Quick tip: Lookup fields to a document library

In order to be able to lookup a document in a document library from a customized list is necessary that the document has the Title (or the property that you have selected to show) informed. When you save the document from Office 2003 the Title is not informed and it causes that the document cannot be putted as a reference in our custom list.

Optimizing your web content management portal

One of the most common problems with this kind of MOSS sites is the time to load the home page (or any other page). The first thought is "We need to add more WFE to the farm", but if you have not any complex component (flash, custom web part, …) the most probable problem will have the weight of the page. In order to reduce it you can follow this article which explains the principal techniques. I wish to remark two of these techniques: enable the HTTP compression on the server and avoid charging the core.js and core.css to the end users (core.js is not necessary for them and core.css will be override by your custom CSS).

In order to check it in this page you can check quickly what is the weight of your page and with this plug-in for FireFox you can calculate (objectively) the load time of any page.

Enjoy it!

Related links:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727371.aspx#MOSS2007OptPerfWCM_PagePayloadSmallisGood
https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/3371

And the 70-542 too. I already have the SharePoint poker!

During the first day of the SharePoint Conference 2008 I have achieved my fourth SharePoint certification. Basically it includes the typical topics of MOSS:

• BDC and the application definition file
  
• Forms Server
  
• Managing the user profiles
  
• Search
  
• Audiences
  
• BI
  
• Enterprise content management
  

For those who are in Seattle this week I recommend you to try it. During this week you can obtain the 70-630 and the 70-542 exams for free.

Good luck!

The missing restored variations timer jobs issue fixed!

While I was Reading about the post SP1 hotfix for WSS and MOSS I have found that the issue about the restore of a publishing portal with variations has been fixed (see my previous post). The documentation says:

"This hotfix package also fixes the following issues that were not previously documented in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Timer jobs may be missing after you restore a backup
After you restore a backup to another server, many Windows SharePoint Services timer jobs may be missing on the restored server. "

Somebody has tested it?

70-630 passed too

With this exam I have achieved three of the four certifications about SharePoint 2007 (70-541, 70-630 and 70-631). This last exam is very similar to 70-631, and I recommend it to every "SharePoint worker" who deals with it regularly.

See you in Seattle!

Accessible variation label menu

This is my little contribution to the improvement of the accessibility in MOSS. I use this user control to show my variations in an accessible manner without tables.

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>
<%@Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"%>
<%@Register TagPrefix="CMS" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls"%> <cms:VariationDataSource id="LabelMenuDataSource" LabelMenuConfiguration="1" Filter="" runat="server"/>
<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server" DataSourceID="LabelMenuDataSource" EnableViewState="False">
<ItemTemplate> <a href="<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "NavigateUrl") %>">
<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "DisplayText") %></a>&nbsp;
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

To use it you can replace the content of the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\VariationsLabelMenu.ascx with the code above. In those cases where there are different publishing portals on the same MOSS installation you can create a new file in the same directory (for example MyCustomVariationsLabelMenu.ascx) and use it in your master page simply changing the register tag.

Original tag:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="PublishingVariations" TagName="VariationsLabelMenu" src="~/_controltemplates/VariationsLabelMenu.ascx" %>

New tag:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="PublishingVariations" TagName="VariationsLabelMenu" src="~/_controltemplates/MyCustomVariationsLabelMenu.ascx" %>

Web.config for all web applications in the same port? How is that possible?

I have three web applications on the port 80 and each one is accessible through different host headers. I have to configure the proxy settings to one of them, but the changes to its web.config have not any effect. But if I make some change in the web.config of the web application that has the default host header access, this change is applied to all web applications. Is it possible? What is the reason?