• Manually: Re-enter the product key as described in kb971620
• Hotfix: Download and apply hotfix as descibed in kb971620

SharePoint Conference 2009 is announced to be in Las Vegas.

To find out more and register go to https://www.mssharepointconference.com/

Did you ever wanted to create completely custom menu in SharePoint and use some common way to manage the navigation nodes?

In this post I’ll show you how to build custom navigation with an XML file as a navigation source and treeview as display control.

And what is the benefit of this approach?

Because navigation nodes are defined in XML file, nodes can be managed manually or retrieved automatically. XML file can be retrieved from anywhere or even constructed and manipulated by custom code. One of simpler approaches would be even to have data source available as XML web service.

Another benefit is XML structure. Structure below is just a sample. Structure can be more complex or completely different or contain a lot more information. It’s up to you to define which information is in element and what in attributes.

Maybe you even have an XML schema already defined somewhere and you just reuse it….

Create navigation source

Create sample xml file with nodes that should be displayed in navigation menu.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Menu name="MyNavigation">
    <Folder name="Technical Links">
        <Node name="Microsoft" url="https://www.microsoft.com"></Node>
        <Node name="MSDN" url="https://www.msdn.com"></Node>
        <Node name="TechNet" url="https://technet.microsoft.com"></Node>
    </Folder>
    <Folder name="Links">
        <Node name="My Blog" url="https://blogs.msdn.com/matjazperpar"></Node>
        <Node name="Microsoft Slovenia" url="https://www.microsoft.com/slovenija"></Node>
    </Folder>
</Menu>

Save file as “MyNavSource.xml” on SharePoint. I used Pages library for this post.

Create blank aspx file

On SharePoint create a blank aspx file and save it as “NavigationPost.aspx”.

Add SPXMLDatasource in NavigationPost.aspx

• Click on a “Data Source Library”.
• Under XML Files create new data source by clicking “Add an XML file…”
• Point “Source” to XML file created at the beginning (MyNavSource.xml)

• In Data Source Library click on MyNavSource.xml and then select “Insert Data Source Control”

File NavigationPost.aspx should look like this:

Add TreeView control

• Select Toolbox

• Insert TreeView

• Click on TreeView and set Data Source to SPXmlDataSource1

• File NavigationPost.aspx should now look like this:

• In a browser is should look like this:

• Because sample XML file uses attributes name and url edit the DataBindings for TreeView control

• For node set binding as set on picture

• Preview should look like this:

• Autoformat the treeview if necessary…

• In SharePoint Designer click Format, Master Page, Attach Master Page

AspMenu?

It is also possible to use aspmenu control instead of Treeview. That would look like this:

One of the most regular content on intranet is a weather webpart. There are many weather info providers, but not many have data for smaller cities. For example, if you want to add weather information for a city Novo Mesto, Slovenia you have a difficult task in front of you... No more..

Slovenian portal www.rtvslo.si has posted local weather information that is accessible through RSS feed. It is easy to pick your city and to add RSS feed to SharePoint.

How to create it:

• Go to the link https://www.rtvslo.si/modload.php?&c_mod=rweather 

• Enter your city name (ex. Novo mesto)

• Weather information appears. Click RSS icon

• Copy the URL Link

• Open SharePoint Site
• Edit Page
• Add new webpart / RSS webpart

• Edit RSS webpart properties 
• Past Weather URL link in the properties
• Click OK

• Exit Edit mode
• And you are done :)

Common mistake that admins do is just replacing the port number in Internet Information Server and fixing record in Alternative Access Mappings (AAM). But in this case settings are not stored in the Sharepoint database and the next time SharePoint Configuration is run, the settings will no longer be valid. Why? Because older settings were stored in a database.

You can imagine that most of the calls I got were when customers deployed SP1 on their farm, and just of a sudden Central administration stopped working...

There are two known procedures (maybe even more...).

Option A: Unprovisioning and provisioning of new CA site

The idea is to unprovision the old CA site and provision the new one. Complete procedure is explained on a Brett's Blog Adding Kerberos & SSL to Central Administration.

This procedure has some drawbacks and have to be careful if you made some customizations to the CA site or you made modifications to the CA's web.config file.

Option B:  STSADM command (getadminport, setadminport)

I think this approach is much better one. STSADM has a a switch you can use to read and set the port number or enable/disable SSL for Central Administration site.

To read settings:

If you are not sure what settings are stored in database, you can check with the command:

stsadm.exe -o getadminport

To change the settings:

stsadm.exe -o setadminport

Command has a few switches:

To change the port number:

stsadm.exe -o setadminport -port <port>

To enable SSL:

stsadm.exe -o setadminport -port <port> -SSL

For SSL to work you also need to import the certificate in the IIS console (Same as for any ordinary web site).

2009/08/25 Updated for typos. (Thanks to erosen03)