Installing application templates with Microsoft SharePoint Services

I've been spending a lot of time working with SharePoint lately – or maybe still… I have been setting up a new portal, and several sites trying to get everything configured to be useful to the folks I work with. I came across the Application Templates supplied by Microsoft a few months ago and began the semi-arduous process of installing them. It's really not that hard, but following the directions only gave me the option if installing them one a time.

Today, a coworker and I worked out a couple of things that enabled us to completely migrate a services portal to a new server quickly and without too much problem. 

The first thing we needed to do was get the production database from the old server to the new one, this turned out to be easier than we thought. By installing SQL Management Studio Express, we were able to simply backup the live database, move it and restore it to the SQL Embedded server on the new server. You have to use named pipes to get to in SQL studio, but it worked like a charm.

After that, just remove the web application on port 80, and then create a new one specifying the new database in the process. This took significantly less time than restoring from a backup using STSADM at the command line.

After that, the site ran almost flawlessly with the exception of a few of the templates not being installed. After we moved the WSP files to the same directory as the STADM file, we found the script which loops through all of the WSP files in that folder and installs them.

net start spadmin

for %%f in (*.wsp) do “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server

extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe” -o addsolution -filename %%f

for %%f in (*.wsp) do “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server

extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe” -o deploysolution -allowgacdeployment -immediate -name %%f
pause

Just save that script as a .bat file, and you're all set.

All of this took less than 2 hours, and we were back up and running perfectly on a new server under the old domain name. That's gotta be some sort of record.

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