Sharepoint for Dummies

So here goes another of my forays into a different technology: this time my chosen target : SharePoint aka MOSS 2007.

So, first of all the installation: being new to SharePoint I went ahead with the Stand Alone installation wherein all the components are installed on a single machine.

While this is very good for beginners, a major hurdle was the fact that it installed SQL Server 2005 Express Edition on its own and set up all it's DBs on this instance. This is something which I didn't like coz it kinda takes away the control from me and being a developer it's something that doesn't agree with me.

So, I uninstalled it after a few days of experimenting. And also uninstalled the SQL 2005 Express Edition.

Next, I went ahead with the custom installation where in I was able to configure my server farm as per my needs much to my satisfaction.

From here onwards its a steep learning curve, creating web applications, site collections, etc.

After a little experiments I realised that every site that I create on the top-right corner the Welcome message states "Welcome System Account". So, I went to the SharePoint Central Administration Portal and searched and searched but to no avail. Finally I resorted to the method which is yet to fail me. Seaching on the net.

The search turned up the following little command to the SharePoint Team Services Admin utility (STSADM in short).

** stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -identitytype NetworkService. **

This should be followed by IISRESET (as expected). And guess what? It worked :)

It turns out that the above command updates the Web application pool for the SharePoint Central Administration Web site and the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service (SPTimer). By specifying the -identitytype parameter it actually provides a way to change the farm account from a domain account to a service account (for example, NetworkService). It also describes the application pool account that you are using as either a built in service account, such as NetworkService, or a configurable ID (for example, Domain\user_name).

So now it does state "Welcome Alvaro" every time I log in. And also other users names when they open the site.

More to come on this as I continue to explore, till then cya.