Renaming the URL of a web application

Sometimes a company might want to change the URL of a sharepoint web application for branding or some other purpose. This change sounds a little challenging but it is not very complicated.

Following steps need to be followed:

1. In Central Administration, go to Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) under the Operations.

2. Select the Web Application from the Alternate Access Mapping Collection for which you want to change the URL.

3. Edit the public URL for this mapping collection to the new URL

Yes, thats it! Not really :-) ... any changes done in AAM do not get reflected in IIS. The host header for the web application need to be modified by opening the IIS manager. Here are the steps:

1. Open IIS Manager and go to the Web Site for which the URL is being changed.

2. Right-click and click on Properties.

3. Under the Wb Site tab, click on Advanced button next to the IP Address.

4. Change the host header to the new URL value.

5. The above steps need to be repeated for each server in the SharePoint web farm. :-(

Yes, That's it. The URL is changed. :-)

But wait, there are a few caveats:

1. Many times, the CEWP and image web parts have absolute links. SharePoint even changes relative links to absolute links. So, these links will still be pointing to the old URL. They will have to be updated. I wrote a small script to do it. Here is a snippet of the code:

mgr = oWeb.GetLimitedWebPartManager(page.Uri.ToString(), System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.PersonalizationScope.Shared);
parts = GetCEParts(mgr.WebParts);
foreach (ContentEditorWebPart wp in parts)
{
try
{
if (wp.Content.OuterXml.ToLower().Contains(urlToRemove.ToLower()))
{
if (page.ListItem.File.CheckOutStatus == SPFile.SPCheckOutStatus.None)
{
page.CheckOut();
}
swLog.WriteLine("Hard Coded path found in " + page.Uri);
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
string outerXML = wp.Content.OuterXml.Replace(" ", "");
outerXML = StringHelper.ReplaceText(outerXML, urlToRemove, urlReplace, StringHelper.CompareMethods.Text);
doc.LoadXml(outerXML);
wp.Content = doc.DocumentElement;
mgr.SaveChanges(wp);
page.Update();
page.CheckIn();
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
swErrorLog.WriteLine("Errors updating CEWP for: " + page.Uri.ToString() + ". Error was: " + ex.Message);
}
}
#region GetCEParts
private static List GetCEParts(SPLimitedWebPartCollection list)
{
List parts = new List();
foreach (System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart item in list)
{
if (item.GetType() == typeof(ContentEditorWebPart) item.GetType().BaseType == typeof(ContentEditorWebPart))
parts.Add((ContentEditorWebPart)item);
}
return parts;
}
#endregion

This code would need to be run for all pages having CEWPs. Code also needs to be run to update image URLs for image web parts.

2. Sometimes, you will start getting "Value does not fall within the expected range" when going to Page Settings for a page. Hopefully, you do not need to go to the Page Settings of a lot of pages as resolving this is a manual process and takes time! Here is a great blog to resolve this issue: http://www.bronios.com/index.php/2008/01/18/moss-page-setting-error-value-does-not-fall-within-the-expected-range/.

"Request Timed Out" deleting site collection

Today, I tried to delete a site collection from Central Administration and I got the "Request timed out" error! The site still showed up on the site collection list in CA but did not show any details (URL, Title, Primary Administrator, Database) and it was no longer giving me the option to delete it. I thought the site collection was not deleted cleanly and I tried to use the stsadm to delete the site collection: stsadm -o deletesite -url http://[sitecollectionurl]. This gave the following error: The system cannot find the path specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070003).

After some digging, I realized that the site collection had got deleted but the content database was still keeping a reference to it. To resolve the problem, I removed the content database and then reattached it to the web application. Removing and reattaching the content database can be done either in Central Administration or by using the stsadm utility.

The simple matter of adding the stsadm path to the Path Environment variable

All the time to use the stsadm command, you have to drill down to the bin folder in the Program Files directory a.k.a. to the c:\program files\common\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin folder. To drill down to this folder every time you have to use the command is annoying at best!

To get around this, just add the stsadm path (c:\program files\common\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin) to the Path environment variable. The steps to do this are:

1. Right-click My Computer and go to properties
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Click the Environment Variables button
4. Under the System Variables list, look for the Path variable.
5. Double-click the Path variable to edit it.
6. Add ;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN or add the shortcut ;%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN to the end of the Path variable
7. Click OK three times and you are done! Now, if you go to the command prompt, you do not have to drill down to the stsadm path. You can use it directly since the path is saved in the Path environment variable.