Migrate Without Losing Your SharePoint Branding

Migrate Without Losing Your SharePoint Branding

 Is this even possible?

Well, yes and no.  Yes, if you branded a very specific way.  No, if you brand the way most people do.

Looks Stellar, but is Problematic

It’s pretty much understood that most people, especially senior management, take issue with the appearance of out-of-the-box SharePoint. The companies with the budget might immediately throw a developer or two at the problem. They’ll ask them to make SharePoint look more like a “website”. If the appearance of their intranet is especially important to them, they’ll even hire an outside company to “brand” their intranet. While the result often looks stellar, if not done correctly, it can be even more problematic when it comes time to migrate to a newer version of SharePoint.

SharePoint Branding is Left Behind

The issue here is that most SharePoint Branding is implemented by creating a couple of  master pages that link to a few layout pages and a handful of custom CSS pages.  When this is migrated into the next generation of SharePoint, SharePoint will most likely stop using the custom master pages and revert to the “new” default master pages.

In a nutshell, this means that your master pages, CSS pages, and  layout pages will not be “turned on” after the migration.

Your site collection has migrated, but your Branding was left behind.  This might just mean that your site looks very plain, while you race to rewrite all of your CSS and layout pages.  In worst case scenarios however, your Branding might have been so extreme (you seriously moved some things around) that your users are unable to use the environment until you’re able to restore your Branding.

Establish Goals Before Branding

The easiest way to avoid surprises and unexpected downtime, is to establish your migration goals and expectations before Branding.

A few general useful tips would include:

Minimize the amount of custom CSS you use

The change in CSS from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 was extreme.  Since you’re going to have to rewrite it, keeping it small could save you an enormous amount of time.  Additionally, you should try to include lots of annotation statements in your custom CSS pages.  This can also really save a lot of time during the rebuild. If you really want to maximize for migration, there are ways to Brand without custom code as well, we have webinars that can show you how.

Maximize Graphics for Branding

While it may be hard work up front, it certainly pays off during migration. What we mean here is the liberal use of Graphics in:

• Image Viewer Web Parts
• Summary Link Hyperlinks
• Content Editor Web Parts
• Announcements & Calendar Events

While it may be a hassle to put in all these graphics (especially the little tiny ones) all of these things will migrate just beautifully without any additional work. Note: This works especially well if you locate them in the site assets library.

Custom Web parts and Unique Features

With VisualStudio, is it possible to create custom SharePoint Web Parts that will function just fine immediately after a migration.  It’s also not too difficult to find yourself in a situation where custom Web Parts need to be completely recreated.  This is typically a situation of making it clear to the developer that you want the web part to survive migration.

Wrap Up

• Do everything possible with embedded graphics
• Add well-commented CSS sparingly
• Try not to move the Primary Navigation, Secondary Navigation or Search

If you follow this strategy your intranet will still be completely usable by your organization while you reconfigure and fine-tune your Branding. This, of course, applies to Branding a “live environment”.  If you are lucky enough to have a production, test and development environment then you have the leisure of being able to develop your new SharePoint Branding ahead of time.  Regardless, following the above recommendations sure can make life easier.