Move, Lock, and Delete Site Collections

Microsoft has recently released an update to the Central Administration site that makes it easy to move a Site Collection between different Content Databases. The Batch Site Manager can be very handy if you need to break up your content across multiple Content Databases – possibly sitting on different SQL Servers.

Batch Site Manager is a feature that is designed to be used by SharePoint farm administrators to manage and administrate bulk operations that involve moving, locking or deleting one or more site collections within a single Web application. To access the Move, Lock, and Delete Multiple Site Collections page, click the Move, Lock, and Delete Site Collections link located on the Application Management page of Central Administration. The same tool also allows you to lock and delete site collections:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508852(TechNet.10).aspx

Download Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit

Move site collections
Lock site collections
Delete site collections
Batch Site Manager files

How to rename a SharePoint Server machine name.

Renaming a MOSS server is tough job. If anything goes wrong along the way chances are that you need to reconfigure your whole MOSS environment.

Here are the steps to take, and the order in which to take them if you want to rename a server that has MOSS already installed and configured on it:

1.Change each alternate access mapping for your MOSS/WSS deployment in Central Administration:

-Open Central Administration, "Operations" Tab, "Alternate access mappings" link -Modify each mapping item to reflect your newly chosen server name

2.Use stsadm.exe to invoke the "renameserver" command option:

-Open a command prompt window

-cd "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"

-stsadm -o renameserver -newservername -oldservername

3.Rename your Server via Change Name Operation in Windows Server 2003: Start Menu Control Panel System, "Computer Name" tab, "Change" button.

4.Input your new server name

5.Reboot the server NOW.

6.After reboot, open command prompt
-cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN -stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin -password -iisreset /noforce

7.Check all application pool identities in IIS, update where the old machine name is still there.

8.If you already have a search index drop this, and rebuild it.

Your server is now renamed.

Limit SharePoint Designer to Certain Users

For this post, I am going to concentrate on using security permissions to limit access to SPD.

Below is a quick way to limit only certain users the ability to SPD.
-Out-of-the-box, users who have Full Control and Contribute security permissions can open SPD and make changes.
-Assuming you want only users with Full Control access to have access to SPD, the easiest way is to turn off access to the site from SPD for users under the Contribute permission level.
-Open the site
-Select Site Actions > Site Settings.
-Under the “Users and Permissions” group, click the “Advanced permissions” link.
-Select Settings > Permission Levels from the toolbar.
-Click on the Contribute link.
-Under Site Permissions, uncheck the “Use Remote Interfaces - Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.” option.
-Click OK

The issue with the above steps is now any user with Contribute access cannot use SPD. You may have some users who you still want access to SPD but do not want to give Full Control to. For that scenario, you could create a new permission level.

-Open the site
-Select Site Actions > Site Settings.
-Under the “Users and Permissions” group, click the “Advanced permissions” link.
-Select Settings > Permission Levels from the toolbar.
-Click on the Contribute link.
-Scroll to the bottom and click the “Copy Permission Level” button.
-For the Name, type in “Contribute (With SPD)” (without the quotes).
-For the Description, type in “Can view, add, update, and delete. With SPD support.” (without the quotes).
-Under Site Permissions, check the “Use Remote Interfaces - Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.” option.
-Click Create

Now the out-of-the-box Contribute permission level can contain all the users who need contribute access but no SPD. For those users you want to give SPD access to, they can be added to the “Contribute (With SPD)” group. One caveat is if you have other applications access the SharePoint web services for the site, they will no longer work.

This web site has been configured to disallow editing with FrontPage. Contact your web site administrator for more information

To prevent users from changing a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site or a SharePoint Server 2007 site, disable the authoring feature in SharePoint Designer 2007 by editing the Onet.xml file. By default, the Onet.xml file for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and for SharePoint Server 2007 is in the following folder:
\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\\xml

Note: Replace the placeholder with the name of the Windows SharePoint Service that is installed on the server.

For example, if the English (United States) version of Windows SharePoint Services is installed on the server, the SharePoint Team Site site template is located in the following folder:
Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\XML

To do this, follow these steps:
1.On the server that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or SharePoint Server 2007, locate the site template that you want to modify. Site templates are located in the following folders on the server:
-SharePoint Team Site: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extentsions\12\Template\SiteTemplates\XML.-Meeting Workspaces: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extentsions\12\SiteTemplates\MPS\XML

Note Replace the Drive placeholder with the drive where Windows is installed.

2.Right-click the Onet.xml file, click Open With, and then click Notepad.

3.Locate the Project Title tag, and then add the following line:

DisableWebDesignFeatures=wdfopensiteThen, click Save.
The complete Project Title tag is as follows:

4.Restart Internet Information Services (IIS). To do this, follow these steps:

-Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
-At the command prompt, type iisreset computer_name /restart, and then press ENTER.

Note: Replace the computer_name placeholder with the name of the computer that is running IIS.

After you follow these steps, users who try to open a site that is based on the site template that has the DisableWebDesignFeatures=wdfopensite attribute will receive the following message:
 
This web site has been configured to disallow editing with FrontPage. Contact your web site administrator for more information.
 
Warning: Do not edit a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site or a SharePoint Server 2007 site by using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. If you do this, you run a major risk of corrupting the site. Instead, always use SharePoint Designer 2007 to edit the site.

Server Error in '/' Application. The resource cannot be found.

Few Days before, in our project, we faced one issue while browsing the site. Don’t know, what gone wrong but got error message as mentioned below:-

Server Error in '/' Application.

HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly
The resource cannot be found.

Even if you have activated the possibility to see errors and trace in SharePoint (Web application web.config --> callstack="true", customerror="off", debug="true") you won't have a precise indication of what ressource is missing.

How to troubleshoot this error message? Here is the answer...

There are two ways by which you can resolve this error message:-

Method: 1

Just right click your page and choose "view source"

Method: 2

Under the root path in IIS configuration, under "Home Directory"under the field "local path". "c:\inetpub\mywebsite\" is not the same as "c:\inetpub\mywebsite" apparently now.

My site came back alive as soon as I removed the trailing backslash so that the path now says "c:\inetpub\mywebsite"

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you.