Removing Internet from your Search Results

The default Search settings within MOSS 2007 may work fine for many companies, but there is one setting that we didn’t like on our SharePoint based Intranet.  That is the display of search results from the Internet.  We want our searches from within the SharePoint sites to focus on internal content, and felt that it is a distraction having what some consider advertising to be displayed with every Search result.

Removing this isn’t difficult, finding the place to do it might be.  If you haven’t messed with Search very much then you won’t likely know where to go to control this behavior.  Additionally, you probably won’t have any idea what it is called so your Google searches may not help you very much.

Want to remove or modify the Internet Results in your Search Results display?

Here are the steps:

1. Navigate to your Central Administration (or directly to your SSP)
2. Select  the SSP for your site from the QuickLaunch in Central Administration
3. Select Search Administration, found under the Search heading on the Home page of your SSP
4. Select Federated Locations from the Queries and Results section of the Search Administration QuickLaunch



5. On the “Manage Federated Locations” page you should see 2 or 3 items listed on the page, we are interested in any that have “Internet Search” in their name.  Notice that the Trigger column displays “Always”


Manage Federated Locations

6. Click on Internet Search Results
7. Scroll down the Edit Federated Location page to the Trigger section



8. Read the information about your options,  you want to choose what is best for your site.  For the sake of this post I am selecting Prefix and entering “web” in the Add Prefix field



9. Click the OK button
10. Repeat steps 7-9 for Internet Search Suggestions (which I assume you have like I did)  Your Manage Federated Locations should look like this now:


Modified Federated Locations

11. Jump out to another browser and try searching on your site.  The Search Results window shouldn’t display

     

    

    Search Results without Internet results

Tadaaa, you have done it!

In this case, if anyone searches on “bozo” (for example) they will get results without anything included from the Internet.  However,  if they search “web bozo” they will get both results and suggestions from the Internet.  That is because I choose Prefix and used ‘web’ as my prefix.  In both scenarios they will always get results from the SharePoint site.

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MOSS 2007 and VSS 2005

<rant >

History: we have a boat-load of documents being stored in Visual SourceSafe 2005 by project managers, product documentation staff, and engineering staff.  They started storing various documents there simply because it was available (due to our developers using the tool) and because they didn’t have anywhere else available.  Most wanted both version and access control.

Fast forward a few years to today.  We are in the process of implementing a SharePoint based intranet.  Some of the files stored on PC’s, Laptops, file shares, and VSS will move to our Document Center or some other Document Library within SharePoint.  There are some files currently in VSS that the groups want to leave right where they are.  Management is in agreement with this situation.

One of the goals of our new intranet is to make it easy to find files.  Search is a big deliverable.  The obvious question is can we perform a search in SharePoint and find files in VSS? A follow-up question is, better yet, can we integrate to some level where users (with appropriate permissions) can see the documents stored in VSS from within a SharePoint site?

The answers are yes, I think, but that isn’t really the point of this post.  I spent hours searching MSDN and TechNet for information to answer those questions.   That is the point of this post.  My biggest complaint with Microsoft is that they seem to make it very very difficult to find any information you are looking for.

Why can’t I search on “Search Visual SourceSafe with SharePoint” and find anything related to what I am looking for?  I tried various searches, with various combinations of words, no luck really.  One old article talking about integrating VSS 5.0 with SharePoint 2003 (the info in that article doesn’t apply to the current versions, things changed).

I tried focusing on Visual SourceSafe 2005 – no mention of integration or interaction with SharePoint found.  Then I tried focusing on MOSS 2007, nothing.  It was painful, and I only found tidbits of information that were actually related to the topic I am interested in.

TechNet FAIL, MSDN FAIL.  Why can’t Microsoft improve the search capability within these sites, it has been terrible for years and years? It is still nearly impossible to find anything in TechNet and on MSDN when you search for something, especially if you don’t know the “proper” keywords.

</rant>

What it was like NOT going to SPC09

Although there was a huge turn-out for the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas this week, there were lots of us who didn’t attend.  Many reasons for that I am sure, mine was simply work schedule conflicts.

Before the conference I was depressed knowing I couldn’t go to Vegas.  All of the twitter, email, and blog buzz made it The Place To Be this week of October.  SharePoint MVP’s, notable authors and bloggers, as well as all of the “cool” SharePoint vendors were going to be there.  How could I not be bummed?

With the Live Blogging and Twitter hash tag for the conference (#SPC09), I felt better knowing I could keep up and learn a bit about what was going on at the conference.  The conference site also presented video feeds – at least for the Keynote, which lasted several hours.  Other highlight videos were made available as well.

As it turned out many attendees posted photos and videos as well as blogged and twittered about the conference.  As I started following things it quickly became apparent that the massive amount of information coming out of this conference was overwhelming.  I had Twitter notifications from TweetDeck popping up constantly.  Not one notification but 6-9 at a time.  And by constantly, I mean less than a second in between.

The information was great, and there were so many folks that deserve commendations for posting such great material that I couldn’t even keep track of them all.  I hit more blogs and information sites this week than I have ever before (at least it felt like it).

The funny part was that while I had been bummed I couldn’t attend, I ended up having to shut down TweetDeck and stay away from the updates.  It was to much to keep up with and still get any work done.  I wanted to follow along and read up on everything, but it would take all day every day.  If I had that time I would have been in Vegas!

I will have to digest all the links I saved over time.  It appeared that people were going 20 hours a day there at SPC09, guess that is what happens in Las Vegas!

I  hope I can attend the next great conference.  Until then THANKS to all that posted so much, and know that while you got tired walking around to sessions – “we” got tired just trying to keep up with you online!

Notes on Creating Themes

Recently I had to create a couple of custom themes for an intranet, the requirements were not tough, but since I hadn’t created a theme in several months I felt rusty.  I forgot a few things and had to go back and clean up after deploying.  So, I thought a “cheat sheet” of sorts might be appropriate for my blog.  The purpose of this is to help me remember and possibly help someone else smooth out their own custom theme effort.

Tips/Notes

• Use Themes to change colors, fonts, background images.
• Use Master Pages to move elements around on the page.
• If possible, apply an Out-Of-The-Box (OOTB) theme that is similar to the color scheme you want to your work site.
• Copy that theme folder and rename it to your custom theme name.
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\THEMES

• Don’t forget to modify the .INF file:
  • rename the file to your custom theme name
  • replace the original theme name with your custom theme name everywhere inside the file
  • change “codepage” to a unique number

• If you “tweak” and view using the theme in a site, don’t forget to copy ALL of your changes into the theme.css that will go into your new theme folder.
• I like to use SPD to edit the applied theme (“themename”1011-65001.css) so I can view my changes with just a Save.  Once I have it completed, then I copy the css out of that file into my custom theme.css file.
• Use the developer tools in IE to find the styles that you are missing.  If a style is in the Core.css, copy the style from there and place it in your css prior to modifying it.  Your theme.css will override the core.css in most cases.
• Don’t just remove or comment out an image file that you don’t want used…use “none” in the image attribute to make sure you are overriding the image usage elsewhere in a SharePoint style.
  • Ie: backgroun-image:none;

• Edit the SPThemes xml, duplicate a <templates> section for your theme
  • C\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\SPTHEMES.XML

Sample section (copy section and change the bolded items in the copy to your theme name and images):

<Templates>
<TemplateID>Lacquer</TemplateID>
<DisplayName>Lacquer</DisplayName>
<Description>Lacquer has a gray background with gray control areas and orange highlights.</Description>
<Thumbnail>images/thlacquer.gif</Thumbnail>
<Preview>images/thlacquer.gif</Preview>
</Templates>

• Place your thumbnail and preview images in the 12 hive (can be gif, jpg, or png)
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES

• When your work is done execute an IISRESET /NOFORCE to make the new theme available to your SharePoint sites