Setting full anonymous access for a document library

If you have a SharePoint site which is running on full anonymous access and you want a document library to run on anonymous access too, that will not be possible because by design SharePoint will only allow the anonymous users to only view the contents of a document library and not add anything to it

If you want the anonymous users to be able to add the documents as well to the library you will have to perform an additional task

SPD workflow Failed on start (retrying)

I have been wrestling with this issue for about 60 days, the issue occurs when you create a simple OOB SPD workflow or even a Nintex workflow.

The solution to this is two parts

PART I

=================

The service account should be a part of

1. Looked at the groups in the local machine

· WSS_WPG

· WSS_ Restricted

· WSS_Admin_WPG

· IIS_WPG

2. Checked on the SQL management studio  > security > logins > Service account > properties > server roles were given as dbcreator > security & system admin > public

      Looked in user mappings the service account  was set db owner

3. >> Looked in the application content database in SQL

      service account should be  is a db owner

4. In  Central Admin page  > policy for web application > add service account as full control 

5. CA > operations tab > update farm administrators group > service account is added there

6. looked in the site > site settings > site collection administrator

7. looked in the component services > dcom config > IIS admin service > security > added the service account to launch and activation > access permissions > and Configuration permissions .

 

After doing all these settings the service account must have all the require permissions

 

PART II

===============

Second part of the solution is change the service account from the central admin page & run an IIS reset

this is the main key and you will have to compulsorily do this to resolve the issue

 

hope it works for you

Basics of DNS and MX Records

An introduction to DNS records

When your Web browser checks the DNS server to find the IP address of the server hosting the Web site, it's actually looking for a record that lists the IP address of the Web site. DNS servers generally contain many different types of records. While it is beyond the scope of this tutorial to discuss all of them, here is an overview of some of the more important DNS records you should know about.

Start of Authority (SOA) records
There are often multiple DNS servers that service a domain. Multiple DNS servers might be used for load balancing, fault tolerance, or both. But, only one DNS server within a domain is considered authoritative.

The authoritative DNS server contains a read/write copy of the records database. Non-authoritative DNS servers are read-only. A Start of Authority (SOA) record points to the domain's authoritative DNS server. It also contains a sort of sequence number that is updated every time a change is made to the records contained within the zone. This helps non-authoritative DNS servers stay in sync with the authoritative DNS server.

Name Server (NS) records
A Name Server (NS) record is similar to an SOA record in that it points to the domain's DNS servers. The similarities end there though. Each DNS server in the domain gets its own NS record, regardless of whether it is authoritative or not.
Host records and Alias records

Probably the most common type of DNS record is a Host record (also called an A record). A Host record is simply used to associate a computer on your network with an IP address.

For example, I have a server on my network named RELEVANT. I therefore also have a Host record on my DNS server that links the name RELEVANT to the server's IP address.

It just so happens that the server RELEVANT is hosting a Web site on my domain. However, when people want to visit my Web site, they do not enter relevant.brienposey.com, even though that is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the server hosting the Web site.
Instead, they enter www.brienposey.com. This is where the Alias record (also called a CNAME record) comes into play. An Alias record's job is to associate an alternate name with a computer for which there is already a Host record. For example, suppose that the host record for relevant looked like this:
Relevant Host (A) 147.100.100.97
When someone enters www.brienposey.com, I want them to be directed to the relevant.brienposey.com server. Since there is no server on the network named "www," I set up an Alias record that associates www with relevant.brienposey.com. The Alias record looks something like this:
www Alias (CNAME) relevant.brienposey.com

MX records
An e-mail message finds its way to its destination via an MX record.

An e-mail address is made up of a recipient name and a domain name (recipient@brienposey.com). I already explained how DNS queries are used to locate a DNS server for a specific domain. The process works exactly the same way when you send an e-mail message to a recipient in another domain.

The difference is that your mail client isn't interested in the IP address of your Web server -- it needs to know the IP address of your mail server. That's where the MX record comes in.
An MX record stores the IP address of your SMTP server, so e-mail clients can determine where a message should be sent. They simply perform a DNS query against a domain's MX record to get the IP address of the organization's SMTP server.


How to create an MX record ??

1. To create an MX record on a Windows Server 2003 DNS server, select the DNS command from the server's Administrative Tools menu to open the DNS console.
2. Navigate through the console tree to DNS -> your server -> Forward Lookup Zones -> your domain.
3. Right click on the listing for your domain and select the New Mail Exchanger (MX) command. You will see the New Resource Record dialog box shown in Figure A.

Figure A

Use the New Resource Record dialog box to create an MX record.

• The first field on this dialog box asks for the name of a parent or child domain. In most cases, this field will be left blank.
• The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is filled in automatically.
• Just below that is a field asking for the FQDN of the mail server -- not the mail server's IP address.
• What this means is that, unless you have a Host record in place for the mail server, the MX record isn't going to work The last field on this dialog box is a priority number.
• If you are only planning on using one MX record, you don't have to worry about changing this number. But many organizations (including my own) have multiple Exchange servers.
  
  How to set up a Host record ??
  
  MX record won't work without a Host record in place, so let me explain how to set one up:
• In the DNS console, right click on your domain listing and select the New Host (A) command from the shortcut menu to view the dialog box shown in Figure B.
• Enter the server's name in the Name field. Be sure to use the simple name, not the fully qualified domain name (relevant -- not relevant.brienposey.com).
• Now enter the server's IP address and click the Add Host button

Figure B

You don't have to worry about creating a PTR record unless you plan on supporting reverse DNS queries. Also, you usually don't want to check the "Allow Any Authenticated User to Update DNS Records" checkbox for security reasons.

Every thing you can do to make WSS search work !!!

If like me you are haunted by Event IDs 2424 and 2436 on your SharePoint server and you have no clue of what needs to be done join the club, WSS has least relation with the search configurations and if you get a search error you can do anything and everything mentioned in this article to get the error away ….

Taking reference from my earlier article WSS search does not work after service account password changes here are the additions

1. If this issue occurs when you have site running in the Host Header and the search stops working after the Infrastructure update is applied, apply the post infrastructure update or the Service pack 2, this is because the infrastructure update is know to break your AAM mappings check this: http://blogs.msdn.com/alimaz/archive/2008/07/27/known-issue-with-infrastructure-update-for-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951297
2. Use KB 934838 which can update your credentials to use the updates account
3. Try to make the content access account as the farm administrator
4. Add the service account to the following groups

• Administrators
• IIS_WPG
• WSS_WPG
• WSS_ADMIN_WPG

5. On database server, configure the account as:

• "dbcreator" and "securityadmin" role of the database server
• "dbowner" of all SharePoint databases including configuration database, content database and search database

6. The alternate Access mappings should have the default running with http://servername:portnumber and in IIS host header should be configured with http port number and second entry as with host header of your site and port 80

7. In web.config set the <identity impersonate = “true”/>, this should help

8. The timer service account must be same as the search services account in the services console and should have permissions in the task folder locate this on c:\windows\task now this is a system folder and will not let you assign permissions, so you can run the following command from start > run > cmd > type the following attrib –s <folder name> this will remove the system attributes from the folder, after your done with giving the permissions you can run attrib +s

9. On Site Actions > site settings > Search Visibility > index all aspx pages

10. Look at the kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952172/

11. go to start > admin tools > component services > component services > My computer > computer > DCOM config > give permissions to the IISadmin and SPSearch components

Go to properties > security tab > edit all the 3 frames and add the service account

12. Now run the command stsadm –o enumservices and note down the output, especially for WSS search

13. Now run the provision the search follow tech net http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262031.aspx first stop and then start, you will have to provide a new database

14. To check if the search works, run the command stsadm –o spsearch –action fullcrawlstart

10 Free SharePoint Themes full configuration for Dummies

As we know that share point does provide you some set of themes to work with you can locate them in at your site, go to site actions > site settings > under the look and feel category hit the site themes to go there, if you are working with MOSS you have an option to apply the master pages to your site as well, master pages are predefined pages which gives your site a uniform look and feel,

The difference between Themes and master pages is that themes needs to be applied on a site level and in master page you can set up an option to inherit to the sub sites, but if you use the sushi 3.4 you can set themes on all you sub sites in one go.

Incase you are still wondering how do we go about these you can refer a superb article by Heather Solomon difference between master pages and Themes difference between master pages and Themes, and you will know which one to implement,

As mentioned in my earlier posts I did discover some hidden themes in SharePoint packed with the product but they were not released because of there non uniform CSS, now Microsoft has released free themes which will work with you MOSS site these are available as free download here, you can checkout the preview this looks super cool on site but the implementation is not that simple

Pre requisites:

You need Visual Studio 2008 installed on your machine

You need Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint – available here:

o V1.2 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7BF65B28-06E2-4E87-9BAD-086E32185E68&displaylang=en

· V1.3 CTP http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=fb9d4b85-da2a-432e-91fb-d505199c49f6

Now after you are done with the pre-requisite you can install the new cool themes for SharePoint from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0a87658f-20b8-4dcc-ad7a-09ad22641f3a

and enjoy a new look to your portal site, I am in a process of implementing these but will surely comment about the look and feel as soon as I am done :)

Alright addition to my earlier post today on 5/5/2009 why? not because the SharePoint themes were tough but because I had jus too much work

Okies now everywhere we see that the ten themes are just given with the links to understand the complete configuration you must refer to my older post at SharePoint Hidden themes; here I talk about Editing the SPthemes.xml file

so if you go step by step

1. Download and install the ten themes for SharePoint

2. Install Visual studio 2008 on the server

3. Download visual studio extensions for SharePoint

4. Then locate the Ten themes folder

5. Select any theme folder eg SportingsiteTheme folder

6. double click on the folder go to > Sporting site theme > Template > themes > SPORTING

7. copy this folder and paste it into c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions'\12\template\themes

8. Also copy sporting_preview.jpg to the c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions'\12\template\images folder

9. Now Modify the SPthemes.xml (Take tips from SharePoint Hidden themes;) located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033

just add a chunk of code in between as:

“<Templates>
<TemplateID>sporting</TemplateID>
<DisplayName>sporting</DisplayName>
<Description>sporting</Description>
<Thumbnail>images/sporting_Preview.jpg</Thumbnail>
<Preview>images/sporting_Preview.jpg</Preview>
</Templates>”

this makes the theme available on site actions> site settings > site themes. so its easy to apply, save the file and close it.

10. now if you try applying this theme it will be applied to your site but will show something as this

11. Now comes the visual studio part, you have to go back to the place where you original Ten Themes for SharePoint are located and sportingsitetheme > double click and run the file SportingSiteTheme.sln, it will load and run the project in Visual studio 2008

12. Once that is done click on Debug button (green start button) the project will take its own sweet time to compile

then it gives you message as Activating feature sporting site template, and succeeded

13. you can check the featured being deployed at the Central admin > Operations tab > Solution Management > sportingtheme.wsp incase this is not deployed you can use the command prompt to do that, catch the links here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263231.aspx

14. now try to refresh the site or apply the same thing… it works !!!!

Here’s the new look

My recommendation try the Construction site theme its awesome