The goal for this redesign was to be user-oriented and to provide the citizens of Mississippi the content that they routinely search and ask for. We based these decisions off of Google Analytics, customer service feedback, and webmaster feedback. We tried to provide the most used links in a compact design while still providing an attractive interface. We weren’t trying to create a brochure site or a travel-theme site, this is a state website meant for users to come in, get what they need, and get on with their day. We added new content throughout the site, such as the Governor’s Initiatives  and the Mississippi Maps pages. We also rebuilt our Agency Directory, which is the most used feature of the entire site, in .net so that it was easier to update, faster, and with more agency content.

ms.gov

Highlights:

• SharePoint 2010 site (Home page is NOT in SharePoint, nor is the Feedback page or the Agency Directory-they are .net)
• Responsive, html 5 site
• Sliders are swipable on iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire
• Uses Google Fonts, Google and Bing mapping technologies, JQuery and SP Services, a hybrid V5 and Randy Drisgil masterpage, and Twitter Bootstrap

Dev Team:

• Creative Director, SharePoint, CSS: Michelle Pakron
• .Net and Javascript Programming: Jesse Kyzar
• Databases, mobile ms.gov iPhone app development: Spencer Jones

Support Team:

•  Ty Carr, Brandon Ward, Kat Taylor
• The whole gang at Mississippi Interactive helped with testing and other tasks and I am very grateful for everyone’s efforts

Texas.gov

The new Texas.gov is responsive, with a  clean, stripped down aesthetic that loads quickly. It uses SharePoint 2010, along with Google fonts, JQuery, Modernizr, and other goodies, proof that modern web development techniques can work beautifully with SharePoint.

SC.gov

The new South Carolina state website is bold and bright. It also uses several modern web technologies such as Google fonts and JQuery UI, and responsive design.

Maryland.gov

The new Maryland.gov is packed with features. It is an HTML 5, responsive site loaded with custom SharePoint developed features-this site is a good example of what you can do if you have dedicated SharePoint engineers.

MS.gov

I can’t show it today or my GM will kill me, but I can tell you it is a SharePoint 2010 HTML 5 site, it is responsive,  uses Twitter Bootstrap, JQuery, SPServices, Google Search and Google fonts, and it is has touch groovies for tablet users. I will post more on it tomorrow

• Start with a solid base. I have used two different starter masterpages, one from Randy Drisgill  (used on ms.gov) and one from Kyle Shaeffer   (an altered version was used as the base for Its.ms.gov)
  • I edited both and added customizations to suite my needs. I used Kyle’s for a responsive site, though I took the ribbon code from Randy’s and made some other alterations.

• If you are going responsive, use a solid framework. I used a modified version of Twitter Bootstrap along with my modified masterpage from Kyle Shaeffer. Kyle includes some SharePoint resets and a script that helps to counter some SharePoint wackiness when going responsive.

• I design internet-facing SharePoint sites the same way I do any other type of site. I create a mockup and then build it out in Dreamweaver using HTML 5 and CSS3. Of course, having a strong knowledge of SharePoint helps in deciding what element s of my design should be lists, which should be data views, and which should be some groovy JQuery thingy that I need to pull my developer in to build. Once I build out the unique pages (usually home, sub, full width layouts) I then test these in IE 7-9, Chrome, FireFox, and Safari. I make any corrections for IE and then I pull the designs into SharePoint Designer.

• I have found that no site that works perfectly outside of SharePoint will work perfectly once inside. I usually have at least a few minor CSS issues to correct, generally having to fix any CSS declarations for global tags, like ul’s and img’s. I try to make all of my styles contextual so as to not override the ribbon or editing interfaces.

• When things don’t work correctly, I find that I usually have misspelled something. I have a habit of spelling Bootstrap as Bootsrap-I wasted an hour trying to figure out why my grid was collapsed until I realized my spelling error.

• Fun With Anonymous Access
  • Internet-facing means anonymous access. This means that many features of SharePoint are no longer supported without being logged in. For example, I had hacked a list entry form to serve as a contact form. User adds their info, hit the button, data gets sent to list, which kicks off workflow that emails user’s contact info. A simple solution that removes the need for a developer to create a table in a database and having to code out an entry form.  While this works perfectly in a authenticated environment, the minute we turned on anonymous access in our UAT environment, the login popped up when users went to this page. Anonymous access won’t allow adds to lists by non-authenticated users by default. So scratch that solution.
  •  Also, if you don’t turn off mobile rendering in Central Admin, your internet-facing site will force a login to display on mobile phones. You want to turn this off for another reason-mobile rendering is horrible; it’s literally a list of links, and not the ones you want your users to see.
  • JavaScript also has issues with anonymous access. Our developer had used JavaScript to query lists and pull back data for several directories on ms.gov. We noticed issues in IE 7 first. We got those fixed and then when we tested with anonymous access we realized we had a problem-login prompts. I blogged previously about these issues. Thankfully Marc Anderson tipped us to his wonderful SPServices JQuery library and our developer was able to get his directories working with anonymous access. If you plan on using JavaScript to query lists or services, save yourself some misery and check out SPServices first.

• Why So Slow?
  • We know the trend in web design now is large photos EVERYWHERE! That’s great and all, but SharePoint tends to be slower than regular websites already, adding huge images just makes it worse. We optimized all of our images as much as possible, made sure we used progressives jpegs, minified our css and js files, and still ms.gov was just too slow. I stumbled upon a setting in Site Settings that I had never noticed before: Site Collection Output Cache. Turn this on and set your profile to Public Internet and you should find that your site starts to perform better.

• Large Lists Not Displaying for non-admins
  • If you have a list with more than 5000 items and you are querying it and the results are not showing up for non-admins, have your farm admin adjust the list view threshold. The default limit is 5000; raising it above the number of items in your list will allow the queries to function properly. If you have several lists that have over 5000 items you might want to look into other methods for handling so much data, but in a pinch this works well. Note that this setting is on a per site collection level.

• Publish!
  • Ever run something all the way up the flagpole to production and then notice either missing image icons or logins popping up randomly? I bet one or more of your files isn’t really published. Depending on how your site was set up, you may have lists that require approvals before the assets are published, or you may have checked an item in and not published it. Go to site actions > Manage content and structure, and view all of the items in draft mode. This goes for reusable content list items as well.

I am about to head off to a tech conference in Utah; when I get back I’ll go over some of the techniques used to make this site.

Site Contents

Settings

Design Gallery

Display Templates

Embed Code

Looks like MS figured out that we have been using the CEWP for mostly embedding code into our pages and have now given us the explicit option to do so now.

SharePoint Designer: Goodbye Design View

So with no design view in Designer, how does one see what the heck they are doing? There is still the option to create data views, but I cant figure out how to connect the DVWP to a list or how to see what I am doing to mess with the xsl. This is a change that I find very strange as it massively handicaps those who do customizations. Sigh.

That’s all for now. As I learn more I’ll post more.

My latest SharePoint project, a state agency website, was not designed to be responsive. The agency wanted it to resemble ms.gov and the mock ups they approved were of a fixed-width design with a few tricky design elements I had no idea how to build. Because I love pain, I decided “Let’s go responsive-with SharePoint!”. I used Twitter Bootstrap as my flexible grid and I created the base site design in Dreamweaver, as I do with all my sites. I tested it in IE and Chrome and my little media queries were working great. Then I pulled the code into SharePoint. And then the real pain began.

I use Randy Drisgill’s base masterpage as my starter for all my SharePoint sites, so I used it here as well. Unfortunately, for some reason when the viewport hit around 777 pixels it simply refused to respond any further. I removed all of my code line by line to see what was making SharePoint so angry. It was not the css, it was SharePoint, specifically, something being called from my masterpage. So I decided to try Kyle Shaeffer’s v5 Responsive masterpage. I added it to the site as is to verify that it worked before I made any changes. Happiness-it responded, no dreaded 777 pixel dead end. The masterpage has a bunch of controls  I never use so I stripped those out. The css was missing the magical code that makes images responsive so I added that. I pulled over the parts of Boostrap that mattered to me, the fluid grid classes, and left out all the non-grid styles. I integrated my code and voila! After, oh, maybe we are at 30 hours at this point since I rebuilt the masterpage like 4 times, I finally thought I had this sucker figured out.

I found the next issue when I started building out my page layouts. Certain admin screens, like checking in masterpages, site columns, contents types, pulled up an error. SharePoint has such lovely and useless error messages, they might as well say “you broke it You so dumb!” Eh. So today I opened my masterpage on one monitor, my standard masterpage on another, and I went down line by line and made sure every control that was in my regular masterpage was in my new one. The dreaded errors finally went away when I added all of the hidden controls. My regular maserpage had 20 hidden controls and my new one only had 16. Once I added the missing four the error just went away-I jumped up and squealed and decided I had earned a lemon ice for all my troubles.

I am happy to report that so far I have encountered no further issues with my new responsive masterpage. I am currently building out the page layouts and trying to get the site ready to start dumping content into it. I hope to launch this baby sometime next month. I still have several other technical challenges to overcome for this website, but I think I finally feel satisfied that I have created a fully responsive SharePoint 2010 site. I sooo need a nap..

More to come!

http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/neworleans/default.aspx