I have often been asked how to add the name of the person who updated a page and the date to the footer. This is the first time I have had to do it. Though it is not obvious there is a control that helps with the display of any list column. The control is ListItemProperty. So for “Modified By” and “Last Modified” the fields are “Editor” and “Modified” respectively.

Recently I noticed on a situation where the sync jobs were failing on a MOSS implementation. Everything else was working great except for the features that surface the “Sites that you are a member of” and “My SharePoint Sites” in office. Looking into the ULS logs I found:

OWSTIMER.EXE (0x07E8)
0x040C
SharePoint Portal Server
User Profiles
8zzy
Medium
Aborting sweepsynch for guid instance due to null or non-online content database

Turns out that the content database had been set to “Offline” to prevent the creation of new sites. Changing the content database to “Ready” status and setting the site limit to the current number of sites solved the problem and now new site memberships are working correctly.

One of my favorite stories from the 2008 SharePoint Conference happened during [Dustin’s](http://www.sharepointblogs.com/dustin/default.aspx" target="_blank) presentation “SharePoint Designer: I didn’t know you could do THAT!”. Dustin was running through his patter and zooming the screen in and out. Every so often for emphasis he would zoom in and then draw a red circle for emphasis. One of my coworkers waved me over (for what I thought was a technical question about something Dustin had just said…) and asked me “How does he ZOOM like that?”

I am very pleased to announce that Andrew Connell, MVP has released a book dedicated to the topic of Web Content Management Development. This book was a labor of love (you never hear that writing a book is easy…) by AC and a couple contributing authors like Spencer Harbar, Bob German, John Holliday and me.

The content is great, here is a peek:

1. Embarking on Web Content Management Projects
2. Windows SharePoint Server 3.0 Development Primer
3. Overview of Web Content Management in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
4. SharePoint Features and the Solution Framework
5. Minimal Publishing Site Definition
6. Site Columns, Content Types and Lists
7. Master Pages and Page Layouts
8. Navigation
9. Accessibility
10. Field Types and Field Controls
11. Web Parts
12. Leveraging Workflow
13. Search
14. Authoring Experience Extensibility
15. Authentication and Authorization
16. Implementing Sites with Multiple Languages and Devices
17. Content Deployment
18. Offline Authoring with Document Converters
19. Performance Tips, Tricks and Traps
20. Incorporating ASP.NET 2.0 Applications

The book is available on Amazon.com.

I’ll be presenting my Social Networking talk at the Austin SharePoint User Group meeting June 11^th, 2008 from 6 to 8 pm.

Social Networking and User Profiles for Business

SharePoint offers many features that facilitate personalization in the corporate environment. Organizations are often eager to adopt the features yet spend little time exploring the extent to which personalization and profiles can enhance the user experience. This session will explore the options available to the enterprise for:

Every time I review Preupgrade reports I wish that I had a better way to review the results. I finally wrote a stylesheet to help. The intent for this tool is to apply it to your upgrade reports after your first prescan run to test the results before you actually run the upgrade. Then keep the reports around for evaluating your upgrade after you upgrade the sites. Here is what the results look like.

There is a LOT of great information on how to configure SSO for SharePoint. If you are still jaded because of the limited capability of SSO in 2003, you have to take a fresh look at SSO in 2007. As far as I can tell the service has not changed substantially (if at all). The biggest change is that SharePoint Designer now understands SSO and you can use it for your Data Form Web Parts and the BDC.

The folks at TechNet have been busy writing new documentation on SharePoint Governance. There is a lot of great information for organization implementing SharePoint who want to implement a governance plan. The articles and white papers cover tools and techniques to help in your quest for order.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263341.aspx

There are a few “one name” folks in the SharePoint world. You know Joel, but you cannot call yourself a SharePoint developer if you don’t know Fitz. Mike Fitzmaurice has long been a technical evangelist for SharePoint in his official capacity as Technical Product Manager. If you ever had a chance to attend any of the Microsoft parties with a karaoke machine, you will remember Mike for his voice and stage presence. (Word UP!)

I’ll be the first to tell you that Alternate Access Mapping confuses the heck out of me. It does not do what I think it should do and it affects things I think it should not affect. I guess my main complaint is the name and not the function. Anyway, here is a fix to a problem that I have seen in several implementations that use an extended web application.