SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide

Web Parts for Administrators

There are only a couple of activities related to the lifecycle of a Web Part performed by the operator or administrator of a site. Depending on how a Web Part is created and packaged and what technologies it utilizes, there are different tasks associated with each.

As explained in the previous section, Web Parts are comprised of different files and resources. These can sometimes come in "zipped" by the developer with some light instructions, or they can come in a specialized deployment package.

Installing Web Parts

There are a number of techniques and tools that can be used to install Web Parts in WSS and MOSS, listed in Table 25-11, ranging from a number of manual steps to full-blown MSI installers. Most of these approaches take pretty good care of the work behind the scenes, and typically deploy files into correct locations and update the web.config for the correct web application.

Table 25-11. Web Part installation options

Web Part package	Description
MS/ installer	An MSI installation file will probably come with some additional installation instructions. On onehand, it may be the easiest way to deploy Web Parts; on the other hand, you will have the leastamount of control over what you do.
CAB file	This is an older style of deployment that was available with WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 platform. CAB files have to be installed on frontend servers by running the stsadm –o addwpppack –filename filename.cab command from the command prompt: C:\Program Files\Common ...