BG Images on Tables

or another method:
BODY{background-color: white;background-image:url('images/background2.jpg');background-repeat: no-repeat;background-position: top center;}

MOSS in a day

NOTE: This information was posted from a blog. I assume no responsibility or ownership of it.

Nothing is more effective in a "pitch" (aka demo) than showing organizations you can rebrand their website in your software (hopefully MOSS 2007) in < 1 day.

I've completely rebranded MOSS several times using a Minimal Master Page and borrowing CSS files and images from customer's external website or their corporate intranet.

To rebuild an intranet/internet site for a demo/proof of concept these are the steps I go through:

1. Analyze the existing website.
   Is there a consistent look and feel for this? i.e. Navigation up to; nav on left; content in middle?
   Global
   -How does the primary navigation work?
   -How does the secondary navigation work?
   -Is there a bread crumb
   -What is the footer?
   Home Page
   -Are there content roll ups?
   -Is there content aggregation from external sites?
   Detail page
   -What does the page structure look like?
   -Is there a common structure for this?
   -Are these basic pages or complex pages (i.e. are there applications being embedded etc.)
   Grab a dump of their existing site
   -Browse to the site and do a SAFE AS from Internet Explorer
   --This will give you the CSS, the HTML and the graphics.
2. Create the artifacts
   -Create a master page (you may require 2 master pages (1 for Home Page and 1 for other pages which includes a left nav)
   -Copy the navigation controls from the default.master or the other master pages.
   -Create a custom CSS file
   -Get the navigation styling right.
   -Get the overall font-family and font-size right – this will make a huge difference.
   -Include the Custom CSS on the master page(s).
   -Look and feel pictures - Upload the images for structure into the /Images/ library
   -Create a page layout for the home page (if none of the OOB ones are suitable)
   -Create a page layout for the detail pages (if none of the OOB ones are suitable).
   -Configure the left navigation for the site.
3. Create the Content – this is the key thing! You want the customer to identify with the site.
   -Upload "content images" into the Site Collection Images library.
   -Create the home page
   --Populate the home page
   -Configure the roll ups from other parts of the site.
   -Create the detail pages
   -Create a sub site
   -Create the pages and populate them with content from the customer's site
   -If you don't want to do this manually you could look at www.metalogix.net – I'll be posting a link to a demo live meeting shortly.
4. Additional things which are awesome
   -Content Query Web Part
   -Show rolling content up from other areas of the site based on some meta data.
   -Search
   -WCM and Search go hand in hand. If you can show easily searching the content from the site this will be an advantage.
   -Standard WCM Features – sometimes as MOSS professionals we forget about the basics.
   -Versioning
   -Workflow
   -Auditing
   -Scheduling

Blocking sites by modifying the host file

If you're running Windows XP and logged in as a privileged user then open a DOS command window, type:notepad C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hostsPut the following line in hosts:127.0.0.1 www.google.comFile > Save.Now try to open http://www.google.com with any web browser on the PC.Remove the line you added from hosts to restore access to the Google web site

Misbehaving Master Pages

Q: When logged in as the Administrator everything looks great but when I log in as someone else, it appears that there are images missing. What can be wrong?

A: It is likely related to the storage location for the images, SharePoint permissions, and/or their draft, published, or approved status. Here are a couple things to check when troubleshooting:
· What happens if you try to navigate to one of those image files directly while logged in as the non-administrator user – do you get a security prompt or a 404?
· Can you verify that everything is published and approved and not stuck in draft mode?
· Are the libraries and file system where everything is located permissioned so everyone has access to those locations?

Text Dropshadow using CSS

MOSS Search Label

To add or remove the search label on the searchbox, remove or add this section:
TextBeforeDropDown="<%$Resources:cms,masterpages_searchbox_label%> "

Poor Usability is like a leaky pipe!