Solution> Restore-SPSite : The site collection could not be restored.

The next problem i have got when i tried to replace the backup from a SharePoint Site.

The problem i'v got is "Restore-SPSite : The site collection could not be restored." what you can see in my powershell dump below.

The problem is that in the contentdatabase on the url a site is registered.
You read allot of person the describe to restore a database backup to fix this problem. This is not necessary.

There is a easier way.

Missing social webparts in Ribbon after migrating from SharePoint 2007

After migrating our SharePoint 2007 envoirement to SharePoint 2010 we where missing the new cool webparts SharePoint 2010 gave us. The following webparts are missing in the updated site:

• Dual Chinese Search 
• Note Board 
• Organization Browser
• People Refinement Panel 
• Refinement Panel
• Tag Cloud

After some research we found out that those webparts are missing in the "webpartdwpfiles.xml". The reason this file is out of sync is because the PortalLayouts feature already is installed in SharePoint 2007 but has changed in SharePoint 2010. 

If we look at the differents we see that the six webparts i mentioned above  are missing in the 2007 version of the "webpartdwpfiles.xml" and there are three webparts deleted form the xml file. The following webparts are not in the 2010 version.

• I need to… (TaskAndTools.webpart) 
• This Week in Pictures (ThisWeekInPictures.dwp)
• Top Sites (TopSitesWebPart.webpart)

When u do an update you still have the removed webparts in the webpart gallery.

We’re interested in adding the new SharePoint 2010 web parts to the site collection’s web part gallery.  You can manually upload them if you so choose.  However, I’m not really a fan of that solution, but it will work in a pinch.  Instead my solution now is to activate the PortalLayouts feature again.  The feature is hidden, so your best bet to do this is with PowerShell.  We do this with the Enable-SPFeature cmdlet.  Since the feature was technically already activated in SharePoint 2007, we have to use the –force parameter.  Here is the complete command for a root site located at http://sharepoint2010.

Enable-SPFeature –Identity PortalLayouts –url http://sharepoint2010 –force

If the command worked successfully, you should receive no errors and another command prompt.  At this point, you can add your new web parts to an existing page.  You should see three new ones in the Social section.

Visio stencils for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013

Visio stencils

After looking around on the internet I found two really great visio stencils for SharePoint 2013. 
This one is created by Stefan Roks and can be found at: Visio stencils for SharePoint 2013
or
the two really great visio stencils for SharePoint 2010. 
This one is created by John Chapman and can be found  at: Visio stencils for SharePoint 2010.

Alternative is to generate this for your entire farm. Download SharePoint Documentation Toolkit to document your SharePoint solution.

Things you can do to make development in SharePoint faster

Yesterday i have a course from Bas Lijten -> Blog . The course give some information to make your develop environment faster. We work within Achmea-IT Mscc with an virtual pc. Because our environment is not working directly on the hardware of the pc we loss a lot of speed. So one of the options we could do is to delete the virtual pc from our environment. The problem is that there is a part of our company that is responsible for the hardware and wants only 1 workstation (also called 1WS). That means that a developer has the same hardware and basic software as an manager or other employee. We have got an virtual pc image to make our system ready to develop software in Visual Studio 2010.

One of the options we now are going to try is to give the SharePoint developers a new laptop with 8 in stead of 4 Gb Memory, also is in the new hardware a solid state disk (SSD) that makes our system a lot faster. The department that is responsible for 1WS gives us a go because our solution is not the final one. Because a other solution cost a lot of time to do research the are okay. The other solution is to make a develop environment is to going to work within a software cloud.

This action is something that need some time to buy and configure the software. So now some other things you can do now to make your development faster.

You can use a tool like ramdisk that enables some hard-disk space directly to a part of the ram memory. If you bind the virtual directory in the ram space the rendering of the SharePoint portal gives a speed-up from x2. Before it was like 54 seconds to start the portal for the first time. After we bind the space to the ram memory the first time to start the portal it was started in a small 30 seconds.