Next up, a giant thank you to everyone who attended this event.  I am always surprised at just how many people come out to learn about SharePoint. And I am humbled every time someone comes to hear me speak.

At SharePoint Saturday the Conference – DC I was able to present a full day workshop: SharePoint Branding 101.  This workshop was exciting for me to try and fit in as much branding goodness into 6 hours as I could.  It was certainly a challenge.

During the day we discussed a full range of topics from Requirements Gathering for Branding all the way through to Implementation and Deployment of Features.

Now that we have all had a moment to take a breath and recover a bit from this very full day of branding learning. I wanted to post out a few things for you.  First up are the slides from the presentation.  Hopefully they will help some of you out as you approach projects in the future. (Thanks for the feedback from a few of you I helped already, it certainly makes me happy to share)

SharePoint Branding 101 Presentation

I really enjoyed spending the day with those of you who were able to join my session in DC. I look forward to meeting many more of the SharePoint Branding intrepid over the next few months!

I am sorry for the delay in posting this.  I also wanted to add a quick listing of helpful tools and items I mentioned in the session.

Wireframing:

Balsamiq Mockups – This is a for purchase application, not free

Visio Graphic Stencils – These are a free download

Visio User Interface Stencils – These are for purchase, not free.

SharePoint Design: (both of these are great and a huge undertaking for both of the creators!)

Starter Master Pages Courtesy of Randy Drisgill – A Gigantic Thanks to Randy

SharePoint 2010 CSS Chart Courtesy of Heather Solomon – A Gigantic Thanks to Heather

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.

If you are looking for a great conference to attend check out any of the 3 upcoming conferences I’ll be participating in.

The Best Practices Conference was March 7-9th in La Jolla, CA.  The Women in SharePoint group will be bringing you the BPC via live blogging. Check out the live blogging online at Women in SharePoint website

I will be posting recaps and session slides here on this blog site soon. But it might be after the next two conferences.

Next on the schedule is the SharePoint Connections Conference in Orlando, FL. This conference is action packed and starts on March 27 and runs until March 30th. While at this conference I will be speaking about SharePoint 2010 branding and how to successfully plan for a design project.

Just one short week after the Connections Conference I head off to London for the Best Practices UK Conference.  I’m really hoping for no Ash Cloud this year and that I actually make it to London. 

Make sure to check back here on my blog site for fun updates and presentations.

I will also be heading up to Baltimore in May to present at the Baltimore SharePoint User Group.

After all that travel, I’m getting tired just thinking about it. If you are attending any of these events come say hi, I’d love to meet you!

First off, the book that I have worked on with a great team of people is now available on Amazon.com. SharePoint 2010: Six-in-One 

Secondly I have been on the road already this year teaching the second session of the new Mindsharp SharePoint Designer 2010 course.  Next up I venture to the frozen tundra of the northern states. But those snow boots I bought sure did come in handy as I was frozen in Atlanta this last week.

Oh and if you are wondering where you can find me soon… Well I will be speaking at the Best Practices Conference 2011 in La Jolla, California. Then I will be off to the Connections Conference in Orlando, Florida. And finally over to the Best Practices Conference in the UK in London, England.

So much fun and exciting stuff going on in this year already. So if you haven’t lost your breath already trying to keep up with my schedule, keep an eye out here for some great SharePoint 2010 Branding information over the next few months.

And Happy New Year to you all!

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.

I am excited to have been accepted as a speaker for the Best Practices Conference in August. This time there will be no ash cloud from speaking at my first major conference!

After all DC is a driveable distance from Alabama!!! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to participate in this event.

And not only will I be speaking in the regular conference sessions, but I am joining some of the other Summit 7 team in the post conference session.

So make sure you register to attend this great conference and come listen to me talk about some great SharePoint branding information that you will want to hear about!

https://www.bestpracticesconference.com/

And if you are bringing a laptop with you, please help out the Women in SharePoint group by signing up and helping us Live Blog the conference.

http://bpc10liveblogging.eventbrite.com

http://bpc10liveblogging.eventbrite.com

So it has been a crazy year so far in 2010 for me. I changed jobs, moved and am working on a new book project. I have barely had time to breathe.

But now that I travel more again I can get back to my blogging on planes habit. What can you expect from me?

Well I’m going to finish my design series and even give you information on branding for SharePoint 2010 as well.

I’m working on my branding section of the SharePoint Six-in-One book for Wrox due out later this year. I am blessed to be part of a great team of writers and we are all giving you our best expertise on our individual parts of SharePoint 2010.

Where can you come see me? Well I will be at the Baton Rouge SharePoint Users Group for their August meeting. (the 5th I think)

Next up is the Best Practices Conference  in Washington DC August 24- 27. I’m speaking on branding there and also working in the Summit 7 Systems booth and with the Women in SharePoint group.

After that I will be at SharePoint Saturday Baltimore again (fingers crossed I will be speaking).

 And I plan to head out to Vancouver in September to speak and participate in the SharePoint Saturday event there.

Also I’m going to post more information for you here. So keep an eye out for a few more posts in the next few days about events and then some content on Design again soon.

The time has almost come and I am almost ready.  Are you ready?

SharePoint Saturday Huntsville will be here in just 2 short weeks. On May 1st lots of great SharePoint knowledge will be shared for free with any and all who wish to attend.

I have had the pleasure of heading up this great event this year for our first foray into the SharePoint Saturday club here in Huntsville.

It is a lot of work, but I am happy to work hard to get so many great speakers here for the community. We will have speakers on a wide variety of topics from administration, search, business intelligence, infopath, and even social networking.

Where else in Alabama can you hear Bill English, Ben Curry, and Robert Cain – all MVPs speak about SharePoint? And to top that off we have speakers from Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, and New Jersey coming here to share their knowledge with us. 

Make sure you register to attend this great event if you are in the area. (only 1 1/2 hours from both Birmingham and Nashville, and a short drive from Atlanta and Memphis.

I look forward to seeing faces old and new on May 1, 2010!

I am looking forward to working with this great group of people and learning even more about SharePoint.

I will be working with all forms of SharePoint and making it look not like SharePoint. So that won’t change. The only change will be my location, but only slightly.

My location, you may be asking yourself, what does that mean? Well I’m going to be moving to Huntsville, AL in the very near future. I’m looking for where I am going to be living, and will be working towards this move in my spare time.

I am still going to be very involved with the SharePoint community, so that won’t change. I enjoy speaking about SharePoint branding and meeting all of you.

In the next few months, I will be at SharePoint Saturday New Orleans the last weekend in February. I’m currently scheduled to do one 2010 session and 2 2007 branding sessions.

After that I am speaking at the SharePoint Evolutions Conference in London in April.

So just a slight change, but one I am very excited to make!!

But what have I been up to other than blog writing.  Well December is always a busy month with the holidays.  This past year I travelled the first two weekends of the month, leaving myself only one weekend to get all of my shopping done.  So that made it a bit of a challenge to write the blog post.

Then with the holiday’s and traveling to visit my family (okay so I know they are just a short car trip from Birmingham to Mobile away) took up some of the other time.

I also have been working to write my chapters for a new SharePoint 2010 book from Wrox.  A few of us are putting together a “SharePoint for All” book that will house 6 different sections on 6 different topics within SharePoint 2010.  So that has taken some time from my blog as well.

Then to top it all off, I am involved with two wonderful charity groups in Birmingham, AL.  Both of these groups are having events in the near future for fundraising.  In fact, one of the events is next Thursday night.  For these groups, I not only volunteer, but I also donate my design services to create the graphics for the events.  Below, I have included the art work that I have created for these two events.

I will be finishing up the next in the series of blog posts in the next day or so.  Tomorrow I am speaking at the Alabama Code Camp in Mobile, Alabama.  I am presenting 3 sessions on SharePoint Branding.  2 on SharePoint 2007 and one on SharePoint 2010.

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