Since Moss2007 you can implement your own connection interface which enables you to connect customized web parts. It looks like you can basically transfer any serializable information.

The first thing you have to do is to define a very simple interface. The second step is to inherit the interface at the web part class that sends the information. In this class you’ll have to assign the interface as the connection interface. The last step in the provider web part is to include the “get function” described by the interface to pass the value.

In our consumer web part we have to retrieve the connection interface. Once this connection has been setup we can read and use the given value.

In the example code we will use the interface with the name “IMossStringConnection” to pass a string value.

Our web part and interface that provides our custom value:

And here is the code for the web part that consumes the provided value:

And that’s basically all the code you need to implement. Just copy and paste it in your web parts and have some fun!

As you might know it is possible at the “Page Layout and Site Template Settings” page (/_Layouts/AreaTemplateSettings.aspx) to limit the selectable site templates for the user. Somehow SharePoint did not allow us to set our own template as only selectable template. After we saved the page, it would simply switch back to the previous known settings.

After a lot of research, I finally managed to solve the problem by removing the - sign from the directory name. It looks like SharePoint does some kind of internal split function at the “Page Layout and Site Template Settings” page, which makes it impossible to save settings for site templates with a dash in the folder name.

To prevent any trouble with your custom site definitions, make sure you don’t use a - sign in the folder name or even better: only use alphabetic characters.

These are the ‘Meme rules’:

• Each player starts with five (used to be eight) random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their five things) and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose five people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So here are the 5 random facts / habits about me:

• I just got engaged on 2008-8-8 at The Disney Magic Kingdom, Orlando
• My favorite food type is Mexican
• My car and my racing bicycle are Italian; I love to drive my 2001 Alfa Romeo 147 and I race on a Bianchi 1885 bicycle
• I lived in Germany for 4 years
• My favorite music artists are Phil Collins and Shakira

The 5 bloggers that I tag for the blogging Meme are:

• Serge van den Oever
• Michiel van Otegem
• Matthew McDermott
• Robertjan Tuit
• Wouter Crooy

You can check if the init.js file is no longer located in the layouts folder, but probably nothing is wrong with it.

It turned out that the Dutch Moss language pack was not installed on the server, which was used by the restored web application.

If you ever bump into this error, make sure you have all the required language packs installed. After you fixed that, the site collection will be fine.

At the end it turned out to be very simple to update the values in a user profile: just update the value in the property and then do a Commit on the profile.