Applying v4.MasterPage as a Search Center MasterPage

Read It

Last week when I was working on a client project I had a requirement of applying v4.masterpage into Search Center as the search center was disconnected from rest of the site collection for its global navigation. So during my search for a solution I came across this useful link “Converting a Custom SharePoint 2010 Master Page into a Search Center Master Page” posted by Randi Drisgill. This blog was simply listing the steps required to achieve what I wanted. So I went ahead and applied the steps mentioned in there. Everything went well and thanks to Randi.

Once after completing the steps mentioned in there, I started performing some basic tests and oops, I came across two bickering issues:

1. The search box was found to be left aligned which was different to the alignment set in OOB.
2. When page loads an additional ribbon row gets displayed momentarily and disappeared.

Let’s Fix

So I had to work on finding a solution for both the issues before releasing the solution.

1. Fixing Issues# 1: I had to remove the style attribute (in the masterpage) margin:inherit as shown below:.srch-sb-results4 {
   margin: inherit;
   padding-left: 20px;
   }
2. Fixing Issue# 2: A <div> tag should be introduced with style set to display:none surrounding the “notificationArea” div.

<div style="display:none">
<div id="notificationArea">
</div>
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="SPNavigation" runat="server">
<SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="PublishingConsole" Id="PublishingConsoleDelegate">
</SharePoint:DelegateControl>
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
</div>

That’s all you need in addition to what Randi Drisgill already provided.

Finally

Creating a Feature with Custom Action to Add Site Manager Menu in Site Actions Menu

Overview

You can add a custom menu item to the default Site Actions menu in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services by creating a Feature with a CustomAction element. In this way, you can add custom commands to the default SharePoint user interface. These commands are available to users as they move between pages on a SharePoint site. When you create a Site Actions menu item, you can configure it to redirect the user to any URL. For example, you can redirect the user to another Web site. You can also redirect users to a custom application page that allows them either to see a custom display of data, or to perform custom operations on the content within the current site.

Code It

1. Create a new Project in VS 2010 and under SharePoint (left) select Empty Project

2. Now enter the url of your SharePoint site for debugging and select deploy as a farm solution.
3. Now, once you have the project open, right click on the Feature folder and Add a new feature.
4. SharePoint automatically adds a feature and names it as Feature1. You can however change the feature name to something like CustomActionFetaure.
5. With this you will have a feature designer opened in front of you set the Title description and scope of the feature.
6. Now right click on the Project and add a new Item. In the Add New Item dialog, select Empty Element to create a blank element file.
7. Add the below Code to the element.xml file

8. Build the Project. Open the feature.xml file and verify that if contains the reference to the element.xml file.
9. Now Deploy the wsp and activate the feature in your site.

Read It

When you create a CustomAction element, you must add an inner UrlAction element that contains a Url attribute. When you redirect the user to an application page, such as ApplicationPage1.aspx, you must consider whether you want the application page to run inside the context of the current site or the current site collection. In the following example, the dynamic token ~site is added to the beginning of the URL. When Windows SharePoint Services parses this CustomAction element and creates the menu item, it replaces ~site with the actual URL of the current site.
"~site/_layouts/sitemanager.aspx"

The key to security trimming your custom action is the Rights attribute. This attribute allows you to specify SharePoint permissions that the user must have for the action to be visible. This can be a comma delimited list. For example:

Rights="ViewListItems,ManageAlerts"

When more than one value is specified, the set of rights are treated with an AND. This means the user must have all of the specified rights for it to be visible. Here is a list of the valid Microsoft.SharePoint.SPBasePermissions you could use:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spbasepermissions

Also, When you create the element for a custom menu item in the Site Actions menu, you have the option to configure it so that it is shown only to users who have administrative permissions. Note in the following example the addition of a new attribute named RequireSiteAdministrator.

RequireSiteAdministrator="TRUE"

When you add the RequireSiteAdministrator attribute, Windows SharePoint Services does not show the menu item to users who do not have administrative permissions. For a CustomAction element in a Feature that is scoped at the site-collection level, the menu item appears only for the site collection owner or administrator. For a CustomAction element in a Feature that is scoped at the site level, the menu item appears only to those who have administrative permissions within the current site.

Finally