Sharepoint Designer Gives Error when Attempting to Customize Site

Question

Hi,

I'm running SP 2010 Foundation on Win 7 with SPD 2010 32bit installed.  When I attempt to Customize my Site in SPD, I receive the error:

You do not have a default My Site specified.  You can set one as the default by browsing to your My Site and accepting the prompt to configure it as the default site.

I navigate to my SP 2010 Foundation site by using http://<PCName> and login with my Windows username and password.  However, I cannot find any reference to setting My Site as the default.  Can anyone steer me in the proper direction?

Thanks,

Sid

Answer 1

Is that the correct URL?  It's usually http://machinename:port.  You can't have MySites in SPF anyway, so I think the error is a red herring.  How are you browsing to your site?  Did you actually name the site http://machinename using a host header?

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Answer 2

You're correct.  I use the URL http://machinename:port to sign into Central Administration.  I didn't name the site that way, just took the defaults when installing SP2010 Foundation.  Is there anything else I should attempt to change?

Thanks:)

Answer 3

Well, you don't open CA in SPD.  Didn't you create a web application with a site collection in it and then try to connect to that site with SPD?  You should connect with whatever the appropriate URL is to that web application, including the port number.

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Answer 4

When SP 2010 Foundation setup finished, I was able to login to my site with my Windows username and password.  That works perfectly as does SPD.  My issue is that when I try to customize the site using SPD, I cannot do so and receive the error message stated above.  I need to add a BCS connection using SPD pointing to a SQL Server 2008 R2 database on my local machine.  Am I going about this in the correct manner?

Answer 5

Oh, well I guess I don't know what you mean by the phrase "Customise my Site in SPD."  What was the exact button click within SPD that caused this error.

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Answer 6

In SPD, the error is raised when I click on Customize My Site. 

Answer 7

LOL, so it was literal.  Customize My Site is for customizing your my site.  That's literally what it's for.  YOu don't have a My Site.  You just click Open Site, not Customize My Site.  I thought you already logged in to SPD just fine.  If you did, you would have had to already connected to a site to log in.  All you do is connect to the site that you want to customize by putting in the URL, and it should not be CA.

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Answer 8

LOL....newbieness is showing through here:)  When I click Open Site, I'm presented with a directory of Websites in Network(Workgroup)->Web Sites.  My machine name is not listed here, but there are a number of other sites generally located in Visual Studio \Project directory.  When I enter the URL http://machinename:port in the Site Name of the Open Site window, I receive a message stating The folder name is invalid.  Yet, when I browse to that URL, I can view the SP 2010 Foundation site.  How do I properly open the site from SPD?

Answer 9

I thought you had said you already opened it with SPD:

"When SP 2010 Foundation setup finished, I was able to login to my site with my Windows username and password.  That works perfectly as does SPD."

How about trying to browse to your site and then click Site Actions > Edit in SharePoint Designer to see if it will invoke SPD and open for you?  I never use sites with port numbers and always use clean host headers, so I am not exactly sure if it will work with port name typed into the "open site" dialog.

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Answer 10

When I browse to my site, click Site Actions, Edit in SPD, SPD opens with a message stating

Unable to open web site.  Possible causes:

Web Server may not have SP installed

Web Server may be temporarily out of service

Proxy setting may be incorrect

An error may have occurred on the web server

When I open IIS, I see 4 entries in Sites, Default Web Site, Sharepoint - 80, Sharepoint Central Administration v4, and Sharepoint Web Services multiple protocols.  The Central Administration has port 7673.  When I try to go to either http://machinename:80 or http://machinename:7673 and click Site Actions Edit in SPD, the same error occurrs.

The plot thickens....

Answer 11

Ok, if you have a SharePoint - 80 site, then that one requires no port.  You need to disable the default web site to browse to the SharePoint 80 site, which would just be http://machinename.  As I've been saying, do not try to connect to Central Admin.

If none of that works, then add an Alternate Access Mapping for your content site by adding a host header to the Intranet zone (something like http://testsite).  Then, open that site in IIS and add a binding with the same name on port 80.  Lastly, you would add a hosts file entry to your machine that points testsite to your machine's IP.  That will allow you to browse from that point forward to a friendly URL instead of your machine name.

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Answer 12

Adding host header to Intranet zone.:  Is that done in Edit Alternate Access Mapping within CA?  If so, do I change the URL to something like http://testsite and change the Zone to Intranet? 

Answer 13

Edit Public Urls, choose the correct web app, and add http://testsite to the Intranet zone (don't touch the default zone).

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Answer 14

Thanks so much for your help thus far:)  I made this change to the Intranet zone, and also added a header in IIS such that Sharepoint - 80 has a binding of testsite IP Address Unassigned Port 80.  When I direct my browser to http://testsite, I receive Internet Explorer Cannot Display the Web Page.  Are these the correct IIS settings?

Answer 15

To open the Site in SPD :

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2010

2. Click on "File -> Sites ->"

3. Click on "Open Site" button

4. in the Site Name box, input "Http://<servername>" . Servername is the name of the machine where you installed SP2010 Foundation.

 

If you can open the site "Http://<servername>" through your IE browser, then you can open the site through SPD 2010

Answer 16

Did you update your Hosts file locally so that your browser knows where to go?

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Answer 17

Natarajan, he did that about 10 posts ago.

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Answer 18

If you are running SPF 2010 on Win 2007, and also running SPD 2010 from the same machine, then you need not do Alternate Access Mapping or Host File entry. SPD 2010 should be able to open the file when you give the URL : http://localhost . Assume that you don't have any other Web site hosted on port 80.

Answer 19

Did you update your Hosts file locally so that your browser knows where to go?

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Sorry, not sure what you mean by Hosts file.  Is that in IIS?

Answer 20

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

You'll need to open notepad as an adminstrator (right-click > run as admin), then browse to this location and open the hosts file in Notepad.

THen, add a new line with your machine's IP address on the left, then click tab once, then add the word testsite.  It should look like this:

10.10.10.10       testsite

Then, when you browse to testsite, your browser will know to go to your machine's IP, which is when IIS will take care of the rendering.

I still don't know why the basic method doesn't work, though.  Can you confirm the basic steps that Natarajan wrote above.  It really should be that simple.

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Answer 21

Good News:  When I browse to http://testsite I get the Team Site - Home page.

Bad News:  When I click on Site Actions - Edit in SPD, I recieve the same message as posted previosuly:

Unable to open web site.  Possible causes:

Web Server may not have SP installed

Web Server may be temporarily out of service

Proxy setting may be incorrect

An error may have occurred on the web server

Note that when I installed SPD, I used the 32bit version because my Office 2007 Pro is 32bit.  Does that have anything to do with the issue I'm having now?

Answer 22

Did you try :

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2010

2. Click on "File -> Sites ->"

3. Click on "Open Site" button

4. in the Site Name box, input "Http://testsite"

If yes, do you get the same error ?

Answer 23

It doesn't make sense to me at all.

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Answer 24

When I do this, I receive the folder name is not valid.

 

Answer 25

You definitely shouldn't mix Office 2010 with Office 2007 like this (why does the machine have Office 2007 instead of 2010?), but I don't really think that matters here.  Are you truly using SPD2010 and not SPD2007?  Are you also using the same version of SPD2010 as SP2010?

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Answer 26

I'm using SP 2010 Foundation and SPD 2010.  Is there a Foundation version of SPD I should be using instead?

Answer 27

I'm using SP 2010 Foundation and SPD 2010.  Is there a Foundation version of SPD I should be using instead?

No, but there are different build levels from Beta, RC, RTM, and SP1.

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Answer 28

I tried everything on this thread and other threads, and I still can't get my foundation site (localhost, <my-machine-name>, and sharepoint.local.com host header) to show up in the SPD Open Site dialog box. Microsoft is missing something here. Any other ideas?