Changing your deployment server url

Today I spent an hour googling & searching to change the target deployment setting in Visual Studio 2010.
I downloaded a sample project from the web and of course, this project has a different target deployment server then my SharePoint server.
I could find hundreds of articles about packaging etc etc but none told me where to change this setting. (No, it's not changeable in the OBVIOUS right mouse on project ->properties ->"SharePoint" screen...!

After getting frustrated finding nothing interesting on the web I tried fixing it myself; opening up the .csproj file with notepad myself... tadaa..!! Fourth line:
http://semoss2010/

YES ! Let's try to change that... Voilà !! Happiness :D :D
(Quickly write a handy blog about this !)

Why you want to use Metadata and not Folders...

Chris Poteet made a great video demonstration about using Metadata to find your files, not using the (20y ago) folder technology.

This video demonstrates two extremes, and he also explains the technological improvements that allow you to walk the line between then. It is still important to note, however, that folders still fall short as a classification method. SharePoint provides a great opportunity to rethink how information should and could be classified to maximize your organization’s information and assisting others in finding it.

http://www.siolon.com/blog/visual-demonstration-of-folders-vs-metadata-for-classification/

Password Change on SharePoint Machine

Last week my VirtualBox test machine gave me the message "please change your password NOWWWWW", due to (default) Windows 2008 Policy I HAD (no way around this in the login screen) to change the password, so I changed the password....

This is the part where the *** hits the fan... Of course, I installed this demo / test environment easy (quick n dirty) under the Administrator account... That password just got changed so of course SharePoint now gives "Service Unavailable" on every web-application... (including Central Admin)

This problem arises when an account password gets change that is being used by SharePoint as a (managed) account to run SharePoint on.

This is because the Application Pool user that is being used by IIS to host the web-applications no longer has access to the appropriate files and folders, resulting in IIS failure.

Solutions
You can manually change accounts for all application pool users:
- IIS -> application pools->[right mouse on application pool]->advanced settings ->[select the application pool user under “identity” ->click the … and re-fill in all the data of the appropriate user.
This is only HALF the part !
The web-applications will work again now. The only problem is that SharePoint is still “disconnected” from the changed AD-User. You need to update SharePoint with this change.
For instance, creating a new web-application (running under this user-account) will fail because of this mis-sync.

How to fix this ?
Start the SharePoint PowerShell and run the following command: Set-SPManagedAccount –UseExistingPassword
You’ll be prompted to enter the user account & CURRENT (new) password. After a while this command finishes updating the whole of SharePoint and everything is fixed now !

Additional (Technet) information:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff724280.aspx