MOSS Themes - Order of loading

There are already some blog posts on the order with wich SharePoint loads its css files. So I won't go into detail on that.

However I want to give you some info on an issue I had not long ago.

Situation

Custom Masterpage
Custom Theme on Root site
Other Custom Theme on child that touches some similar styles with other colors

Problem

The last css to get loaded was the one of the parent theme

Solution

Moving this tag

<SharePoint:Theme ID="Theme1" runat="server"/>

to be in front of

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server">
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

More Info

I used a custom masterpage together with a theme. Because I wanted to do all css with the theme I moved the tag to just in front of the tag.
However when you configure a theme on a subsite it gets placed in the "additional page head" wich caused the above mentioned caution.

Moral

When designing your custom masterpage, think twice when moving tags .. and test test test.

Kind regards
Steven

AssetPortalBrowser 403 Access Denied

Are You familiar with the following Screenshot:

The story:

Some user calls you up and tells you that when he wants to browse for an url, he gets this error page. As admin you can't reproduce the problem but with the reporters user account you can...

You say to yourself: No problem, It's jus a matter of giving the user some rights ... hmm but what rights?

The Solution:

Well for this, I make a separate Permission Level called "Browse". I do this because I don't want to mess with the existing levels, and I can decide in a flexible way who can browse what. This Permission Level has 3 Site Permissions flagged:

• Browse Directories - Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces
• View Pages - View pages in a web site
• Open - Allow users to open a Web site, list, or folder in order to access items inside that container

For the people who have a Dutch installation:

• Zoeken in mappen - Bestanden en Mappen van een website inventariseren met SharePoint Designer en Web DAV interfaces
• Pagina's bekijken - Pagina's weergeven op een website
• Openen - Stelt gebruikers in staat een website, lijst of map te openen zodat ze toegang hebben to items in dat onderdeel

You're feeling pretty good about yourself by now, so you apply the Permission Level to the group/person reporting the problem on that site. Problem fixed !?!

Or isn't it? Are you sure you applied the permission to the correct site?
There is a small gotcha here. SharePoint is so user friendly that it saves the last selected browse location on a per user basis. When you don't fill in the Selected URL textbox and just click on browse, SharePoint looks up that URL and tries to display the content.
Now if for any reason, the user lost rights on that site (maybe he moved to a different team), he is going to get the 403 Error.
A simple workaround here is this:

1. Fill in the url of the current page in the textbox, and then click browse.
2. You will see that Location (URL) points to the current page
3. Click OK
4. You've just overwritten the old invalid url! Job done, Go have yourself a cup of Tea/Coffee

Let me know if this helps any of you.

Greets Steven

SharePoint: Content Deployment Paths and Jobs

Today I was using the content deployment functionality of SharePoint. All configuration seemed to go well but when i started the Job it just kept hanging on Preparing.

After a simple google search I found out that many people had ran into this problem, but most had not found an answer.

For some it was the Windows SharePoint Timer Service that had to be started, for some it was the target Site collection that had to be created based on a Blank Site template ...

For me however I only got it working by changing the "Content Deployment Settings" on both servers so that in the "Connection Security" part both had the "Do not require encryption" functionality selected.

Maybe this can help somebody, someday, somewhere ;)