I’ve recently been working on a design project and must say that I’m overjoyed about master pages now being an integral part of the SharePoint platform. I’d previously worked with master pages in other projects using Visual Studio 2005. The experience in SharePoint Designer 2007 is relatively seamless and in fact I’ve been able to port master pages created in Visual Studio 2005 to SharePoint Designer 2007 and apply those pages to SharePoint sites.
One main difference when working with SharePoint Server 2007 master pages is the fact that you are working with two types of master pages – the custom and default master pages (this is aside from the administration master pages). The custom master page relates specifically to publishing pages throughout SharePoint sites, such as those pages stored in the Pages document library, whereas the default master page relates to those pages which drive the forms and views pages within sites, such as the Team site. You can set both the custom and default master page via the SharePoint Server 2007 administration page – Site > Site Settings > Look and Feel > Master page. Using SharePoint Designer 2007, you can also set the custom and default master pages for a site. However, the interface is slightly different, so I’ll explain the differences here.
In the masterpage (Master Page Gallery) in SharePoint Designer 2007, you have the option to set a master page as either the Default Master Page or Custom Master Page for a site.
Using the Site Master Page Settings page, you can also set the custom and default master pages for a site. But, note that here the custom master page is called the Site Master Page and the Default Master Page is called the System Master Page (Site Master Page=Custom Master Page; System Master Page=Default Master Page).
We can demonstrate this by changing the Site Master Page on the Site Master Page Settings page to BlueTabs.master.
If we then go back to SharePoint Designer 2007 and create a new page based on a master page, we’re given the options to create the page based on the Default, Custom or Specific master pages. In this case, because we changed the Site Master Page back in the Site Settings page to BlueTabs.master, SharePoint Designer 2007 automatically recognizes the new custom master page for the site.
