MOSS Has Got Game - Glu Mobile’s Website (www.glu.com) - How We Did It - Part 3 of 3

Welcome to the third and final entry in Allin Consulting’s guest blog series on how we built the Glu Mobile web site. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you have not already read them. In this post, we will focus on the software architecture and techniques that we used to increase site performance. Our hardware architecture follows the best practices in sizing a farm of 3 web front-ends, 1 application server, and a 2-node SQL Server cluster, so we will not go into hardware architecture in this post. Beyond having a solid hardware architecture, we recognized that meeting the requirements of our project would mean optimizing performance through a lightweight custom framework in order ensure a positive user experience, especially with the requirements of rich graphics, media, and content targeting that a gaming site would demand.

Silverlight & MOSS Integration

If you are struggling to integrate the Silverlight and MOSS

Here is the solution for your problem   

1.      Part 1 (Silverlight project DLL to be copied into this ClientBin Directory)

1.         Create ClientBin Directory under this folder   (C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80)    Default web app

2.         Open IIS Manager  and locate the ClientBin Directory Created in step 1

3.         Choose the property window of CilentBin

4.         Change the  Execute Permissions: to Scripts Only

2.      Part 2

The Microsoft Sharepoint Conference 2008 will be in Seattle from 2nd to 6th March

I know it seems a long way away but the Microsoft Sharepoint Conference 2008 will be held in Seattle from the 2nd to 6th March 2008. There have been a series of Sharepoint conferences running around the World since 2006 to great acclaim including an excellent review posted on the Sharepoint UserGroup UK’s site where Eric Shrupps discusses the event held in Berlin.

64-Bit Gotchas

There are a few very important things you need to be aware of when choosing between 32-bit and 64-bit MOSS environments.

Upgrade and migration

.Net 1.1 framework is not installed on Windows Server 2003 64-bit by default.  You can download and install it, but here’s the issue: to run .Net 1.1 code in IIS, you have to set IIS to run in 32-bit mode.  This is a global server setting and by doing this, you are also running MOSS in 32-bit mode, losing any benefits of a 64-bit installation.  In other words, you might as well have gone 32-bit in the first place.  Here is the Microsoft support article on how to configure IIS for .Net 1.1 on Windows 2003 64-bit.

Document libraries, Folders & Content Types

I have been asked a few times if it is possible to associate different Content Types with different folders within the same document library.  From the Web UI in WSS this does not seem to be possible.  However,  there are sneeky ways to achieve this.

Scenario:  I have a document library that has some document content types (say Report, Review & Results).  I want to have people create Reports in the root of my document library & only Review and Results in sub folders.

Solution:What Happens to Listings During Upgrade and Migration

In SharePoint 2003, each area had a built-in list “Listings” which was used to maintain links between content in different portal areas as well as external links.  This was somewhat of a flawed design in that listings could very easily become broken if the content or area it points to is renamed, moved or deleted.  But that is a topic for another blog post on listing validation.  This article gets into the details of exactly how a SPS 2003 Listing is migrated to MOSS 2007.

A list named “Listings” is created in each site.  This is no longer a built-in list; in other words, you can delete or rename it if you choose.

15 Ways / Questions To A Smooth SharePoint Contract

We have all been burned on contracts (well most of us I suppose, I have a whole lot), predominantly prevalent with SharePoint projects because it seems like the skill set pool for an experienced SharePoint developer is particularly thin, and recruiters / human resources staff in organizations are ready to sell their mortal souls and lie their ass off to get you to join a team. I am not blaming them I guess, you sometimes have to do questionable things to fulfill your job role within empirical ethic boundaries, even though sometimes they appear to skirt them.

MOSS 2007 VS MCMS 2002

As you may already knew that Microsoft discarded its Content Management product line and make its new SharePoint product as the content management platform. Almost all MCMS elements and terms that current MCMS developers familiar with are changed. To make me learn the new things easier, I did a comparison in following list:

Sharepoint gets a boost

The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 are usually tied back to a common source – improvements in the way users share and communicate information with each other. 2.0 suggests a new age, a User Age where consumers, either as individuals or as part of an enterprise, are taking control of content and information consumption, forcing business to respond to their new demands.

The businesses that are able to respond to these new trends with the right offers, content, community, branding, advertising, and search will be crowned the winners. This market power is accrued by businesses that let users harness information according to each of their individual consumption patterns.

Installing Windows Server 2008 with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

With Beta 3 I know there will be someone out there wanting to know more about WSS 3.0 on Windows Server 2008.  Here are some resources.  I’ll be following up this post in the next few weeks with my thoughts on why it’s a good idea to start looking at the value in Windows Server 2008 as an easy to manage server management platform.  What I’ve seen, it truly is a great step forward and will be quite easy to justify upgrading.

TechNet: Install Windows SharePoint Services in Windows Server 2008

WebParts and Dynamic UserControls in MOSS

I have recently started working on my first MOSS project and came up with a very common scenario of wanting to use UserControls into WebParts simply because of the great Designer support for UserControls in Visual Studio. (Usercontrols vs WebParts)

Also I wanted my WebParts to just act like a shell and provide me the build in features of serializing, storing, and retrieving the site customization and member personalization data without being worried about rendering of the actual UI controls.

 

(Approval) Workflow thingies continued..

As promised in my previous post (Approval) workflow thingies “I promise.. heck maybe I will do a screencast about this as well! ”

So here it is.. in this screencast (without audio so just have to look real good at what i’m doing ;)) I’m gonna show you how to promote fields from InfoPath to Sharepoint columns and use those columns to populate the task that is created by the workflow using SharePoint Designer. Thereby giving the approver the information he/she needs without having to open the document.

RDP in MOSS

My school has been given 104 laptops for pupils to have. This has brought up many issues. The pupils have to be able to take the laptops home and use them there.

This has brought up several issues, Group Policys for the user, not enough IPs in my allocated range for the government WAN, wireless infrastruture etc.

The schools users and PCs are locked down so pupils can’t install anything - done through GPOs.

If you give pupils the laptop with the restrictions that are currently there they will not be able to add the laptop to the internet at home - do I give them permission to access the network properties, opening to all sorts of hacking!!?!