SharePoint 2007 ends the bucket nightmare.. move those sites!!!

Do you still remember that good old bucket system in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 where the first 20 portal area's ended up with nice urls, but then the buckets started kicking in and provided you with urls like http:/server/C0/myarea/default.aspx? Those days are over.

The reason behind the bucket system in Portal Server was understandable; Microsoft expected a huge number of areas, with deep hierarchies that could be moved around at will without breaking links, and probably performance was an issue. But the bucket solution is a really machine oriented solution, users want to be able to understand their urls. If not we could use GUID's instead of urls;-) But I think they calculated wrong, I never saw really deep hierarchies appearing, and in most cases not that many areas, because you don't want to do to many things in areas due to all the limitations imposed compared to the standard WSS sites: no list and document library security, no possibility to backup a single area, no possibility to create a template from an existing area, or create an area based on a template... should I continue?

In SharePoint 2007 Microsoft got rid of the bucket system. You can move sites around, and the urls of the sites change!! But what happens to urls pointing to those sites? There is a good side to the story, and a bad side. The good side is that all urls in url fields in lists and metadata are rewritten. This is actually quite cool! Move your site and all lists like links lists are updated!! But the bad thing is that all urls NOT managed by SharePoint will NOT be updated (SharePoint has no control over them), and this will break a lot of links.

I wonder about links within documents within document libraries in SharePoint... would be a nice excercise to update those as well;-)

Another thing I heard, but not verified yet, is that if you put a url in a url field in a list, and this url points to something within SharePoint it is actually stored as a relative url. You can also store a releative url in a url field now, but if you edit the field again it shows the full url, but still stores the url in a relative format.

21 Comments

  • what is this garbage?? do you get paid for this?? do you get paid for doing sharepoint work??? Man am I sorry for your clients!! What is the point of this article?? To say you can move sites?? Do you know how to "move" a site?? you can't!! You can backup and restore a site to a new location. But thats not a "move" function when you have to do it to 150 sites. Quit posting "noise" on the internet that everyone who is searching for usefuly information has to filter though.

    What a waste of resources you are!

  • @whatever: what a frustrated answer;-) Yes, I get paid for building solutions based on the SharePoint platform, no, I don't get paid to write down all the 'garbage' in my weblog. I try to write down things I encounter during my projects in the hope I can help other people with it. Note that this post is about the SharePoint platform in its early beta stages, things might have changed. If you have new insights in doing site moves, please let us know, maybe you could be of some help to others.

  • just stumbled across this post while browsing..quite funny actually...keep up the good work Serge.

  • My links are being redirected to the correct URL have the upgrade. I was looking to see if there was a problem during upgrade that caused my links to not update automatically. I now get a nice little message letting me know the site has been moved and then redirects the user to the new URL. Wish Micrsoft did something far better to fix all links that include /C8/ in them to correct with the new web address. After reading your article, now I know it's a normal phase to work out after upgrade is complete. If you have any other information about ways to update/fix links automatically please comment back!

  • sharepoint is a living nightmare!!

  • the problem that we are running into is that after a database migration upgrade none of the Portal Area links work any longer. They seem to appear in the upgrade log and go through no problem but then the links simply get a page not found error.

  • Sharepoint is hard to use and stuff.

  • Yeah they end it but for anyone upgrading they create a new nightmare when 1000's of links in lists go to a redirect page so they all need updated in order to be correct. Sure the user gets there through an annoying redirect page that everyone complains about. Is there a way to update the link lists programatically?

  • Commenting on:
    "Another thing I heard, but not verified yet, is that if you put a url in a url field in a list, and this url points to something within SharePoint it is actually stored as a relative url. You can also store a releative url in a url field now, but if you edit the field again it shows the full url, but still stores the url in a relative format."

    It seems that MOSS stores the full url (but yes, it can change it if you move the site). At least when I try to access the url programmatically it is absolute no matter what I have entered in field. Or am I missing something?!

    It's a problem for me, because I have a webapplication web2 extending another webapplication web1. A URL entered in either of the webapps points to web1 no matter what I enter (except for external links). This is a problem since web1 is only accessible inside the company and web2 is accessible from the outside!

    I can't believe it's made this way. I hope I'm mistaken. If you know anything, plz post a comment on the issue or mail me at "kristiankjaer (AND nospam) AT gmail DOT com"!

  • First of all Mr. W/E you can move/copy sites using the site collection management utility, it takes a couple seconds... and works perfectly! Secondly, Kristian, if you store your links in a URL field type you should be gravy, My extranet is flawless as far as links... I have one app using AD and one with Forms Authentication...

  • Hi - I have Urls with mixed case - i.e.
    www.domain.com/sites/SiteName

    Is there an easy way to change the case so that i get a nice
    www.domain.com/sites/sitename

  • How to move a discussion board from one top level site to another.

    1) Template(.stp)- Its copying the contents but its not copying created by and modified by

    2) Import to spreedsheet - This is bit better it copies all the contents as well as created by but it is not creating it as discussion board instead it create it as a list.Due to this mismatch, the functionality of discussion board is getting affected e.g. we are not getting the flat view.

    Please let me know the solution as soon as possible

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  • SharePoint 2007 ends the bucket nightmare_2E002E00_ move those sites_210021002100_.. Huh, really? :)

  • SharePoint 2007 ends the bucket nightmare_2E002E00_ move those sites_210021002100_.. Great! :)

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