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October 24
Templates and SharePoint Sites - 1 of 4
by  Raymond MitchellNo presence information  on 10/24/2008 10:20 AM
Category: Site Definitions

Introduction

Yesterday Joel wrote a post titled "Just SAY NO to Creating Custom Site Definitions."  This has been a subject I've given a lot of thought to lately so I thought now would be a good time to put some of those thoughts into writing.  Because it it is such a big topic, hitting many different SharePoint technologies/areas, I have split it into several core posts and plan to add follow up posts which I will link to from here.

Core Posts:

  1. This introduction post
  2. Definitions and Background
  3. Approaches and Comparisons
  4. Best Practice

 

My Related Posts:

 

Other Related Posts and Resources:

  1. Just SAY NO to Creating Custom Site Definitions - Joel Oleson
  2. SPWebProvisioningProvider
Permanent Link to Post | Email Post Link | Number of Comments 1 Comment(s)

Comments

Great insights

Hey Raymond,

Thanks for this series of posts.  I have been doing a lot of reading to see what appraoch I want to take for different aspects of my current project and have been getting a bit annoyed with the bitter war that has broken out with pro/anti Site Definition camps.

I have been wavering between both approaches for the reasons you outline.  I don't want the complexity / dependencies of Site Definitions, but I want to be able to use Feature Stapling and receivers to maintain content on my different types of sites.  I need a way of deciphering what sites are of what type (Directorate, Department, Team, Project, Programme, etc) and target new functionality against them.

Your final approach of spoofing the template name is a perfect resolution for me.  I don't have to create a whole new blank site definition JUST to get a custom template name.  Now I can reuse what is there and also make use of Feature Stapling.

I am going to go with your recommended approach and hopefully that works out for me.

Great stuff, thanks.

Mark Stokes
http://sharepointstudio.com
 on 11/5/2008 6:01 AM