A little facelift…

Figured it was time to streamline:

• New URL: http://freakingsharepoint.com/
• New look – testing out Blogger’s Dynamic Views – not completley sold yet - Nope. Hated it. Going back to a basic template!

Other interesting tidbits to mark this juncture:

• First Post: 10/2/2007 – Site/Web Template Names – This blog is 4 years old!
• Most Popular Post: – SharePoint 2010 forces users to save PDFs – Solution Found! – 10,135 views & 25 comments
• Least Popular Post: Changing MOSS Service account password – 8 views & 0 comments
• Top Search Terms:
• “microsoft.sharepoint.applicationpages”
• “one or more web parts on this page references”
• Fun Search Terms:
• “freaking sharepoint”
• “sharepoint fun” <—Who are you people???!!!!
• “why sharepoint be hating on pdfs” <—HA! Love it.

Thanks for reading and hope to discover more SharePoint goodness to share with you guys!

SP2010 Performance Optimization

There are lots of things you can do to make SharePoint go faster.

This blog aggregates some useful information I’ve leveraged. Will continue adding as I learn more. Figured it would be good to have the info aggregated in one place.

• Infrastructure
• Move TempDB & Database log files to separate drives
• Consider content db strategy for different types of SharePoint sites (intranet vs. collaboration vs. public)
• Content db size limits are there to ensure backups can run quickly
• Don’t use default db growth settings: http://www.benjaminathawes.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=5
• Registry Setting
• The windows server will routinely call to Microsoft to check licensing. If you are on a VM that has blocked network this will cause slowdown in performance. To fix it, copy the following into a .vbs file on your server and run it with a cscript command from the command prompt:

const HKEY_USERS = &H80000003 strComputer = "." Set objReg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _    & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv") strKeyPath = "" objReg.EnumKey HKEY_USERS, strKeyPath, arrSubKeys strKeyPath = "\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WinTrust\Trust Providers\Software Publishing" For Each subkey In arrSubKeys     objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_USERS, subkey & strKeyPath, "State", 146944 Next

• IIS
• Run a warmup script
• http://spwakeup.codeplex.com/ or
• http://nearbaseline.com.au/blog/2010/02/powershell-warmup-script-2/ (Powershell)
• Run IIS 7.5 warm-up module - http://www.idocs.info/index.php/2010/09/warm-up-sharepoint-2010-on-w2k8r2-using-iis-7-5-app-warm-up-module/
• Cache - http://www.zimmergren.net/archive/2011/01/09/sp-2010-developing-for-performance-part-3-caching-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
  • BLOB cache (cache files on WFE)
  • Output cache (cache rendered ASPX files in memory)
  • Object cache (cache SP object metadata on WFE)
• Search or User Profile sync scheduling – these are super intensive processes that will slow down your server. Verify that they are scheduled to run during non-peak hours.
  • You should only run the full crawl once or when needing to reset your crawls.
  • Otherwise, only run incremental crawls
• Logging
  • Turn logging down in non dev environments if not needed for troubleshooting
  • Health Data Collection may also be logging more data than is necessary
• Services
  • Do not turn on all the service applications by default. Turn on only the ones required for the implementation.
• Custom Dev
  • Disable Loopback Check  - http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/07/02/disableloopbackcheck-amp-sharepoint-what-every-admin-and-developer-should-know.aspx
  • Use the developer dashboard to figure out which parts of your page running slowly - http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2009/10/28/using-the-developer-dashboard-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
  • Use SPDisposeCheck to check for memory leaks in custom code - http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck

 

• Other great links regarding performance:
  • http://www.aptimize.com/Upload/docs/SharePoint-Performance-Optimization-10-Steps.pdf 
  • What SQL DBAs need to know about SharePoint -  http://www.slideshare.net/jdwade/sharepoint-for

SharePoint 2010 Service Accounts

Word to the wise, when working as a consultant/contractor, get as far ahead as possible on getting service accounts requested. Same goes for hardware.

I always look to this blog for a easy copy/paste/edit when I’m asked for a list of the required service accounts for SharePoint:

http://www.ericharlan.com/Moss_SharePoint_2007_Blog/sharepoint-2010-service-account-reference-guide-a184.html

I also like his answer for WHY you should have so many accounts. I always get asked this! http://www.ericharlan.com/Moss_SharePoint_2007_Blog/why-all-these-sharepoint-service-accounts-a181.html

SharePoint Server Time and Solutions stuck in Deploying

I recently went through setting up a Trial environment at my client which included 4 web front end (WFE) servers. I used AutoSPInstaller which was really sweet for the multiple SP2010 installs. Make sure you get the latest version for a bit more flexibility and nicer config xml.

When I went to deploy the code, which had already been successfully deployed in 1 WFE Dev environment, I noticed my solutions were getting stuck in “Deploying” status.


I verified that I did see dlls deployed by the solutions in the GAC for all my 4 servers, but the solution in Central Admin did not seem to know that the solutions had completed.

My coworker, Blake, pointed out that the server time on my WFEs was in the wrong time zone and that he’d had issues with SharePoint before when servers were out of sync on time. I checked and all my WFE’s were on the same incorrect time, but my SQL servers were on the right time. A ha!

I went and changed the server time zone to the correct time and restarted the SharePoint Timer Service on all 4 servers. Then I retracted all my code, manually deleted .dlls from the GAC of all servers (had to use gacutil, or I get an Access Denied error), and then re-added & redeployed the solutions. My timer job time was still wrong, but the solutions completed deploying to all 4 servers this time!

Anyone know how to reset the SharePoint time?

Followup: We had a MS tech guy in for a risk assessment and we mentioned this issue he said to go ahead and rebuild the farm. GAHHH!

So, lesson learned: Make sure your servers are ALL on the same time zone before you install SharePoint!! It is now on the infrastructure teams check off list.

Document Sets & Multiline Text field with appending does not work

Noticed something today as I was working.
I have a mulitline text field with "Append changes to existing text" turned on.
I added that column to a Document Set content type and saw that the changes to the column are not appended. The column only keeps the last entry made.

Why is this? Is this by design?

Freaking SharePoint!!!!

SharePoint 2010 – Embedding Youtube Videos in Wikis – Media Failed to Load

You’d think this would be easier, but…no.

This issue popped up when a client was trying to embed a youtube video in his shiny new wiki by editing the HTML & adding the <object> embed code. Sadly, the code was stripped once the page was saved and he turned to me for help.

I then tried to do Insert > Audio & Video > Change Media > From Address and enter the youtube video address which seemed like a logical way to do things. Unfortunately, I was only greeted by the error message “Media failed to load.”

What???!!! Of course this isn’t going to be easy. Eventually, after digging around, I did find a solution.

Essentially you have 2 options for embedding video:

1. Upload a video onto the SharePoint site & embed using the Media Web Part
2. Embed a Youtube (or other source) video using the Content Editor Web Part

Option 1 works very easily:

1. Edit Page & Check Out
2. Click “Insert” > “Audio & Video”
3. A Media Web Part appears on the page. Click the center of the web part & a new Medio Options ribbon shows up
4. Click “Change Media” > “From Computer”
5. Browse to the video file on your computer (It gets uploaded to the “Site Assets Library” by default, but you can change this)
6. Save & Check In
7. Click the video to play it.

Option 2 is a little trickier, but does work:

1. Edit Page & Check Out
2. Click “Insert” > “Web Part”
3. Click the “Content & Media” section & pick the “Content Editor Web Part”
4. Click the down arrow at the top right of the web part > “Edit Web Part”
5. Click the web part and enter some text about the video (if you don’t when you edit HTML in the next step there will be a bunch of junk and it will be hard to figure out where to insert your embed text)
6. On the Ribbon > Editing Tools > Format Text, you will see an HTML menu. Select “Edit HTML on this menu”
7. Paste your <object…> embed code here
8. Save & Check In
9. Click the video to play it.

SharePoint 2010 Create New Web Application links/buttons disabled??

Saw this happening off and on in my 2010 environment. Issue would clear when machine was rebooted. NOT a good maintenance plan!

Luckily, ran into this post that worked! http://socialsp.com/2009/12/03/links-not-enabled-on-sharepoint-2010-central-administration-site/#comment-16

Woo hoo!