Configuring Forms Based Authentication in SharePoint 2013

Configuring forms based authentication (FBA) in SharePoint 2013 is very similar to SharePoint 2010, but there are some differences due to SharePoint 2013 using .Net 4.0. The web.config entries entries are slightly different. As well, IIS doesn’t support editing .Net 4.0 membership provider configuration through the IIS interface, so all of the configuration has to be done directly in the .config files. I’ll go through all of the steps required to setup FBA for SharePoint 2013, from start to finish.

Section-1 Creating the Membership Database

The first thing you need when configuring FBA for SharePoint is a place to keep all of the usernames and passwords. ASP.Net comes with a tool that we’ll use to create a membership database to store the logon information.

• Navigate to c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\
• Run “aspnet_regsql.exe”

• 

• A welcome screen will appear. Click Next.

• Select “Configure SQL Server for application services” and click Next.

• Enter the name of your server and your authentication information.  In this case SQL Server is installed on the same server as SharePoint 2013 and I am logged in as an administrator and have full access to SQL Server, so I choose Windows Authentication.For the database name, I just leave it as <default>, which creates a database called “aspnetdb”.
• 
• A Confirm Your Settings screen will appear. Click Next.
• A “database has been created or modified” screen will appear. Click finish and the wizard will close.
• Now that the database has been created, we’ll have to give SharePoint permissions to read and write to it. We’re going to connect to the database with Windows Authentication, so we’re going to have to give those permissions to the service account that is being used to run SharePoint.First, let’s find out the service account that’s being used to run SharePoint. Open IIS, go to “Application Pools”. Take a look at the “Identity” that is being used to run the SharePoint application pools. On my test server, it happens to be my administrator account that is being used, but it will probably be different on your machine. Make note of the identity used.
• Now that we know what account is being used to run SharePoint, we can assign it the appropriate permissions to the membership database we created.  Open up SQL Server Management Studio and log in as an administrator.
• Under Security/Logins find the user that SharePoint runs as.  Assuming this is the same database server that SharePoint was installed on, the user should already exist.Right click on the user and click 
• 
  ‘Properties’.
• 
  
• Go to the “User Mapping” Page. Check the “Map” checkbox for the aspnetdb database. With the aspnetdb database selected, check the “db_owner” role membership and click OK. This user should now have full permissions to read and write to the aspnetdb membership database.

Section-2 – Adding users to the Membership Database 

Now that we’ve created an empty membership database, we need to add some users to it that can be used to login.  You have a couple of options for doing this.  If you’d like to do all of your user management in SharePoint, then you can install the SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack and skip to Section-3.

If you’d like to be able to manage the users outside of SharePoint, and setup some inital users, then continue on to learn how to manage the FBA users with IIS.
To manage users in IIS, we’re going to create a dummy site just for managing users.  In SharePoint 2010 and earlier it was possible to edit the users directly from a SharePoint web application site, as long as the default membership provider was set to the membership provider you were going to edit. This is no longer possible, as previous versions of SharePoint ran against ASP.NET 2.0 (3.5), but SharePoint 2013 runs on ASP.NET 4.0.  IIS does not support editing users and roles for ASP.NET 4.0 applications. To get around this, we’ll create a dummy/blank ASP.NET 2.0 web site just for editing users. The asp.net 2.0 and 4.0 membership databases are exactly the same, which makes this possible.

NOTE: These directions were created on Windows 2008 R2.  On Windows 2012 they have reversed things and the .Net Users and .Net Roles options are only available for .Net 4.0 and are not available for .Net 2.0 – So on Windows 2012 please use .Net 4.0 where 2.0 is mentioned in the directions.

• Open IIS.
• Right click on Sites and select “Add Web Site…”
• A configuration dialog will appear. Just give it a meaningful name, point it to an empty folder and give it a random unused port number and click OK.
• Click on “Application Pools”. An application pool of the same name should have been created. The .Net Framework for that application pool should show as “2.0″.  If it doesn’t, you’ll need to modify it’s settings and change it to “2.0″.
• You’ll also have to set the identity the account runs as to the same as SharePoint, so that it will have permissions to read and write to the membership database. Select the application pool and click “Advanced Settings…” in the right panel. In the dialog that comes up, click on the Identity to change it. Choose “Custom account” and enter the SharePoint service account username and password. Click OK on all of the open dialogs to close them.
• The identity should now match the identity used for the SharePoint application pools.
• We’re now going to create a database connection to the membership database. Select your new site and open the “Connection Strings” page from the Features view.
• From the Connection Strings page, click “Add…” on the right side panel. On the Add Connection String dialog that appears, give it a name (I used “FBADB”), enter your server name and enter “aspnetdb” for your database name. Select “Use Windows Integrated Security” and click OK. We’ve now created the database connection.
• We’re now going to create the membership provider, that will let us edit users in the membership database. From the site Features view, click “Providers”. (If “Providers”, “.Net Users” and “.Net Roles” is missing from the features view, then the associated application pool is configured for .Net 4.0. Go back and configure it for .Net 2.0).
• From the Providers page, select “.Net Users” under Feature. Click “Add…” in the right side panel. In the dialog that appears, chose “SQLMembershipProvider” for type. Give it a name. For this example I used FBAMembershipProvider_2_0.  I added the _2_0 so as not to confuse it with the “FBAMembershipProvider” entry we will be creating when we set it up for SharePoint. Select the different options you want associated with your membership provider.  I have some more detail on the options available in the next section when we setup the membership provider for SharePoint. One thing I must stress though is that the options you pick here MUST match the options you use when you setup the membership provider for SharePoint. If they don’t, the users you create here will not work properly.For options, I chose:
  

  Option	Value
  EnablePasswordReset	True
  EnablePasswordRetrieval	False
  RequiresQuestionAndAnswer	False
  RequiresUniqueEmail	True
  StorePasswordInSecureFormat	True
  ConnectionStringName	FBADB (This must match the database connection we setup earlier)
  ApplicationName	/

  Click OK to close the dialog and create the membership provider.
  
• We’re now going to add users to the membership database. Click “.Net Users” from the Features view.
• The first thing we have to do before we can create users is configure the default membership provider. Click “Set Default Provider…” in the right side panel.  When the dialog appears, choose the membership provider we just created and click OK.
• Now that the default membership provider is selected, we’re presented with an empty .Net Users page, as there are not yet any users in the database. Click “Add…” in the right side panel to add a user.
• From the “Add .Net User” dialog, give the user a name, email and password. In this example i’m creating an admin user that i’m going to use as the SharePoint Site Collection administrator.The password needs to be at least 7 characters long and must contain at least 1 non-alphanumeric character. Since we set RequiresQuestionAndAnswer to false when configuring the membership provider, the Question and Answer fields can be left blank.Click OK to create the user and close the dialog.
• Now the .Net Users page lists the one user you have created. You can use this page to add and edit users in the future.
• If you are going to use Roles in SharePoint, you can create a Role provider from the Providers page, and then use the .Net Roles page to add roles – very similar to how we added the membership provider and added users.

Now that we’ve added a user to our membership database, you can continue on to Section-3 to learn how to configure the membership provider for SharePoint.

Section - 3 – Editing the Web.Config Files

The next thing that has to be done to get forms based authentication working with SharePoint is setting up the membership provider.  A membership provider is an interface from the program to the credential store.  This allows the same program to work against many different methods of storing credentials. For example you could use an LDAPMembershipProvider to authenticate against Active Directory, or a SQLMembershipProvider to authenticate against a SQL Server database. For this example we’re using the SQLMembershipProvider to authenticate against a SQL Server database.
SharePoint is actually divided up into several web applications – Central Administration, the Security Token Service and all of the SharePoint web applications that you create. Each of those web applications needs to know about the membership provider. Most tutorials have you adding the membership provider settings over and over again in each web config (as well as every time you setup a new SharePoint web application).  I prefer to add the membership provider settings directly to the machine.config. By adding it to the machine.config, the configuration is inherited by all of the web.config files on the machine – so you only have to make the changes once, and don’t have to remember to make the changes every time you create a new SharePoint web application.
If you don’t have access to the machine.config, or prefer not to edit it, you will have to make all of these changes to the following web.config files:

• SharePoint Central Administration
• SecurityTokenServiceApplication
• Every SharePoint web application you create that you would like to access via FBA.

• Navigate to “C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Config” and open “machine.config”.
• In the <ConnectionString> section, add the following line:

  <add connectionString="Server=WIN-C6ES927TE58;Database=aspnetdb;Integrated Security=true" name="FBADB" />

  Be sure to replace the value for Server with the name of your SQL Server.
• In the <membership><providers> section add the following:

  <add name="FBAMembershipProvider"
   type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
   connectionStringName="FBADB"
   enablePasswordRetrieval="false"
   enablePasswordReset="true"
   requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"
   applicationName="/"
   requiresUniqueEmail="true"
   passwordFormat="Hashed"
   maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"
   minRequiredPasswordLength="7"
   minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="1"
   passwordAttemptWindow="10"
   passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" />

  You can customize the authentication by modifying each of these options. The most important thing to remember though is that if you define a membership provider in multiple locations for the same database, they MUST ALL USE THE SAME OPTIONS. Otherwise you’ll run into all kinds of problems with users created with one set of options, and later being authenticated against with a different set of options.
  Here’s a description of the different options available:
  

  Option	Description
  connectionStringName	The name of the database connection to the aspnetdb database.
  enablePasswordRetrieval	true/false. Whether the user’s password can be retrieved. I suggest setting this to false for security purposes.
  enablePasswordReset	true/false. Whether the user can reset their password. I suggest setting this to true.
  requiresQuestionAndAnswer	true/false. Whether accounts also have a question and answer associated with them. The answer must be provided when resetting the password. I suggest setting this to false, as setting it to true prevents an administrator from resetting the user’s password.
  applicationName	Setting the application name allows you to share a single membership database with multiple different applications, with each having their own distinct set of users. The default applicationName is /.
  requiresUniqueEmail	true/false. Determines if multiple users can share the same email address. I suggest setting this to false, in case you ever want to implement a login by email system.
  passwordFormat	Clear, Hashed or Encrypted. Clear stores the password in the database as plain text, so anybody with access to the database can read the user’s password. Encrypted encrypts the user’s password, so although the password isn’t human readable in the database, it can still be decrypted and the user’s actual password retrieved. Hashed stores a one way hash of the password.  When a user authenticates, the password they enter is hashed as well and matched against the stored hashed value. Using this method, the user’s password can never be retrieved (even if your database is stolen), only reset.  I always recommend using “Hashed” as it is the most secure way of storing the user’s password.
  maxInvalidPasswordAttempts	The number of times in a row that a user can enter an invalid password, within the passwordAttemptWindow, before the user’s account is locked out. Defaults to 5.
  passwordAttemptWindow	The number of minutes before the invalid password counter is reset. Defaults to 10.
  minRequiredPasswordLength	The minimum password length. Defaults to 7.
  minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters	The minimum number of non-alphanumeric characters required in the password. Defaults to 1.
  passwordStrengthRegularExpression	A regular expression that can be used to validate the complexity of the password.

  
• In the <roleManager><providers> section add the following:

  <add name="FBARoleProvider" connectionStringName="FBADB" applicationName="/"
   type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />

  Save and close the machine.config file.
  
• I mentioned that if you modified the machine.config, you’d only have to put the config in a single place.  I wasn’t being completely truthful.  The SharePoint Web Services configuration overrides the machine.config and clears the entries we created. For that reason, the membership and role providers also need to be added to the SecurityTokenService (But only there – you won’t have to add them to the central admin or other SharePoint web app web.configs.First we need to find the web.config for the SecurityTokenService. Open up IIS. Under sites, SharePoint Web Services, right click on SecurityTokenServiceApplication and click on Explore. Edit the web.config in the folder that opens.
• Add the following to the web.config, just before the closing </configuration> tag:

  <system.web>
   <membership>
   <providers>
   <add name="FBAMembershipProvider"
   type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"
   connectionStringName="FBADB"
   enablePasswordRetrieval="false"
   enablePasswordReset="true"
   requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"
   applicationName="/"
   requiresUniqueEmail="true"
   passwordFormat="Hashed"
   maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"
   minRequiredPasswordLength="7"
   minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="1"
   passwordAttemptWindow="10"
   passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" />
   </providers>
   </membership>
  <roleManager>
   <providers>
   <add name="FBARoleProvider" connectionStringName="FBADB" applicationName="/"
   type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
   </providers>
   </roleManager>
   </system.web>

  Remember to match all of the options with what was entered in the machine.config.Save and close the file.
  

The role and membership providers have now been setup for SharePoint. Continue on to Section-4 to configure SharePoint to use the membership provider we just setup.

Section-4 –  Configuring SharePoint

Now that the membership and role provider have been configured, we can configure SharePoint to use them.  For this example i’m going to create a new SharePoint web application.  The same settings can be applied to an existing web application through the Authentication Providers dialog.

• Open SharePoint Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Web Applications.
• Click “New” to create a new Web Application.
• Name the web application and adjust any other options to your preferences.
• Check “Enable Forms Based Authentication (FBA)”. Enter the ASP.Net Membership Provider Name and ASP.NET Role Provider Name that you configured in the web.config. For this example we used “FBAMembershipProvider” and “FBARoleProvider” (Without the quotation marks).Also, for this example we left “Enable Windows Authentication” checked. This allows us to login either via Windows Authentication or Forms Based Authentication (SharePoint will prompt you when you login for which method you’d like to use).Click OK.
• An Application Created dialog will appear. Click the “Create Site Collection” link to create the first site collection for this web application.
• From the Create Site Collection dialog, give the site collection a name and URL and select a template.
• For the Primary Site Collection administrator, i’ve left it as my Windows administrator account, so that I can login without FBA. For the Secondary Site Collection Administrator i’ve set it to ‘fbaadmin’ – the FBA account we setup in Section-2  (If you skipped Section 2 because you’re using the SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack, then you can just leave this blank for now and use your domain account to login to SharePoint and create your FBA users). You can set these to whatever is appropriate for your setup. Click OK.
• You’ll get the “Top-Level Site Successfully Created” dialog. You can click on the URL to visit the new site collection you just created.
• When authenticating to the site collection, if you enabled both Windows Authentication and Forms Based Authentication, you’ll be prompted for which method you’d like to use to authenticate. I’m going to choose to authenticate with Forms Authentication.
• You’ll be prompted for a username and password. Enter the username and password that we created in Section-2, and also set as the Secondary Site Collection Administrator.
• You’re now logged into the site as a site collection administrator.

That’s it! Now you can authenticate to the site with Forms Based Authentication. You can also create and edit users using the methods discussed in Section-2. Be sure to check out the SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack, which will allow you to manage your forms based users directly within SharePoint, as well as provide methods for users to register, change their password and recover their password.

Difference between sharepoint 2010 and sharepoint 2013

Difference between SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013. 

SharePoint 2013	SharePoint 2010
What is SharePoint 2013 (Preview) - A new version of Microsoft famous Collaboration portal called SharePoint. The version adds few new exciting features such as Social Feed, SharePoint Apps and cross-site publishing.	What is SharePoint 2010 - It is a previous or I should say current version of SharePoint that was released in year 2010.
Development Changes –   §  In SharePoint 2013 Microsoft introduced a new Cloud App Model for designing Apps for SharePoint. Apps for SharePoint are self-contained pieces of functionality that extend the capabilities of a SharePoint website. You can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and protocols like the Open Data protocol (OData), and OAuth to communicate with SharePoint using Apps. §  Tools – SharePoint 2013 has introduced new Tools for App development. Visual Studio 2012 now lets you develop apps for SharePoint and apps for Office. In addition a new web-based tools called “Napa” Office 365 Development Tools were introduced for developing apps. §  No more Sandbox solutions. SharePoint 2013 sandboxed solutions are deprecated. So all we got is the New App model and the Old SharePoint Farm solutions. check out SharePoint 2013 – Apps Vs Farm solutions	Development Changes –   §  SharePoint 2010 Introduced Sandbox solutions to help developers deploy code that did not affect the whole farm. §  In SharePoint 2010 you could use Server Object model and Client Object model (.Net Managed, ECMASCRIPT and Silverlight) to extract data from SharePoint. §  In SharePoint 2010 developers were also developing Farm solutions as they did with the previous SharePoint 2007 version.
Social and Collaboration features –  Microsoft in SharePoint 2013 Introduced new Social capabilities for better collaboration in the company. New Features added are -   §  Interactive feed §  Community Site §  Follow people §  Follow Sites	Social and Collaboration features - SharePoint 2010 had very few social capabilities.   §  My sites §  Tags and Tag profile pages §  Notes
Search - SharePoint 2013 includes several enhancements, custom content processing with the Content Enrichment web service, and a new framework for presenting search result types. Some of the features added are –   §  Consolidated Search Results §  Rich Results Framework §  keyword query language (KQL) enhancements	Search – SharePoint 2010 had Introduced Integrated FAST search as an Enterprise search. In addition to this build-in SharePoint search is still widely used in companies.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - SharePoint 2013 added some of the best capabilities of an ECM software. The newly added stuff is   §  Design Manager §  Managed Navigation §  Cross-site Publishing §  EDiscovery	Enterprise Content Management (ECM) -SharePoint 2010 on the other hand had Introduced Managed metadata and taxonomy as a part of new ECM benefits for SP 2010. This version did not had Managed Navigation and Cross-site Publishing. SharePoint designer was a primary tool to modify Master pages instead of the new Design Manager.

Reset List Item ID value numbering at 1

Reset List Item ID value numbering at 1

One of the most common problem we face in SharePoint Lists is there is no direct option to reset the value of ListItem ID. In development environment we used to insert and delete lot of test records and during this time ID value automatically increased since ID column is a incrementer type. Finally when we move the site to staging and production environments using backup and restore the ListItem ID value will not start with 1.

But we do not have a OOB option to reset this value. But in the backend content database we can reset this value for any list. The following query will be used to reset value.

UPDATE <Content DB>.dbo.AllListsAux set NextAvailableId=1 where ListID='<GUID>'

Here you can see a table called AllListsAux. This list maintans Item count and Id details for all lists.

Please note we have to be very careful while doing any opertation in backend.

 

 

Or

 

 

Save the list as a template and recreate the list. ID columns will always keep incrementing and will never be reused.

Restrict users to overwrite files in document library

The Code should be on 'ItemAdding' event handler. Where you check if the FileName already exist in the List, if yes cancel the adding of document. Since, if you check of 'ItemUpdating' it will stop user from updating the existing document.

 public override void ItemAdding(SPItemEventProperties properties)
{

base.ItemUpdating(properties);
   if (properties.ListItem.File.Exists)
   {
    properties.ErrorMessage = "File Allready exists uploaded by other user.";
    properties.Status = SPEventReceiverStatus.CancelWithError;
    properties.Cancel = true;

   }

}

Implement Feature Stapling in SharePoint.

Scenario

I want a custom list to be created by default whenever a site is created using the Team Site template. The best way to do this is to create a Feature Stapling. 

Feature Stapling

Feature Stapling can be created for the site definition that is already in use. Feature Stapling has two features.

1. Stapler feature: staples another feature to the site definition
2. Staplee feature: that which will be stapled

Steps involved
The following is the procedure steps to to implement Feature Stapling in SharePoint:

1. Create Empty SharePoint Project
2. Create a feature
3. Create the feature stapler
4. Create FeatureAssociation.xml
5. Deploy the solution
6. Check whether the feature stapler is activated in a web application
7. Testing

Create Empty SharePoint Project

1. Open Visual Studio 2010 by going clicking "Start" then select "All Programs" | "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" then right-click on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and click on "Run as administrator".
2. Go to the File tab, click on "New" and then click on "Project".
3. In the New Project dialog box, expand the Visual C# node, and then select the SharePoint 2010 node.
4. In the Templates pane, select "Empty SharePoint Project".
5. Enter the Name as FeatureStapling and then click "OK". 
   
   
    
6. Enter the local site URL for debugging, select "Deploy as a farm solution" as in the following and then click on "Finish".
   
   

Create a feature
In this section you will see how to create a new feature and feature receiver to create a custom list in the site.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click on the Feature folder and then click on "Add Feature".
   
   
    
2. Rename the feature to "CreateListFeature".
3. Double-click on the feature and enter the Title and Description for the feature.
   
   
    
4. Select the scope as web from the drop down list.
5. Right-click on CreateListFeature and then click on the Add Event receiver.
   
   
    
6. Double-click on CreateListFeature.EventReceiver.cs and replace the code with the following:
   
   
    
7. The code above creates a custom list on the feature activated.

Create feature stapler
In this section you will see how to create a feature stapler that is used to staple the CreateListFeature to the site definition.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click on the Feature folder and then click on "Add Feature".
   
   
    
2. Rename the feature to "FeatureStapler".
   
   
    
3. Double-click on the feature and enter the Title and Description for the feature.
   
   
    
4. Select the scope as WebApplication from the drop down list.

Create FeatureAssociation.xml
In this section you will see how to create the XML file to associate the feature to the site definition.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right-click on the project, click on "Add" and then click on "New Item".
2. Select the "Empty Element" template, enter the Name and then click on "Add".
   
   
    
3. Double-click on Elements.xml and replace with the following:
   
   
   
   Id - CreateListFeature feature Id.
   
   Template Name: To which site template the feature should be associated (the format should be <site template name><configuration number>).
    
4. Ensure this file is added to the FeatureStapler feature (double-click on the FeatureStapler feature and see whether in the "Items in the feature" window the Elements.xml file is available).
   
   

Deploy the solution
Right-click on the solution and then click on "Deploy Solution".
Check whether the feature stapler is activated in the web application:

1. Open Central Administration.
2. Click on Manage Web Applications that is available in the Application Management section.
3. Select the web application and then click on "Manage Features" in the ribbon interface.
   
   
    
4. Check whether the Feature Stapler feature is activated.
   
   

Testing

1. Open Central Administration.
2. Click on "Application Management".
3. Click on "Create Site Collections" that is available under the Site Collections section.
4. Create a new site collection using the Team Site template.
5. Navigate to the newly created team site.
6. Click on "All Site Content" in the quick launch bar.
7. You will see the custom list created by default.
   
   

Summary

Thus in this article we have seen an example for implementing the Feature Stapling in SharePoint.

Creating A New Master Page In SharePoint 2013

This article explains how to create a Master Page in SharePoint 2013 from an existing HTML page with associated graphics, scripts, CSS files, etc.  This article is targeted primarily at designers who want to start customizing their SharePoint 2013 site with minimal fuss.  In SharePoint 2013, designers can now use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create dynamic pages where in previous versions it required an ASP.NET developer.  This article shows a step by step example.

For this example, I have used our own web site as a starting point:

http://www.navantis.com/Portals_Collaboration.html

 

We’re going to convert this page into a master page for use in SharePoint 2013.

Planning Out Your Master Page

A Master Page in SharePoint represents the chrome elements of a page, e.g. those areas of the site that stay the same from page to page and the associated master styles, scripts, fonts, images, etc. that should be included on every page of your site.

For our page, we want these chunks of content in our master page as well as all the governing style sheets, JavaScript, images, etc.:

 

The content in the middle of the page is what will governed dynamically by SharePoint using a combination of Page Layouts and dynamic content.

Before moving to SharePoint, create a stripped down HTML file that has the chrome isolated with the appropriate images, CSS, JavaScript, etc. in folders.

The dynamic content is going to go where it says, “Dynamic content will go here”.  My folder structure looks like this:

Ok, now that we’re organized, we can create our Master Page in SharePoint 2013.

Creating a SharePoint 2013 Account

Currently, you can download and install the SharePoint 2013 beta software locally, or you can create a cloud based account.  I have used the cloud based account route because its easy and free for the moment.  Go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/office-365-enterprise to signup for an account and you will have your own SharePoint 2013 environment in the cloud.

The same instructions should work on a local version of SharePoint 2013 as well.

Creating a Publishing Site Collection

When you are first granted a SharePoint 2013 account, you are allocated a public facing web site and a collaboration site.  You can use your public facing web site, but I recommend you create a separate Publishing Site Collection for development purposes as Microsoft only allows one public facing web site in the current cloud environment.  To create a new Publishing Site Collection, go to Admin –> SharePoint –> Site Collections and click on the New Private Site Collection button.

 Now that you have a Publishing Site, you can start to customize it with your new Master Page.  Your default home page will look like this:

 

The Design Manager

If you click on “Design your site”, this will bring you to SharePoint 2013’s new Design Manager:

 You can also reach this screen by clicking on the settings menu at the top right hand of the page and clicking on Design Manager

 

Mapping to the Master Page Directory

Click on 4. Edit Master Pages and you will see a screen like this:

 

We’re going to Convert an HTML file to a SharePoint master page.  Click on that link and you will see this dialogue box:

This directory is the folder containing Master Page and Page Layouts as well as their dependent assets (CSS files, scripts, images, etc.).  The easiest way to manage this folder is to map a network drive in Windows to this folder.  To do this go to Windows Explorer, right click on your computer and select Map Network Drive.  Copy and paste the URL for the location of this directory (it’s at the top of this dialogue box) and put in your login credentials.  You should then get a drive letter that maps to this folder and you can copy and paste files from your local machine into SharePoint directly.

NOTE: You will get an error when you map the network drive if you don’t have the “Keep me signed in” checkbox selected when you sign into Office 2013.  Sign out, delete your cookies, and re-authenticate with this box checked and it will work. 

 

With a mapped network drive, we can simply copy our template and dependent files into this folder.

NOTE: SharePoint 2013 will allow you to create folders in this directory, so this might help in keeping organized to create a separate folder as the root of your master page and its files. 

NOTE: If you cannot map the drive, you can also upload files through the UI by going to Site Settings and Clicking on  Master pages and page layouts.

When you click on this you will access the same master page library that is used by the Design Manager. 

If you click on files you can then upload documents and create folders through the browser UI.

Creating a Master Page from HTML

Now that we have uploaded our files, we’re going to create a Master Page.  SharePoint 2013 can take your HTML file and convert it into a ASP.NET Master Page automatically.  When it does this, it will link the HTML and Master Page together so that if you change your HTML file it will sync these changes into the Master Page.  This allows designers to now work in their comfort zone with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

Go to the Design Manager.  Click on 4. Edit Master Pages and then click on Convert an HTML File  to a SharePoint master page.

Select your HTML file and click insert.

If you go to the Design Manager, you will also now see your Master Page in the list of Master Pages:

NOTE: SharePoint 2013 expects your HTML to be XML Compliant. If you have older or non-compliant HTML you will get an error. Fix your file and try again.

If you click on the Master Page, it will take you to a preview page.  At the bottom of the page you will see a Yellow Box that represents the place holder where dynamic content is going to be inserted…We’re going to now move that place holder into where we want it to replace our dummy text in the middle of the page.

Download the HTML file from the SharePoint 2013 environment (you can just copy and paste it if you have a mapped network drive) and open it in your HTML editor and you will see that SharePoint 2013 has decorated your HTML with a number of tags.  These tags are used by SharePoint 2013 as markup to specify where to put to insert content when it generates the Master Page.  You can edit and add HTML around them and add new snippets to the HTML to add dynamic navigation, content containers, metadata etc.

In your newly improved HTML file, you will see tags in the header (used to insert metadata, title and other header information), at the top of the body (used to insert the ribbon), and at the bottom you will find a div called “ContentPlaceHolderMain”.

This is a content place holder and is used by the Page Layout to inject content dynamically.  You can move this place holder into the appropriate spot in your HTML to insert the content correctly.

Publishing Your Master Page

The last step is we need to publish our master page – its currently in draft.  If you don’t publish it you won’t see it in the Site Master Page Settings drop down menu.  To publish your page, go to Site Settings –> Master pages and page layouts and then find your HTML file.  Hit the publish button on the ribbon.

NOTE: If you try to publish the master page itself you will get an error because it is linked to the master HTML file.  If you publish the HTML file, the master page is automatically published as well.

Assigning Your Master Page to your Site

Now that your master page is published, you can assign it to your site.  All pages in your site will adopt this new chrome.  Publish sites have two types of pages: 1) publishing pages and 2) system pages.  Publishing pages are traditional web pages and System pages are views of lists, document libraries and other administrative pages.  You can assign your master page to either type of pages.

To assign your master page, go to Site Settings –> Master Page (under Look and Feel) and select your master page from the drop down list (if its not there then you probably didn’t publish it successfully or it has errors).  Your site will now adopt your new look and feel!

Here is my default site with the Master Page site assigned.