Building Simple Master Pages for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Applies to:  Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007

Joel Krist, iSoftStone

July 2007

Master pages provide the look and feel for all of the pages in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. By changing the styles or content of a master page, you can quickly customize the appearance of an entire site. This Office Visual How To illustrates how to build simple master pages for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

To illustrate how to build simple master pages for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, this section walks through three key steps:

  1. Opening a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site in Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

  2. Locating and creating a copy of the site's Default.master page.

  3. Applying the new master page to content pages in the site.

Open a SharePoint Site in Office SharePoint Designer

The first step is to open the SharePoint site for which the new master page is to be created.

To open a SharePoint site in SharePoint Designer

  1. Start SharePoint Designer.

  2. Click the File menu, and then click Open Site. The Open Site dialog box appears.

  3. Enter the URL of the SharePoint site and click Open.

Locate and Create a Copy of the default.master Page

By default a single master page named default.master is applied to all the pages in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. Copying default.master and then modifying the copy is a good option for creating a new master page, if this default master page already meets most needs and only a few changes are required. The default master page is located in the Master Page Gallery.

To create a copy of the default.master master page

  1. Locate the master page named default.master in the Folder List. As shown in Figure 1, the default.master master page is located in the masterpage (Master Page Gallery) folder, which is located under the _catalogs folder.

    Figure 1. Locating default.master


  2. In the Folder List, right-click default.master, and then click Copy on the shortcut menu.

  3. Right-click the masterpage (Master Page Gallery) folder, and then click Paste on the shortcut menu.

The new master page is named default_copy(1).master. You can now modify and rename this page. When a master page is copied, all content pages that are attached to the original master page (in this case, Default.master) remain attached to the original master page and not to the copy. After you copy and customize Default.master, you can apply the new master page to all of the content pages in the site.

Apply the New Master Page

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 defines two types of master pages: the System Master Page and the Site Master Page. Forms and views pages use the System Master Page; publishing pages use the Site Master Page. SharePoint Designer refers to these two types of master pages by different names. It refers to the System Master Page as the Default Master Page and to the Site Master Page as the Custom Master Page. When a new master page is set as the default master page, all of the pages that are attached to the current master page are also attached to the new master page.

To apply the new master page to the site

  1. In the masterpage (Master Page Gallery) folder of the Folder List, right-click the page that will be used as the new master page.

  2. To set the page as the new System Master Page, click Set as Default Master Page on the shortcut menu. To set the page as the new Site Master Page, click Set as Custom Master Page on the shortcut menu.

    A message warns that any pages that contain content regions that do not appear in the new default master page will appear broken.

  3. If the content regions in the new default master match the content regions in the site's content pages, click Yes to continue.

This article explores how to build simple master pages for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. The key steps covered are as follows:

  1. Opening a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site in SharePoint Designer 2007.

  2. Locating and creating a copy of the site's default.master page.

  3. Applying the new master page to content pages in the site.

Watch the Video

Length: 03:29 | Size: 4.7 MB | Type: WMV