1. My Site Host Site Collection - Shared by all users – My Profile link – First site collection created in My Site web application
2. My Site Personal Site Collection – Personal site collection – created when users click on the My Profile link – subsequent site collections in the My Site web application – can disable

The My Site Host Site Collection is easily customised and branded as this site collection it is shared by all users. There is a great article explaining it here.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/spsocial/archive/2010/04/08/customizing-my-sites-in-microsoft-sharepoint-2010.aspx

The My Site Personal Site Collection is created for each individual user thus customisation is not so easy. A developer is required here as the solution here is known as Feature Stapling.

Feature Stapling allows a Feature to be called when a Site Template is called during the provisioning process. This means you can run some code to change master pages, apply custom security, etc… to the site during the provisioning process. So when the site is displayed to the user all of the changes you implemented in your Feature has been applied.

I have just finished implementing a solution for a client which I am happy about as Personal Sites are now branded and users are not site collection administrators.

This post while written for SharePoint 2007 is still very relevant for SharePoint 2010
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?PageType=4&ListId={72C1C85B-1D2D-4A4A-90DE-CA74A7808184}&pID=794

The following JavaScript will remove the reply (previous post) text.

var d = document.getElementsByTagName(“textarea”);
for( var i=0; i < d.length; ++i){
if( d[i].id.indexOf(‘TextField’) != 0 ){

d[i].value = ” “;

}
}

If you are developing custom applications in SharePoint 2007 are are interested in displaying your data in a graphical format (like this) then you will need to complete some configuration first.

Note: Make sure you download and install the Sample Applications as this has many great examples.

To setup the Charting in SharePoint you will need to perform the following:

1. Download and install MSChart.exe on the SharePoint Server
2. If you are in a development environment then also install MSChart_VisualStudioAddOn.exe
3. Add Reference to the System.Web.DataVisulization.dll
4. Update the SharePoint web.config file
   1. <handlers…section
      <remove name=”ChartImageHandler”/>
      <add name=”ChartImageHandler” preCondition=”integratedMode” verb=”GET,HEAD” path=”ChartImg.axd” type=”System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartHttpHandler, System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
   2. <appSettings…section
      <add key=”ChartImageHandler” value=”Storage=file;Timeout=20;Url=/_layouts/Images/MicrosoftChartControls/;”/>
   3. <controls…section
      <add tagPrefix=”asp” namespace=”System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting” assembly=”System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
   4. <httpHandlers…section
      <add path=”ChartImg.axd” verb=”GET,HEAD” type=”System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartHttpHandler, System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ validate=”false”/>
   5. <tagPrefix…section
      <add tagPrefix=”asp” namespace=”System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting” assembly=”System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ />
5. Create the _layouts/Images/MicrosoftChartControls folder and provide higher permissions so everyone can modify
6. Add POST to the httpHandlers ChartImg.axd to remove the error “Error executing child request for ChartImg.axd”

• All information is stored inside SharePoint lists
• The Unavailable section is automatically updated from the SharePoint Leave Calendar (removing weekend hours)
• Project capacity is selected from a dropdown list using a custom field control. This control is populated from the Projects site which lives in another web application
• Heatmap functionality based on department or individual teams

Here are some screen shots:

Capacity Planner Image

Heat Map Image

public static StringCollection GetEventCategoryChoices(SPWeb web)
  {
   SPList leaveList = web.Lists[LeaveCalendar.ListName];
   return ((SPFieldChoice)leaveList.Fields[Fields.EVENT_CATEGORY]).Choices;
  }

C# doesn’t allow spaces in Enum’s, just like variables. However, thanks to c# extension methods we can create a new method that returns the Description Attribute.

Apply descriptions which may be different to the enum value. Notice the space.
public enum WorkType

Create the extension method
//used to get the description from enum fields
public static string GetDescription(this Enum value)
{
Type type = value.GetType();
string name = Enum.GetName(type, value); if (name != null)
{
FieldInfo field = type.GetField(name);
if (field != null)
{
DescriptionAttribute attr =
Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(field,
typeof(DescriptionAttribute)) as DescriptionAttribute;
if (attr != null)
{
return attr.Description;
}
}
}
return null;
}

Use it in your code
string serivceDelivery = WorkType.ServiceDelivery.GetDescription();

If you are running .net framework 3.5 sp1 and VS2008 then you are in luck to use Microsoft’s free charting platform with Visual Studio add-ons and very complete sample project. This fantastic news and a great addition to business solutions.
read about it here:

Note: The Chart control is built into VS2010 so no configuration or installation is necessary.

The chart currently displays dummy data but will in the future graph the data that is inside the grid.

“

I have done what you have said consistently several times without running PrepareToMove.  

Create the new web apps in your DEV environment first making new databases for them.  

Detach these 2 new content databases you created by making your new web apps from your SharePoint farm.

Have your DBA (or you can do it yourself if you know how) restore the content from the 1 old content databases to the 2 new content databases.  

When the restore is complete, reattach the 2 new databases you just refreshed to your farm using the AddContentDB command in STSADM.  Make sure to add -assignnewdatabaseID and -clearchangelog parameters to the AddContentDB command.  

Check the SiteSynch table in your SSP Service database as indicated above and if the ‘Moving’ column is TRUE, run the PrepareToMove STSADM command using the -contentDB command with the name of your new content DB and the -undo parameter.  Do this -undo command 2 times, once for each new contentDB.  

This worked for me when I had to refresh 2 separate databases in my DEV farm from 1 production content database.

“

One table that stood out was the AuditData table which was 50Gb in size. SharePoint Auditing can take up so much database space especially if you are auditing an entire site collection. Auditing was capturing data since late 2007 and wasn’t being used at the company, so the decision to disable this functionality. Great…save space and system resources.

So I turned it off at the site collection in site settings.

So the next step moved to how do we remove these logs?

• Truncate the table – fast but unsupported and I am not sure what state this will leave you in
• Object Model – write code to remove entries
• stsadm trimauditlog- only available after SP2 – This is the one I selected

Stsadm trimaudtilog
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc706881(office.12).aspx

 I used the –url parameter instead of the -database parameter. I was receiving an object reference not set to an instance of an object error when using the -database parameter. I am not sure if it was because the site collection was migrated to a different database server and the audit logs was stored against a different database server.

I ran this command in 1 monthly intervals (which was painful) as there was a lot of data to clean up and the SQL database log file wouldn’t consume all the disk space. I would then manually shrink the log file DBCC ShrinkFile after every trim to free up space. I performed this action until the entire AuditData table was cleared.

So if your Content database is growing at an alarming rate then make sure you check your AuditData table and assess if you really need auditing enabled, especially for the entire site collection.

private void RecurseNodes()
  {
   foreach (TreeNode parentNode in locationsTreeView.Nodes)
   {
    if (parentNode.ChildNodes.Count > 0)
    {
     RecurseChildren(parentNode);
    }
   }
  }

  private void RecurseChildren(TreeNode tn)
  {
   if (tn.ChildNodes.Count > 0)
   {
    tn.SelectAction = TreeNodeSelectAction.None;
    foreach (TreeNode tnC in tn.ChildNodes)
    {
     RecurseChildren(tnC);
    }
   }
  }