Developing Sharepoint 2007 Webpart with Visual Studio 2005

Althought Sharepoint contains a lot of webpart out of the box however there are times that you will need to develop a custom webpart base on the business need. I will try to keep the writing short and show you the steps that you need to get started developing a Sharepoint web part.

Development Environment

First of all you will need the following things on your development environment:

1. Windows Server 2003, x32 bit (Sharepoint needs to be install on Windows Server and not Will not work on Windows XP)

2. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Service Pack 1

3. Visual Studio 2005, Service Pack 1

4. Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, version 1.1

5. A SharePoint site that you created

Download the latest Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions 1.1. Currently the latest version is 1.1. You can download it from this location.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3E1DCCCD-1CCA-433A-BB4D-97B96BF7AB63&displaylang=en

2. To download the latest user guide go to this link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A8A4E775-074D-4451-BE39-459921F79787

If you attempt to installed Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows XP or in an environment without Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) then you might get this error: "This product can only be installed if Windows Sharepoint services 3.0 has been installed first". So ensure you have satisfied the above requirement.