Installing MSS2010 Express on SharePoint Foundation

If you’ve gone as far as to install SharePoint Foundation and your environment can handle the additional load, why not extend the search capabilities with Microsoft Search Server Express? It’s free and will provide powerful, web-style search across your corporate intranet sites quickly, and easily. You can find additional information on it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/enterprisesearch/ee263912.aspx#tab=1.

I’m convinced, so I went ahead and installed it only to run into a few snags along the way. I’m running a standalone installation of Foundation with a couple of site collections. Mainly to test new functionality and upgrade my masterpages before permanently migrating my content. During the Foundation install a site collection was created on port 80 without a host header, I can’t remember if I was prompted to enter one or not. But I later added one in Central Administration and made sure in IIS that the Web Application had the correct settings. So when the MSS 2010 Express initiated the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard I thought I was gold. Only to be prompted with the following error:

Failed to create sample data.

An exception of type System.ArgumentException was thrown. Additional exception information: The directory C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80 is already being used by another IIS Web Site. Choose a different root directory for your new Web application.

 

Searching online didn’t result in much information, but some people have experienced similiar errors when web applications were created without host headers. Even after ensuring that the default site had its header the Configuration Wizard would not complete. Solution – backup the Site Collection, delete the Web Application and re-run the wizard. Simple enough. Except that when deleting a Site Collection from Central Admin doesn’t immediately delete everything necessary to run the wizard and complete the configuration. After deleting it in Central Admin, and removing the IIS site manually(also removing the folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories\80) I got the following error when running the wizard:

Failed to create sample data.

An exception of type System.ArgumentException was thrown. Additional exception information: The IIS Web Site you have selected is in use by SharePoint. You must select another port or hostname.

 

 

 

In the warning dialog when deleting the site collection there is a note specifying “To perform an immediate deletion, you need to run a set of commands using, for example, Power Shell or the Object Model. Find more information, see the SharePoint Help system” which didn’t provide much help as to actual commands to delete the web application.

Fortunately, Adam Preston posted List All SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Commands that provided the necessary information to complete the deletion. Namely, run get-spwebapplication to list the web applications configured in SharePoint Foundation. Then run Remove-SPWebApplication -identity:http://webappname/ -removeContentDatabases -deleteiissite -verbose -confirm. This command will immediately delete the Web Application, delete the content database, and the IIS site. After this I was successfully able to complete the Configuration Wizard. Up popped the Search Administration page in Central Administration. Of to configuring it!

Maybe this post should be titled ‘Trials of installing MSS2010 Express on SharePoint Foundation’?

SharePoint Foundation Master Page CSS

I recently had to take a WSS 3.o masterpage and upgrade it for use in SharePoint Foundation. Simple enough, following the helpful post here Upgrading an Existing Master Page to the SharePoint Foundation Master Page to ensure that I have all the necessary controls on my page. This post from Tom Wilson was also very helpful determining the elements that make up the new ribbon, Ribbon Customization: Changing Placement, Look and Behavior. The following is just a table of the CSS overrides that you may like to use to modify some of the styles, backgrounds, or borders to suit your brand.

SharePoint 2010 CSS Chart (Well at least a start anyway!)