SharePoint 2007 Publishing site development and deployment

Question

I am total beginner in SharePoint and I need some help in starting a project. I have to develop publishing site that will be delivered to the client. I would like to give client deployment experience like he would get when deploying standard ASP.NET application as much as possible. I plan to use Visual Studio 2008 with SharePoint extensions and maybe WSPBuilder or some other tools. I also need help in structuring whole project.

Here is what I plan to do:
1. Develop minimal site definition
2. Create site from this defionition. How should I do this from code ? Use SharePoint Feature ? How should I activate it ?
3. Develop all the needed infrastructure for the site (master page, layouts, content types, ...) as SharePoint Features.

Is this correct and how should I develop all those parts so I can make a some kind install script so can client create get complete site with one click ?

Answer 1

Personally I don't find that creating a site definition is really that useful for the sites I have built. They can be very tricky to set up, because of their complex nature.

What I do is use the standard Publishing Site and then using features to add my additional componets (deployed via a SharePoint solution).

You can use Feature Stapling to connect up the feature to the Publishing Site creation.

I've also just done a blog post on how to programmatically modify the workflow which is created by default: http://www.aaron-powell.com/blog/february-2009/programmatically-modifying-sharepoint-workflows.aspx (that also has a link in the comments off to the Feature Stapling concept).

Then I use a combination of SharePoint Solution Installer (http://www.codeplex.com/sharepointinstaller) and batch files to install the components. SSI for all the SharePoint database level installs and batch files for the file system stuff.

Answer 2

Site definitions are complex no question about it, but they are very useful if you need to deploy to unrelated enviornments. If you are staying on the same server farm, maybe site definition is overkill. If you are going between domains (i.e. test & prod, then maybe they are worth looking into).

Another advantage to site definitions, esp. if delivering to a client is it feels more like a traditional deliverable. They will have a bunch of files (hopefully in source control) that are their custom site. I think that gives IT dept's a much warmer feeling than an XML file created from the SharePoint UI.

Another benefit of site definitions are you have a lot more control over the pages that make up the site. IMHO its easier to add master pages & custom CSS via site defintion that site template.

I am curious as to what are the 'moving parts' to the site you are trying to deliver? I think that answering that question will determine how to define the project's structure.

Generally, I think you are on the right track. Features and solutions are a must. I would stay away from VSeWSS, its buggy and clunky and generally terrible if you are trying to do anything complex. It tries to be so smart, that it leaves you no control.

That said, it really depends on what you are trying to do. If you are going to build a solution to deploy to the GAC with one assembly, and only building features supported by vsewss you may be fine.

If however, you want to develop, say a timer job wiring that into the VSeWSS feature framework gets tough. Also, if you need multiple assemblies in the solution. YMMV, but I had to junk it and find of a more flexible solution (hello NANT).

A lot of the work you will end up doing is building and checking, and re-checking XML configuration files. Bookmark the Feature Schema reference page on MSDN, you will be spending a lot of time going through it.

Finally, yes, if you have all of the parts packaged as features you should be able to develop a nice install script. Ultimately the script will need to call the STSADM (there are some really nice STSADM extensions here) commands necessary to create the site structure, add & deploy the solution & activate the features. You can start with a batch file, and get as complicated as you want.

Answer 3

Adding another answer, because I have more than 300 characters worth of stuff to say :(

RE: SharePoint solutions generator, again I would say your mileage may vary.

The biggest issue with SharePoint dev is managing all of the "magic strings" across the various configuration files. GUIDs and Fully Qualified Assembly names are the spit and glue that hold the whole thing together, and although it all makes sense its very difficult to manage.

The current crop of tool all try and alleviate the complexity of managing these things, but they require that you work in a certain way, so the tool knows how to inject the appropriate plumbing.

If you plan on doing a lot of work with SharePoint it really behooves you too learn to manage the plumbing yourself. Its painful up front, but really pays dividends.

Basically, I suggest you spend your time learning the platform and not the tools. Once you know the platform, using the tools will be much easier.

If you are doing this as a one-off engagement and just want to get it done, I'm sure you can get any of the tools you've mentioned to do the trick.

Answer 4

I would agree with the use of the out of the box publishing site definition, and then customizing it using Site Collection features (Master Page, Page Layouts, CSS) and site features (create lists, pages, sub sites, defining master pages of sites, etc...).

Feature stapling is great when you want to customize new sites (allow user to create new sites) of well known site templates, like customize the "My Site" look and feel. In this case I don’t think its very useful.

As a tool to help this task, I personally use STSDEV (http://www.codeplex.com/stsdev) to help in creating, programming, debugging and deploying my Sharepoint solutions.

First it creates a good project for Visual Studio (clean, or with some nice "starting point" definitions). Then it includes some “build configurations” that really helps with install, deploy and upgrade in the development machine.