MOSS Site Definitions, Features and the moving site collections

Question

Hi

The general consensus is that devlopment of MOSS publishing sites, should be done using site definitions, Solutions, Features but due to project timescales we had to do all list/site column/content type/master page development using the SharePoint UI and SPD. We then used the contentdeployment wizard to migrate everything from devlopment.

Having done this, the future plan is to possibly, given the budget, change what has been built to use a site definition and features to get in line with best practices.

Has anyone done anything similar or have any tips on how best to plan for this?

Kind Regards

Answer 1

This is somewhat dependent on how large and complex your solution is. I was in the same situation with a project I started to work in. They initially started to do everything in SharePoint Designer. But when I was thrown in to the project, I decided to scrap all those changes, starting from the requirements and build up everything as site definitions/solutions/features in Visual Studio. In this case, it was feasible since the customizations were not too complex.

You can take a look at the SharePoint Solutions Generator, to see if that could help you as well. It can give you at least a good starting point.