Learning Sharepoint

Question

I'm starting a new job involving Sharepoint design/development. While the job will involve training courses on Sharepoint and other technologies I haven't used, I am interested to get a headstart and learn a little more about Sharepoint.

Are there any good articles explaining Sharepoint development and what I need to know (being a beginner in the technology)? I am strong with C# and ASP.NET as I use it everyday (job or no job), it's just the Sharepoint specific stuff I wonder. I am checking out MSDN. I did check out some other threads on this, but I am not really looking for a book.

A better question would be what blogs are there which focus on code snippets and best practises?

Thanks

Answer 1

Sharepoint was a disaster for me (as I've said before), but I'd be willing to give it another try once .Net 4.0 and VS 2010 are released.

I would definitely download the VS 2010 beta and give the new Sharepoint integration a spin. I hear that it is a big improvement over what we have now.

As for documentation, msdn was the best learning resource I could find. It was more concise than what you will get with most books, although books usually provide a storyline and cohesive progression of learning.

Hope that helps, Good luck.

Answer 2

A few months ago I was looking for decent SharePoint articles just to get an introduction to the technology. I found an entire section on CodeProject dedicated to it. Check it out if you haven't already, I found a number of good articles there.

Answer 3

http://www.microsoft.com/click/SharePointDeveloper/html/Default.html

This site has the information I started with when learning SharePoint: webcasts from TechEd by Andrew Connell and Rob Bogue and the hands-on-labs that go along with them.

There are very many SharePoint MVPs that have blogs that are easy to find and many of them hang around on twitter so it's easy to get help.

http://andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2008/11/25/Free-MSDN-Webcasts-amp-HOLs-for-MOSS-2007-WCM-Development.aspx has info on some newer webcasts

http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/ and http://www.methings.com/podcast/70342/MOSS-Gone-Wild.php are 2 excellent SharePoint Podcasts.

Answer 4

Codeplex is good for examples of developement. Given the rate of change with "best practices" I have seen some books that have become out of date quite rapidly.

I personally have gained a lot of valuable knowledge from looking at questions on forums like this one, trying to replicate the issue on a developement VM. I would recommend having a VM for "play" as hands on will run you up against many of the strengths and weaknesses with different approaches.

If you can get a backup of an existing content database you are using, having lots of documents and document libraries is good for hitting real data and trying out different search configurations etc.

Answer 5

Also, check out the SharePoint dev wiki

Answer 6

In addition to all the links provided by others:

• Microsoft has a Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007 on Technet
• The official SharePoint Team Blog has some good info.
• Sharepoint Joel has a list of Top 100 SharePoint blogs, though a year old provides a good starting point of blogs to look at.
• Several MSDN articles such as:
  • Disposal Best Practices
  • Common Coding Issues using the SharePoint Object Model

Edit: Also just noticed that the Patterns & Practices team has a SharePoint Guidance project on codeplex.

Answer 7

One additional site you shouldn't forget is myrampup.com. It's a community-based training site which will help you get the knowledge you need to develop solutions on the SharePoint platform.

Answer 8

Thanks for this guys. I'd just like to say I don't want tutorials to teach me sharepoint inside out (obviously I need practise for that). I'm just looking for some articles to understand the basic concepts to speed up my learning.

The links, which I haven't found, are very good. Because I'm new to Sharepoint, I don't know which blogs etc are best (though I am partial to MSDN content).

EDIT: I made the original thread but from an unregistered account.

Answer 9

There are lots of SharePoint virtual labs. They are good b/c they let you get your hands on the technology without too much of the setup hassle. :)

Answer 10

Before learning SharePoint development, learn what SharePoint can do. Use it and become familiar with its features. Many people's first thought is to develop new features when much of what they want to do can be done with existing SharePoint features. It's a huge, complex product.

Answer 11

I've found some very good videos for learning Sharepoint at Point8020

Answer 12

Very good reference for SharePoint Object Model: http://www.etechplanet.com/post/2009/08/28/Overview-of-SharePoint-Object-Model.aspx

Answer 13

A good starting resource is the Microsoft RampUp Site it's a free resource that has 2 tracks for SharePoint for developers. Each track consists of articles, slide casts and virtual labs to help you gain an understanding of what goes into developing for SharePoint. They are not all inclusive but it should give you a good starting point.

There is also a user centric overview on the Microsoft Office Site for SharePoint 2007 that can help get you an understanding of some of the features in SharePoint.

I don't know if any of the resources have been update yet for SharePoint 2010, but hopefully those will follow soon.

Also check Microsoft Learning with SharePoint 2010 around the corner you might find free courses. Microsoft usually releases free online courseware for new products around the time of release.

For uo to date announcements check out the SharePoint Team blog, usually there's lots of good information around there.

Good Luck.