Managing SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010 is a powerful application used to build custom sites and solutions on the SharePoint platform. It’s a great way to create and customize pages, views, forms, data sources, workflows, and more.

But there are some tasks in SharePoint Designer that give SharePoint administrators real heartburn because of the potential problems it creates for them.

Here are the big 3:

1. Detaching pages from their site definition – When you do this, intentionally or not, the page overrides the site definition and therefore won’t be recognized the next time the site definition is updated. This means you’ll be talking to your SharePoint administrator the next time the server is upgraded.
2. Customize master pages and page layouts – While this may improve the look and feel of your site, there’s a risk that you’ll remove the corporate brand that was intended for all sites in your organization. Even worse, you could potentially break your site and other sites if you change or delete a required content region.
3. Editing files directly in the site URL structure – This might be a quick and easy way to modify any file on your site, but in doing so, you could mistakenly delete a support file or template file required by SharePoint.

So on one hand, SharePoint Designer 2010 gives you a lot of power and flexibility in how you change the appearance or functionality of a SharePoint site. But on the other, if it’s used incorrectly, it can create issues for you, your site, and of course, your administrator.

The SharePoint Designer Settings page

In SharePoint 2010, you and your administrator will be happy to learn about the SharePoint Designer Settings page, which looks like this.

The SharePoint Designer Settings page helps you manage how SharePoint Designer 2010 is used in your organization by giving you control of these settings:

1. Enable SharePoint Designer: Enables or disables SharePoint Designer for an entire application or site collection. When checked, SharePoint Designer can open and edit SharePoint sites. When unchecked, it cannot be used to open or edit sites.
2. Enable Detaching Pages from the Site Definition: Enables or disables the ability to detach pages from the site definition. When checked, SharePoint Designer allows users to edit pages in Advanced Mode, giving them access to every part of the page and consequently when they save, the page is detached from its site definition. When unchecked, SharePoint Designer disables the Advanced Mode, forcing users to edit only the parts of the page in a Web Part Zone. The page, as a result, is never detached from the site definition.
3. Enable Customizing Master Pages and Layout Pages – Enables or disables master pages and page layouts in SharePoint Designer. When checked, SharePoint Designer displays master pages and page layouts in the Navigation pane. When unchecked, these pages don’t appear in the Navigation pane of SharePoint Designer.
4. Enable Managing of the Web Site URL Structure – Enables or disables the site URL structure and its contents. When checked, SharePoint Designer displays the All Files options in the Navigation pane allowing users to view and edit any file on the site. When unchecked, the All Files option doesn’t appear in the Navigation pane.

In Central Admin and Site Collection Admin

There are not one but two SharePoint Designer Settings pages that you can use to manage how SharePoint Designer 2010 is used in your organization:

• Central Administration – The SharePoint Designer Settings page in Central Administration applies the settings at the web application-level for all site collection administrators on down. That’d be everyone.
• Site Collection Administration – The SharePoint Designer Settings page in Site Collection Administration (you know, the Site Settings page for your top-level site) applies the settings at the site collection level to all designers and owners.

Use one or both pages to manage how SharePoint Designer 2010 is used in your organization without fear of it detaching pages, removing corporate brands, or breaking sites. You may even choose to temporarily enable and disable certain SharePoint Designer features depending on where you’re at with your SharePoint deployment.