SharePoint 2010/2013 Prequisites

New task today required me to grab the bits for a 2010 install. We are building out 2 Frontends and so I grabbed the MSDN bits. Next I was looking at the the whole update and prereq issue. This can be a real pain until I found this great project on Codeplex. The Autospsourcebuilder project does all this work for you.  You just get the powershell script and the SharePoint iso and go this script will create a slipstream installer for you.

Sample:

.\AutoSpSourceBuilder.pas1 -SourceLocation "d:\SP2010" -Destination "d:\SPSlipstream" -GetPrerequisites $true

The Script will prompt you for the name of the update which can be found at the sharepoint updates site.



Source:

1. http://autospsourcebuilder.codeplex.com/
2. List of all Cumulatives Updates

Shortcut to SharePoint 2010 site template form

It is nice to be able to skip the GUI on SharePoint if you need quick access to certain functions.


1.) I was trying to remember the site template page. 

Structure:
http://<servername>/<path>/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx


Example:
http://www.mydomain.com/mysite/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx


2.) Now get the template out of the location where it was saved
http://www.mydomain.com/mysite/_catalogs/lt/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Webpart deployment gives error - Could not load file or assembly '' or one of its dependencies

I was trying to upgrade 2007 webpart to 2010.  I used the VS empty sp template and added my features and webpart.  I use the argotic libraries to support rss feeds.  These 3rd party dependencies had been added into the project and it compiled and deployed.  After each deployment, I would try and use the webpart and it would fail each time my part tried to hit any of those dlls.  I could not figure why this was not working.  I had the controls deployed to the GAC but was still getting the error.  Then I ran across this post (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8406037/could-not-load-file-or-assembly-or-one-of-its-dependencies).

Solution:
Add the dependencies to the package deployment and then you are guaranteed to always have the dlls you need.  In your SharePoint 2010 project,

1. Open Package.package from Package folder in SharePoint project.
2. Click Advanced in bottom area.
3. Click Add and chose which type of assembly you want to add.
4. In dialog select dll file, chec GAC or BIN, add safe controls and class resources entries if required. Click Ok.

SP 2010 Publishing Sites Without Workflows

We just did the upgrade on an old 2007 site to get it up to 2010.
We had a pages library which required user's to go through the approval
process just to publish!  Egads lots of pain for our users. 

Thanks to the grumpy guru at Publishing Sites Without Workflows

Solution:
Navigate to the Pages library (View all site content for example). Click on the Library tab then Library Settings. Under General settings, click on Versioning settings. For “Require content approval for submitted items?” select the No radio button. That’s it!