Application Development
Application Standards
Enterprise Library Application Blocks
Application Unit Testing

Sharepoint Standards

Please note: The standards were developed for Sharepoint 2007, and are currently being redeveloped for Sharepoint 2010.

General

No. Standards Source
1. Don't change any default SharePoint installation files 1
2. Custom master pages will be based on a copy of the default master page 2
3. Avoid customising content pages with SharePoint Designer. 3
4. Avoid inline server side script in pages 1
5. All applications should be globalised and then localised to English 3
6. Package all web parts and templates as features 3

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Deployment / Packaging

No. Standards Source
7. Deploy site definitions and features as SharePoint solutions 1
8. Strong name assemblies using a DEECD vendor specific key pair (.snk) file 2
9. When modifying assemblies increment the file version instead of assembly version 2
10. Use a new trust policy file to elevate privileges for assemblies deployed to the SharePoint bin folder 3
11. Do not use PageParserPath configuration setting to allow server side code to execute 1

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Programming

No. Standards Source
12. Inherit from ASP.NET 2.0 web part class rather than SharePoint web parts class. 2
13. Avoid hard coding html colour and formatting in SharePoint web parts and web controls 2
14. Handle all exceptions to prevent Web Part Page failures 2
15. Avoid using the indexer when accessing multiple properties of an object 1
16. Dispose of SPSite and SPweb correctly 1
17. SharePoint lists will be programmatically accessed by name 2
18. When calling web services, avoid instantiating network credentials using username and password combinations 1
19. Querying the database is not acceptable as it can affect SharePoint transactions and Microsoft agreements 1
20. Code for least permission set 2
21. For administration tools extend STSADM 2

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Template design

No. Standards Source
22. For new Site definitions create a custom WebTemp*.XML file. Where * is a unique name representing the site. 1
23. For new Site definitions ensure that the site definition Id in the WebTemp*.xml is greater than 10000 1
24. Do not override default form or control templates when customising item forms. 2
25. When creating a new XML document custom content type, adhere to the default mapping for the ContentType column and TemplateURL column. 1

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