When working with SharePoint branding you often run across the problem of how to properly deploy your work. The best practice for deploying branding is to put it into a feature by creating a wsp.

But what is a wsp or Solution file and how do we create this.  Most of us who are Designers first and SharePoint people second, might never have heard of a wsp before SharePoint.  Let me explain the advantages to using a Solution file.

Creating a wsp for your SharePoint Branding will allow you:

• Easier ability to troubleshoot site errors. You can turn the feature off and eliminate your branding as the root cause of problems
• Make it Managed Code, which makes our developers happy and allows us to have a versioned copy of our files.
• Easier to Update. Having all your files in one package will give you the ability to more easily make changes and updates.
• Provides a greater sense of control. You can enforce policy around your site branding and even change the behavior around things like new site creation.
• The other big component is where your files are located. Solutions will allow you to place the files for your branding on your server instead of in the content database.  This will help with performance and page load times.

These are just a few of the reasons that we deploy SharePoint branding as a feature.  But what exactly is a feature and how do we create this mysterious thing.  If you are a developer or have a staff of developers you can enlist their help in creating this.

The long and short of it is, that a solution for SharePoint branding is made using Visual Studio.  In order to make this transition you should set up a solution in Visual Studio much like you would if you were writing a web part. 

I have attached a sample wsp and Visual Studio 2010 project file to this post. You can use this as a basic sample for how you might start to set up your very own branding solution. This sample solution is being provided to you in conjunction with Paul Schaeflein, SharePoint MVP. I am not a developer, so I had to enlist some help to properly form this solution file.

Sample Solution

There are some big tips in working with solutions and moving your files into a proper SharePoint 2010 Branding solution. If you are anything like me, you will have worked your initial branding development using SharePoint Designer.  When it comes time to move your files into Visual Studio you will find yourself asking what is the best method.

I have found that simple exporting your files out and importing them into Visual Studio leaves you open to what I affectionately refer to as SharePoint Designer Gobbledygook. (Yes that is my very own fun technical term) SharePoint Designer is a great tool for working with SharePoint branding, but it has a tendency to create issues when it comes to moving your files outside of it. 

My favorite method for moving files from SharePoint Designer into Visual Studio is to simply copy the code out of your files in SPD and move it into a simple text editor like Notepad. Then when I have Visual Studio open I will create blank files and copy my code out of Notepad into these blank files.

Once you have done this you will still want to check for that gobbledygook. This can come in many formats. The most common are hard returns in the files or the insertion of some SharePoint Designer specific file characters in the head tag and !DOCTYPE declarations. This extra information can and will cause problems for you. So you will want to remove this as you find it.

Working with Visual Studio and SharePoint branding can be a bit of a challenge for those without an understanding of basic SharePoint development, but it is not impossible. Once again, I am providing you with a very basic SharePoint branding solution that you can start to see how it works.

Sample Solution

And again, thanks to Paul Schaeflein for helping me out and writing a solution and agreeing to allow me to share it with all of you.

In the past few years that I have been honored to be a part of the SharePoint community I have noticed an increase of women becoming more involved. This group of women have inspired some of us to form a Women in SharePoint group.

You may ask yourself why we have formed this group, to me it seemed like a great next move. With so many women in the community how do we continue to grow as well as encourage young girls to look into IT and SharePoint as a possible career path?

By forming the group we will have a better community platform to support and encourage women and girls. We will now have groups of other women to reach out to with questions or concerns as well as to gather in person for support and encouragement.

The new Women in SharePoint Board: Becky Isserman, Kathryn Birstein, Lori Gowin , Karuana Gatimu , and myself have already had our first event representation at SharePoint Saturday DC in May.

Our next big outing is at the Best Practices Conference in Reston, VA on August 24 – 26, 2010. At this conference the Women in SharePoint will be handling the live blogging and twitter stream for the conference. We are excited for the opportunity to spread the message of women pursuing careers in SharePoint and the men of SharePoint who have had strong women as influences in their careers. If you are interested in helping out with the live blogging at the conference please register at: http://bpc10liveblogging.eventbrite.com/

So be on the lookout for Women in SharePoint and how you can help us with our outreach programs to women and girls in school.

If you are interested in the group please check out our site at: http://womeninsharepoint.org and make sure you email us at womeninsharepoint@live.com to join our mailing list.