Screenshot of this blog viewed through WPTouch

This brings up the question that if I am supposed to be a SharePoint professional, why don’t I use it to blog?

Great question.

My answer goes back to one of the main reasons why SharePoint is so successful in the enterprise.  When a new app enters an enterprise it not only has to meet the primary functional requirements justifying it’s existence – but it has to fit into the larger enterprise framework of things like Security, Integration, and Compliance.

When I was an Enterprise Architect in my previous role I was constantly challenged to review SharePoint against it’s competitors.  I was almost always able to find “single play” provides who had superior features to SharePoint in that one feature. I was never able to find one competitor who could compete with the breadth of what SharePoint can do out of the box.

When an enterprise considers a new application – it has to consider how that app will fit into the enterprise framework – not just the key features.  When an enterprise brings SharePoint in – they can solve that problem once for the entire feature-set of SharePoint.  Now there are other benefits to having “everything in one package” – and that lends to SharePoints global dominance.

For the purposes of this blog – I needed a blog.  That’s all.  I needed it to be easy.  I get distracted enough and don’t need any additional roadblocks to getting a post posted

So for me – Worldpress won. Add to that the ease of adding WPTouch for mobile users – and you have another win.

So I will continue to post about how awesome SharePoint is and how to make it better using the WordPress platform.

Have a beautiful day-

That leads me to the topic of the “Community” that exists around SharePoint.  Every day I’ve encountered and connected with people with whom I have engaged in what can be termed a “correspondence” relationship with and am only now meeting face to face.  What I keep learning is that the relationship was no less engaging or important before we connected in this way.  These are individuals who have been extremely helpful in navigating some aspect of SharePoint.

I was talking about the SharePoint Community last night with Jennifer Mason and Christian Buckley and we all agreed that it was extremely unique from other technical products.  A few of the reasons we identified for this included the fact that SharePoint is such a “multi-disciplined” application that there isn’t a way for any one person to completely master all that it is.  Maybe it would be better to state that its not practical to think that the vast majority of people can master the application.  Given that until recently the documentation was “lacking” – community was a requirement.

Also, I would state that SharePoint is all about “collaboration” – so why wouldn’t the SharePoint community be among strongest communities out there. It just makes sense. SharePoint is Social.

Link to article: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepointserver/HA101762841033.aspx

Unfortunately, the article assumes that you are running MOSS. If you are running WSS, then you will not be able to find the

In order to enable this for WSS you have to add 2 lines to your WEB.CONFIG file.

First:
Make a copy of the WEB.CONFIG file (I’m assuming you can find the correct file for your SharePoint WEB). Make sure that you append a new extension to the copied file’s name. If you don’t, both files get processed.

Second:
Open the WEB.CONFIG file and locate the tag for:

<sectionGroup name=”SharePoint”>

Add the following line to this section just before the tag is closed:

<section name=”BlobCache” type=”System.Configuration.SingleTagSectionHandler, System, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ />

Note the PublikKeyToken. You may need to change the one in my line above to match others in your WEB.CONFIG file.

Third:
Locate the following tag in your WEB.CONFIG file:

</MergedActions>

Add the following line right after the /MergedActions line:

<BlobCache location=”C:\blobCache” path=”\.(gif|jpg|png|css|js)$” maxSize=”10″ enabled=”true” />

Feel free to change the maxSize to whatever fits your requirements.

Fourth:
Go to a command line and execute an IISRESET /NOFORCE.

Final Thoughts:

1. Please, Please, Please – make a copy of your WEB.CONFIG file before attempting this.
2. If you have more than one Front End Server: this has to be performed on all Front-END servers or you will see inconsistent results as your load-balancer directs you between servers.
3. If you have a large production farm – make this change a part of a WSP/Feature and deploy it to the farm via STSADM -o addfeature. This is the right way to make changes to your production farm.

In the mean-time, give me a few days to move into the new digs, make the place my own, and post some content. Set a bookmark and I’ll talk to you soon.

Jeff