SharePoint Master Page missing from Look and Feel

In order to see the Master Page menu option in the “Look and Feel” Sites Settings section in SharePoint 2010, you have to activate the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure.  There are two features that need to be activated in SharePoint

  • SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
  • SharePoint Server Publishing

These features must be activated at the web site level and not by using the Central Administration Web Application.  This can cause some confusion because these settings are available in the Central Administration tool.

First, navigate to the website that where you want to activate the Publishing feature.  Next,  Select: Site Actions>Site Settings

sharepoint_publishing_1

Now Select, Site Collection Features from the Site Collection Administration section:

sharepoint_publishing_2

In this section you want to activate the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure

sharepoint_publishing_3

Go back to the Site Settings page and select Manage Site Features from the Site Actions section.   This time you need to activate SharePoint Server Publishing

sharepoint_publishing_4

Once this is activated the Master Page option will be available in the Look and Feel section for the Site Settings:

sharepoint_publishing_5

Its important to remember that this must be set up at the site level.

Troy

Getting Started with SharePoint 2010

 

Business Intelligence is a core part of SharePoint 2010.  Its much more than just a content management system.  SharePoint 2010  has the following new features:

Business Connectivity Services

Central Administration Redesign

  • Interface is much more intuitive
  • UI now uses the well known Ribbon Toolbar

central_administration

Claim-Based Authentication

Health Monitoring

health_monitoring

Sandboxed Solutions

  • Deploy solutions onto the Farm or into a sandbox
  • Sandbox is a restricted environment which can be used to control and limit resources for a solution
  • Some solutions may not work in a sandbox and are better suited for a Farm deployment
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/ee704543.aspx

If you are planning on installing and setting up a SharePoint site I recommend checking out the following training videos from Microsoft:   

Installing SharePoint 2010 (54 minutes):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sharepoint/ee518665.aspx

Setting up Your First Web App (24 minutes):

 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sharepoint/ee518671.aspx

I reviewed these videos and had no problems setting up a couple of web applications.    I don’t recommend setting up a VM (it must be 64-bit for one thing) to run on your laptop or desktop.  You will want to create the VM on a server and assign it at least 4 GB of memory.   This requirement may increase if you are using a  Full SQL Server Stack (Analysis Services, Reporting Services etc.) for a Business Intelligence evaluation.

My next little project will be to use Business Connectivity Services and build a simple application using external data from SQL Server 2008.

Troy