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I currently have a SharePoint 2007 demonstration setup on a development environment. The SharePoint 2007 installation was originally setup for a specific client. So the host headers, computer name and farm credentials contained the client name. This all had to be changed. Carrying out another installation of SharePoint was something I did not want to do since I wanted to retain all the dummy data and sites.

You might be thinking: Why don’t I just change the host headers with the new client name? Well that’s because I am a bit OCD and I like everything to be consistent.

To rename, carry out the following. But remember to carry out these steps exactly because you might come across the problem I did where I couldn’t get to Central Admin or view my Intranet:

1. Go to Central Admin > Operations > Alternate Access Mappings.
2. Change the host headers as required.
3. If you changed the name of the server carry out the following command:

stsadm -o renameserver -oldservername <oldname> -newservername <newname>

4. Rename the server to a new server name by going to My Computer > Properties > Computer Name and restart.
5. After restart you will need to update the farm login credentials since the computer name has been changed from Steps 3 and 4. If you do not update the farm credentials, you will get the dreaded “Cannot connect to database” message when trying to view your Intranet.

stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin <domain\user> -password <password>

6. Change the site names in IIS. This site names will need to reflect the changes you made in Step 1.
7. Change the host headers in the host file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts).

After I designed a theme to my SharePoint 2007 site I came across a small problem. Well it was not exactly a problem it was more of a hassle I encountered. The current SharePoint Intranet I was working on contained quite a lot of sites and I didn't want to change the site settings within each site in order to change the theme. Thankfully, SharePoint 2007 allows you to apply a Custom CSS from your theme.

In order to change the theme across the whole SharePoint Intranet carry out the following:

1. View the source of main portal homepage and look for a line which looks something like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" id="onetidThemeCSS" href="/_themes/Intranet/Intr1011-65001.css?rev=12%2E0%2E0%2E4518"/> 

2. In Site Settings click on Masterpage and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
3. Select the "Specify a CSS file to be used by this publishing site and all sites that inherit from it" radio button.
4. Use the link from the CSS HTML tag above excluding anything after the query string. For example: ""/_themes/Intranet/Intr1011-65001.css".

Now the theme should be applied throughout the site. You can change the link for the Custom CSS by changing the directory path.

Over the last couple of months I have been involved in upgrading our current MOSS 2003 Intranet to MOSS 2007. All I can say that it has been eventful to say the least with numerous errors popping up left right and center. I am sure I will be posting more in future regarding my Sharepoint upgrade experience.  Anyway, back to this post. When I attempted to add a content database to my MOSS 2007 Intranet I got the following error:

"Duplicate ID on sequence [Microsoft.Sharepoint.Portal.Upgrade.FarmSequence]"

Interesting...

The cause of this error resides in the Upgrade Definition files located in  "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\CONFIG\UPGRADE" directory. The Upgrade Definition files tell Sharepoint where to dump the old content in the new database during the upgrade process. Even though the error message is not helpful in any shape or form, the solving this error is not too bad.

Locate the following two XML files within the UPGRADE directory: SPSUpgradePremium.xml and SPSUpgrade.xml. Then all you need to do is delete the following line that looks something like this in both files:

<Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Upgrade,Version=12.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c,Custom=null">
    <Order>5</Order>
</Assembly>

I just hope the other Sharepoint upgrade errors that appear will be more straight forward...