The Stsadm command-line tool of SharePoint 2007 has the following limitations: As part of a farm backup, backs up, but cannot be used to restore the configuration database or Central Administration content database. For more information, see Recovering the configuration database and Central Administration content database. Site collection backups affect performance, and they can cause access errors. They should only be used when the site collection is locked. Site collection backups can be...

Be careful when you try to import sub-site to be your root site, especially when you have publishing sites. STSADM import/export doesn't work doesn’t work too well when you export a sub-site and import it to the top level site in a site collection. When you get you resulted root site you Template Settings page (Site Settings-> Page Layout), and Site Setting -> Create Page are corrupted. Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1. at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exce...

When you administrate SharePoint or develop new application one of the most frequently used console command is STSADM. This command provide you specifc access to the SharePoint functionality via commands. STSADM has a huge number of commands, which is hard to find from the results it prints in console. There is a nice trick how to find the command you forgot, but only remember a part of a name - use stsadm |find "<name>", where is "name" is a part of the orginal command. For example,...

SharePoint provides you OOTB features to run something on regular basis using "timer jobs". You can create you own custom job and SharePoint will handle it using OWSTIMER.exe. There are several resources (1, 2, 3) describing how to create and deploy you custom timer jobs. Unfortunately, SharePoint doesn't provide tools to delete custom timer jobs via Central Administration - you can only disable it, or delete via API - SPJobDefinition.Delete() (sample) There is a codeplex project that install ...

Sometimes you have a already created site but wanted to know the site definition of that site, or gets the name of the site definition from which the site template that was used to create the site is derived. There are several steps to get that template First method Navigate to the “Central Administration –> Application Management –> Site Collection List” and choose the site you are trying to find the template for Write down site "Title” and “Database name” values ...

Question: >> How can I copy groups and permissions across sites? Answer: SharePoint doesn't provide OOTB features to copy groups and permissions across groups and sites. But there are several solutions for this: 1) Copy groups with permissions with site You can make a copy of your site and groups with permissions will be copied as well. To do this you need to export and import your site via STSADM with -includeusersecurity parameter STSADM -o export -url <site_name> -f...

Almost all changes that developers and administrators introduce to SharePoint are completed via “jobs” mechanism of SharePoint (Central Administration –> Operations --> Timer Job Definitions). Your changes are queued and SharePoint complete them when “job” time comes.  It might be a bit frustrating, because all jobs have different timing and SharePoint doesn’t provide you UI to change when jobs start. The only way to change when job starts is using STSADM – ether running a...

Intro Ken Zheng posted a good overview of how to create a Site Collection in new Content Database http://littletalk.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/creating-a-site-collection-in-a-new-content-database/ I’d like to add some notes to Ken’s post, regarding planning site collections and sub-sites among different content databases. There are some reasons, why you could have several content databases: MS recommends to have content database not more the 100Gb, otherwise it could hinder perform...

SharePoint Site Template has one very handy feature – it can be registered inside a Site or you can restrict certain sites to use only certain templates. It’s obvious how to do this for site collection, because UI provides you specific links, but it’s a bit tricky to assign templates for a Site, so do the following: 1) Upload an existing site template to the site template gallery (Site  Settings –> Modify All Site Settings –> “Site Templates") link under the "Galleries" se...

Question: >>I have a new installation of Sharepoint.  Before we start using it, I would like the site to be more meaningful than http://server08/site. >>I would like to change the name so that is is something like http://mysite/site. Answer: There are several ways of how to rename Web Site. You can use stsadm -o renameweb command. More details are in MSDN article. But this command does't help you if you want to rename the site with the port. For example if you have http://se...