The crawler could not communicate with the server. Check that the server is available and that the firewall access is configured correctly..

This error is very common and users encounter frequently in SharePoint search setting. There are bunch of reasons which will cause this error. Reasons are like improper access to content access account, web part error on default.aspx page, MOSS SP1 not installed, "CaseSensitiveURL" key is set to "0" in registry etc.. Last week, I encountered same error in one of VM and I could not find any of above reason in my VM. My VM configuration is something like this.

Standalone 64 bit MOSS 2007 farm installed on Windows server 2003 64 bit. SQL server is installed on same machine.

I got this error resolved by help of my colleague "Ruben". Thanks a bunch Ruben.

Ok, enough background of error. Let's dive in error and its resolution.

Error : When I crawled content, crawling finished in few seconds like 2 or 3. Sometime even 0. Now I looked at crawl log and I was getting "The crawler could not communicate with the server. Check that the server is available and that the firewall access is configured correctly.." error in each SharePoint site added in content source. I was able to get people profile crawled in same content source but not SharePoint sites.

Solution :
(1) Open SSP site.
(2) Click on "Search Setting"
(3) Click on "Proxy and timeouts" located under "Crawling" in left navigation.
(4) Scroll all the way down and check the checkbox "SSL certificate name warnings"
(5) Click "Ok" button.
(6) Open a command prompt and execute command "net stop osearch"
(7) After successful execution of above command execute "net start osearch".

Now crawl your content again and you should be good now. Since I have already said that, there may be multiple reasons for this error, so you can try this solution as one of the possibilities.

Thanks
JP

Can not find or enable ASP.NET 2.0 in IIS

1. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or later. ( ..In my case, it was already installed it)

2. Enable ASP.NET 2.0 or later in the IIS:
a. Open a command prompt window.
b. Change to the ASP.NET 2.0 installation directory:
For the 32-bit version of ASP.NET, the directory is
%windir\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\
For the 64-bit version of ASP.NET, the directory is
%windir\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\
c. Run aspnet_regiis.exe -ua
d. Run aspnet_regiis.exe -i -enable

Thanks
Jigar

Cool BDC stuff

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-4-SharePoint_2007__BDC_-_Writing_Custom_Code_against_the_runtime_object_model.aspx

Implement state machine workflow using sharepoint designer

Back in month of auguest !!

Are you wondering by listening that you can implement state machine workflow within 1 hr ?
I wondered!! Checkout this link which nicely describes how to implement state machine workflow logic using sharepoint designer.
http://coredotnet.blogspot.com/2008/04/creating-state-machine-workflows-using.html

Add Context menu without using feature !!

Add context menu to list item without adding or creating feature in site. Put just simple content editor webpart and add some javascript to page that will create a menu at item level.

Find actual implementation.
here

Customize Quick Navigation Menu : Add your own child node under quick launch node

Here is nice way to add sub link to quick launch links like library, report site etc.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/04/26/customizing-the-quick-launch-menu-adding-fly-out-menus-to-sharepoint-navigation.aspx