Centrally controlling "SharePoint Desinger Contributor Settings"

SharePoint Designer 2007 is a powerful tool used to design and modify SharePoint sites.

Some of you might have seen this recent post from the SharePoint Designer team. It discuss various ways of removing permissions, either at web application or site level to limit what a user can or can't do.

The post also talks about "SharePoint Designer Contributor Settings" and how they are controlled at site level.

I would like to share a way we found to centrally control the contributor settings.

Before doing that it might be useful to understand what happens when contributor settings are turned on.

1. An .htm file is saved to the _contributor_settings folder at root of the site. This file contains the settings specified by the site owner.
   
2. "vti_safeditingconfigurl" is created at the sites property bag (spweb.properties). This property contains the URL for the .htm file created in step one.

The "vti_safeditingconfigurl" property will read by SharePoint designer every time the site is opened.

Knowing that the "vti_safeditingconfigurl" contains the URL gives us an opportunity to manipulate its value!

Our solution uses two components.

1. A contributor settings .htm file (spdsettings.htm) which we store in the "_layouts" folder.
   (The file was created in SharePoint Designer and then exported).
   Storing the file in the "_layouts" folder means that all users have access to the file and that no one can modify it without access to the file system.


2. A hidden feature receiver to set the "vti_safeditingconfigurl" property to "/_layouts/spdsettings.htm" at site creation time. We achieve this by using a Feature Staple.
   (See here and here for more info regarding Feature Stapling.)

Now every time a user creates a site, the "vti_safeditingconfigurl" property will be set and point to the location of our centrally controlled file.

If a site owner tries to disable the contributor settings, they are met a message saying "Couldn't persist Contributor Settings configuration."

This is good news because it means no one can disable our centrally stored contributor settings!

So remember: "vti_safeditingconfigurl" is the key to control SharePoint Designer Contributor settings!