Question

I’m after a bit of feedback with regards to using SharePoint Designer in production environments (I’m talking SharePoint 2007 here). There seem to be conflicting views amongst the SharePoint community with some advocating the tool as a valid means of “power users” customising layouts and building workflows whilst others take the view that using SPD effectively means developing in a production environment and it shouldn’t happen, full stop.

This is a tool obviously targeted at the type of users who are not typically going to go through a full application lifecycle of dev / stage / prod, particularly when they’re only looking to change a colour or insert a banner on a page. I hear the “don’t develop in production” message loud and clear but if that’s the case, where does it leave SPD? Is there a practical risk from its direct usage in a production environment? Should it be blocked? If so, who’s the intended audience and is there any place left for it at all?

Answer 1

I have used sharepoint in a live enviroment and I would highly advise against it.

1. It can crash randomly if you switch between code/design view after altering the code manually. IF you were to provide invalid markup it can cause it to crash, at least from my experience. This has caused me to get stuck in a mode of hald edited, half checked out status that left me waiting for sharepoint to be restarted on its next schedule before I was able to get back in and identify the issue.

It has also left me with corrupted files.

1. I have accidently modified shared files without realizing the cascading effects. Fortunatley I was able to recover fast enough but the last thing you want is to get support calls because you accidently updated the wrong file.

In the end though it depends on how in depth you are pushing it, if you are going to stick in deisgn mode or use it for managing your workflow patterns then go ahead just tread lightly.