Professional SharePoint® 2010 Branding and User Interface Design

Common Challenges for Custom Master Pages

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Working with Application Pages

Earlier you learned about how master pages apply to most pages in SharePoint 2010, including the

application pages like Site Settings. One common “gotcha” with this behavior is that these pages

have an extra level of error handling applied to them. Many simple errors, such as those that occur

when you omit a required content placeholder, are not displayed; instead, SharePoint actually reverts

to displaying the default

v4.master page. This can be frustrating when you are creating your own

custom master page because without any type of message, it’s diffi cult to determine the source of a

problem. If you run into this, your best bet is to make minor changes to your master page until it

starts applying to these pages again. Often the problem lies with missing content placeholders, so

that should be the fi rst thing to check. Another common solution is to compare your custom master

page with one that is known to work, like

v4.master or a Starter master page.

Hiding Left Navigation

Another issue that arises when custom master pages are applied to the application pages can be seen

when you want to hide all left navigation from your custom branding. The issue here is that many of

the application pages, such as the People and Groups Site Settings page, require the Quick Launch

bar for critical menu items. Therefore, ...