'Customizing SharePoint the supported way' - slides and sample code now available

The slides and code from my presentation at last week's UK SharePoint user group meeting are now available - the topic was 'Customizing SharePoint the supported way - from end user to admin interfaces'. The slides etc. will appear on the user group website at some point but I've also published them at:

http://sharepointchris.googlepages.com/customizingsharepointsupportedway

The areas covered are:

• creating site definitions (and why it can be a good idea even for a WCM scenario with limited numbers of sites/webs being created)
• how to modify the site admin and central admin areas of SharePoint, without modifying any of the shipped files. The examples I used (the sample code zip file contains all the code/Features for these) were:
  
  - modifying the recycle bin to show only files deleted by the current user
  
  - modifying the 'Create Site Collection' page in central admin to display a policy message to the farm administrators
  
  
• using the DelegateControl to override the user controls used such as the 'My sites' link and the publishing console. (This assumes either default.master is being used or you have added the controls to your master page/page layout using <SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="MyControlID" />). More details in my DelegateControl post.

Since the slide deck alone doesn't really convey the entire process, the next post will cover modifying the admin areas of SharePoint in detail. Included will be the list of areas where you can add/change links, and how to use a <CustomAction /> instruction within a Feature to do this.

If you need to make customizations to SharePoint functionality, the idea behind this technique is to make the changes without modifying the core files and thus putting your SharePoint installation in an unsupported state. This is very important if you need to make these kind of changes!