Making structural customizations to SharePoint 2010 system pages

In my last post we’ve looked at how you can make changes to your SharePoint 2010 system pages by manipulating CSS for Site and System masterpages.

This approach works as long as you don’t have to introduce new controls to your system pages and manipulate existing controls such as a left nav etc.

If you do need to introduce new .NET controls, you will need to create a new system masterpage for your system pages, which is quite simple. In here we’ll look how to accomplish this with SharePoint Designer 2010.

Open your site in SharePoint Designer 2010; on the left hand side Site Objects menu, click Master Pages.
When presented with a list of available masterpages select v4.master and copy/paste it to the same place. Give it a meaningful name. Navigate back to your site using SharePoint UI, Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Master pages (assuming this is a publishing site).
There you should see your new masterpage under System Masterpages drop down, as shown below

Once applied using the UI above, this masterpage will be used on all system pages and modal dialogs.
At first you won’t notice any differences on your pages until you start modifying the masterpage.

In your SharePoint Designer masterpage view, it’s important to copy v4.master as opposed to some other masterpage available there:

Even though you might be tempted to apply your Site Masterpage for your system sites, you should avoid that since site masterpages may not have all of the required placeholders that system pages require. When a system page tries accessing the placeholder name which is not present on the masterpage it will crash the page with a big error and you don’t want your users to see that.
For system pages, this means that important system function may be broken and users won’t be able to manage certain features on the site.
Therefore, it’s best to get a copy of the existing system masterpage and transfer your customizations to there.

You can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to modify your masterpage; the split view is pretty handy where you can see the code associated to most elements in the preview panel:

Before removing placeholders and elements from the system masterpage, make sure you have tested how all (at least most) system pages look like with those elements removed. If you’re not sure about a meaning of a particular control and how it affects other pages, it’s best to leave it alone or hide it rather than remove it altogether. Adding new controls and markup is easy, just make sure you account for a fact that system masterpages are used in modal dialogs so be sure to test your UI in modals too. If you ‘d like to see how to style modals, check out my previous post here.

Oh, did I mention you can find a lot of handy tips on the subject in my branding book?

Enjoy!