Customizing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Lists

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 lists, such as announcements, calendar, and discussion board are composed of .aspx pages designed to display, add, and edit list items. Customizing these pages is something that no WSS 3.0 developer could smash away from. Thanks to Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, with its professional-quality design tools and sophisticated no-code solutions, we could now easily tailor a design-compelling WSS 3.0 list – notwithstanding that it is not straightforward for discussion board list.

In this paper, we will try to customize the New Item page of a discussion board.  

1.       To start the customization, let us open our Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, and then we will open our SharePoint site.

2.       In the Folder List panel, let us select Lists folder, then Discussion Board. As illustrated below, let us open the NewForm.aspx.

3.       Our NewForm.aspx page has a ListFormWebPart that we need to hide by adding a <IsVisible>false</IsVisible>  attribute.  Notice that by deleting this Web part may cause an “Invalid page URL.” or “Unexpected error has occurred.” error. It is commonly caused by an unreferenced object related to Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls namespace.

4.       After hiding the ListFormWebPart, we can now insert a CustomListForm SharePoint control. To do this, click Insert menu, then select Custom List Form. Below is the illustration.

5.       To define the library and content type we are going to insert, we will be prompted by the List or Document Library Form dialog box. Complete necessary information, in this demonstration we will select Announcements for the List or Document Library dropdown list and Announcement for the Content Type dropdown list, then click Ok. Below is the illustration.

6.       As illustrated below, we could now start customizing the SharePoint:FormField of our CustomListForm. It may be a twaddle reminder:  common errors in this exercise are duplicate control id and incorrect FieldName definition of both SharePoint:FormField and SharePoint:FieldDescription.

7.       If necessary, right-click the SharePoint list in Folder List pane, then click property. As illustrated below, we will be prompted by the List Properties dialog box where we could configure items like Security, and Supporting Files mapping.  

8.       After saving the customization we have made, we could now enjoy browsing our customized NewForm SharePoint page.

Hoping this would help...Thanks!