Finally, once you understand the basics of how the overall components
involved in Master Pages, we can move to creating a basic Master Page. You just
need to follow these steps to create the Master Page.
Step 1: Open SharePoint Designer 2007.
Step 2: On the File Menu, click New.
Figure 2
Step 3: On the New Dialog box, click on the Page Tab and
Select Master Page. Please note that the SharePoint Content menu will only
display if you have opened a SharePoint site.
Step 4: The Master Page will be created as follows.
Figure 3
Step 5: Go to the code tab.
You can highlight everything and replace the code that is
listed on MSDN Site.
The code mentioned above will just give you the basic Content Place holders that you need to work. The site will definitely work with the above code.
You will have to rearrange the Content Place holders based on your HTML design.
But now we have another issue with the above Master Page. If you try to add an
item to any of your lists (for ex: Document Library or events list), it will
generate an error because it is missing the Content Editor place holders that
are needed to display those pages. So, the easiest way is to add the remaining Content Place holders manually. The Content Place Holders that needs to be added in the
above code are:
Listing 7
<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderGlobalNavigation" runat="server" />
Using the above syntax you can create Content Place holders
for the following.
PlaceHolderSiteName
PlaceHolderTopNavBar
PlaceHolderHorizontalBar
WSSDesignConsole - This is the missing component which is
used while editing.
SPNavigation
PlaceholderTitleinTitleArea
PlaceholderTitleRightMargin
PlaceholderLeftNavDataSource
PlaceholderLeftNavBarTop
PlaceholderLeftNavBarBorder
PlaceholderFormDigest
PlaceholderUtilityContent
Once you add the above Content Place holders in the appropriate
places as per your HTML design, the site will start functioning on all the
pages. You have to save the Master Page to the Master Page Gallery as mentioned
in the previous section. You can setup a Master Page as the Default Master Page
by Right Clicking on the Master Page and Selecting Set as Default Master Page.
Figure 4
Now you have the basic Master Page ready in the Master Page
Gallery. Now we need to assign the Master Page to our site.
