At this point, you might be asking why we were still running WSS 3.0. Simple, it met user needs and worked well. While full-blown SharePoint offers a lot of rich features, the bulk of our demand was for a robust document library and workspace and project sites. The free version of SharePoint accomplishes all of that. I could not justify the cost.

What I will be recommending is the in-place upgrade of SharePoint Foundation 2010. There are alternatives and I encourage you to read up on them, but what I needed was a smooth migration of my existing document libraries, sites and user rights. The in-place upgrade accomplishes all of this with the only downside being that the production site has to be down during the upgrade. The entire upgrade itself can easily be done in an hour, so schedule two to be safe.

The Tough Part – Getting everything to a 2008, 64-bit server

My instance of WSS 3.0 was using a Server 2008, 64-bit server as the application server, but a Server 2003 server with SQL 2005. In order for a smooth in-place upgrade, you will want your WSS 3.0 instance running on all 2008, 64-bit machines.

This means testing. If you are already on a fully 2008, 64-bit environment, go ahead and skip this part.

What you will need:

1. A workable installation of WSS 3.0, but they are out there on the Internet. I was able to find it on MSDN. This was the trickiest part! Small version differences will mean that your back up will not restore to this version.
2. Download Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, also from MSDN.
3. 2008, 64-bit servers to test with. Do your best to duplicate your production environment.
4. A copy of a recent back up of SharePoint.

If you are not backing up your current SharePoint instance, stop here. Get your production environment backing up immediately. This is not only good practice, but you will need the backups to complete this migration.

Moving on, I created a duplicate of my application server (I cannot recommend virtual servers enough!) and then used the new database server. I installed WSS 3.0 and restored from my back up, which I have detailed here. This gave me an exact replica of the environment I would be using.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Here’s what we will be doing, first in the test environment and then production:

1. Verifying that we have a valid backup of our data
2. Uninstalling our current version of SharePoint
3. Re-installing WSS 3.0, but this time to the all 2008 environment
4. Restore your data from your back up
5. Installing the SharePoint Foundation 2010 prerequisites. This will add components that would have been installed had you upgraded to SharePoint 2007.
6. Run the SharePoint Foundation 2010 in-place upgrade

I ran through this process several times. I wanted to be comfortable with the process and to beat it up a bit to see what shook loose. Happily, it’s a pretty straightforward process. Move to your production environment when you are ready.

Post-installation instructions

I ran into two issues after my installation: search did not immediately work and I needed to create a backup job.

Assign the site to an indexer to get search to work
This blog post explains it very well.

Use Powershell to back up the farm
Create a job using Powershell to back up your data. Details on creating the backup are on Technet and from there, you schedule your Powershell code to run by creating a job.

Create a “dummy address” for your campaign

Notice that you can be pretty specific when creating the new URL.

1. Use the Google URL Builder – http://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
2. Fill in each of the required (*) fields, for a unique web address
3. Click “Generate URL”
4. This gives you something like
   “http://www.YourWebSite.com/?utm_source=QR&utm_medium=MarchNewsletter&utm_campaign=NewCampaign”
   (Notice that your “source” is a QR code, “medium” is the March newsletter and the “campaign” is “NewCampaign”)
5. Highlight and copy your new link

Create Your QR Code

1. Shorten the link using either http://goo.gl/ or https://bitly.com/
2. Copy your new, shortened link
3. Use http://createqrcode.appspot.com/ or your favorite QR code generator to create your code.

Monitor in Your Web Tracking Software

I’m a big fan of Google Analytics, but whatever tool you use, look into your page visits to see which pages got the most hits and which did not. From there, it’s a matter of tweaking your marketing campaign.

I was surprised at the depth that Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour a Day provided in terms of detailing the entire analytics landscape. I had really expected the book to be geared for the entrepreneur looking to optimize their online business – which it did address – but it was definitely more geared to large organizations.

The book’s real successes come from being easy to skim for whatever you need help with as well as his tone, which is not the data “quant” you might expect, but someone who wisely focuses on using the data for a desired outcome. The data is simply a record of what has happened and he does a great job of reiterating the importance of using it to make intelligent decisions about the future. How do we shape all the data we can collect into something useful?

Here are three things worth noting from the book:

Customer Centricity

Time and again, Kaushik cautions that web analytics offer tons of data that can easily swallow you. His term “customer centricity” means to keep the focus on what customers want, not what management thinks customers want.

This approach offers a more holistic view of your site users (he states that only 15-25% of visitors to an ecommerce website are there to make a purchase, so imagine all the visitors you are not accounting for) and gives you a more realistic way of affecting positive change using analytics.

Competitive Data

It’s too easy to get focused on the avalanche of data you can collect on your own site and it’s worth the reminder that getting data on your competitors is perhaps the most effective way to gain a strategic advantage.

Success or failure for your web properties does not exist in a vacuum, you need the ecosystem context: what is happening in the landscape that could have caused these outcomes vs. what you are causing?

This competitive intelligence is key to helping you understand your performance in the greater web ecosystem and whether results have been caused by trends, your actions or your lack of actions. It can help you:

• Exploit market trends
• Build off the success of your competitors
• Optimize your SEO program

Use Site Overlays to Communicate Important Ideas to the Big Stakeholders

This was a great insight: anyone in your organization can understand a site overlay. They can see the data. So the key here is to make sure that you really understand what your reports are saying, where focus needs to go, and to then use those overlays to publicize your goals.

In the end, Kaushik has written a very actionable and detailed book I would recommend to anyone looking get a solid understanding about website analysis.

Existing Websites

A website that has been around for some time is a bit easier to define; you can get a better sense of what has worked and what has not. Ideally, you would have some analytic tools and reports that could at least tell you what was popular and what was not, hopefully even more.

In this case, the reports were pretty spare, but the team had a great relationship with their audience. We were able to conduct some informal surveys with potential users as well as staff members who had worked in the office for some time to figure out what was likely to be the driving forces of the website.

Without that relationship, the lack of analytic reports would have led me to replicate the site as best as possible in our system, where we would be able to track it moving forward. Usually, there is either someone who has at least gotten some informal feedback that can point you in a direction to focus.

New Websites

It’s surprising how many times the answer to “why will this website exist?” is because they have to have a website. Having your own website is now more common than having your own office, but the focus of the site will drive everything from the initial design and content development to the long-term goal tracking and site maintenance.

Some suggestions:

• Lead generation for sales prospecting and/or creating an email database
• Reducing support costs by providing self-help information
• Providing required forms or research materials
• Creating a customer experience that reinforces your brand
• To sell products online

Simple

I know it sounds really simplistic, but it works. There’s a great Jack Welch quote: “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” Now the team knows where to focus their time and effort. We have been able to develop short-, medium- and long-term goals to measure against because we know what is strong, what needs work and how to incorporate other goals for the site.

This book is not just about selling; it’s about getting your ideas implemented!

I am a little embarrassed to admit that The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa sat on the “to read” section of my bookshelf for a few months. The reviews I had read were obviously good enough to get me to buy the book, but I could not get over the idea that this is a “how to sell” book.

And it is a sales book, but what you are selling are your ideas. This book gives thorough, step-by-step guidance on how to get your ideas implemented. They quote Lee Iacocca, “you can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.”

It’s a shame that I waited so long to read such a great book. Here are three things that really stood out to me:

Meet face to face as much as possible. Call if necessary and use email and IM as a last resort.

This one is tough for me. Sure, I can fall back on the excuse that I work on the web, but that’s just an excuse. They give great examples and a lot of detailed research supporting the simple importance of a face to face conversation. No excuses!

The PCAN Model – Problem, Cause, Answer and Net Benefits.

Just having the idea is only the first step. You have to work to polish that idea to perfection and – because you never know when you’ll really have a great chance to convince someone else how great it is – you need to be able to deliver it like an elevator pitch.

The PCAN Model is a simple way to do it. You develop a concise statement that defines the problem or need that your idea solves. You give a brief explanation of the cause of the problem itself, state your solution and then explain why your solution is the best available.

I love books that provide actionable advise and this terse method is the best I have heard since the SEER technique. (And no, I am not the “Tom” in this forum thread.)

Secure Your Commitments

In order to safeguard the longtime success of a persuasive decision, it is vital to deal with politics at both the individual and organizational level.

This might be the most helpful part of the book. Buy in today does not mean implementation tomorrow, so the authors offer great advice and ways to ensure that all your hard work does not go to waste. Yes, it involves a little office politics, but as they point out: the good politicians are usually the ones who get their agendas pushed through.