Video 2: SharePoint Simple CMS

The power of having a Web Site ready in a couple of minutes is something the SharePoint Simple CMS knows to do. It is a good sample of using SharePoint technologies to make our work easier.

Simple CMS for SharePoint

Definitively Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is one of the most powerful web collaboration tools available. It is so easy to edit that many dreamed to have it for editing their company web sites.
Out of the box WSS looks a bit boring and that's why many opted for other kind of solutions for web sites:


Pixelmill just announced the SharePoint Simple CMS, and that is actually the solution to the boring look of WSS plus some enhancements in the editing capabilities. Pixelmill's great graphic design templates are now editable! and with a SharePoint hosting service you could have your web site running in minutes (depending on the service).

B4Contact, the company I work for, developed the SharePoint Simple CMS in cooperation with Pixelmill. Boris Gomiunik is responsible for the development of SharePoint Simple CMS and he is serious about WSS as you could see on his Blog.

Here some samples of web sites working with the SharePoint Simple CMS:


You can see more samples in http://www.sharepointcms.com/templates.aspx

I personally think this will help thousands of organizations and individuals to have a powerful Web site, editable from the same browser and with possibilities of having collaboration intranets or project based web sites. I think Schools and small business will be the most interested.
Some of the characteristics:

• Editable from the browser
• RSS feeds enabled
• Picture gallery integrated with the CMS
• Different levels of authentication

If you would like to know more contact me or simply visit www.sharepointcms.com

WSS - Changing the "administrator" username and password

Today we received the call from one of our customers because for some reason their Windows SharePoint Services web site and intranet stopped working. Some days ago they were making some work with Exchange so the first thought was that Exchange could be causing some problem.
After checking from close the server logs I discovered that some errors were pointing some kind of authorization problems. So something changed with the authentication.
IIS was working without showing errors and the web sites looked working... but the browser was showing an error. Then I went checking the Application Pools inside of the same IIS and I discovered that the application pools of each one of the sites were disabled. Inside of their properties in the tab "identity" I found that the user name and password were not updated. The solution was to select a network service like authorized user. Then like art of magic... the web sites apeared online again!

Windows SharePoint Services 3

WSS 3 is a great application but I have to say that the upgrade from the WSS3 technical refresh version to the RTM was very painful.
2 important web sites where running on the WSS TR before the upgrade and after it... were not working anymore. It took me many hours to solve the problem. So after all that I think I'm able to give some recommendations for any kind of upgrade to WSS.

1. If you are running WSS3 TR make a backup of the complete server farm using the SharePoint 3 Central Addministration site. Go to the Operations section and find the "perform backup" option.
2. Check that the backup was finsihed without errors.
3. Make a copy of all the content databases of your WSS sites and include also the log files related to them. Locate the copies in a different folder.
4. Using the SharePoint Designer (Latest version) make a backup of each one of your sites.
5. Install the WSS 3 RTM. If you are lucky all will go fine... If you have the same problem than me... you will find that you have any of your sites listed within the Web Applications list. If that's the case you will need to create a web application per each web site you had before. Then you will need to remove the content database of each one, restart the IIS and use the STSADMIN.EXE to add the old content databases. You must use the STSADMIN because it converts the databases to what WSS3 needs.

If all fails... you have the back ups and you can contact me using this post. Good luck!