Microsoft MOSS 2007 / WSS 3.0 Deployment Issues

The following is a list of issues encountered while working with Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Service (MOSS) 2007.

When I activate the feature, I get “Unable to import feature” and “A file specified in the modules section of this template already exists.”

Basically, when you activate the feature, it attempts to import your web part, but if you have deployed this web part previously, it will thrown this error. This is the case even if you have retract and deleted the solutions for your web part.

To fix, go to your feature element files, there should be an entry for the file of the web part such as:

<File Url="MyWebPart" Type="GhostableInLibrary" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="false" >

Make sure that IgnoreIfAlreadyExists is set to true.

When I add the web part, I get an error saying that the web part cannot be imported. In the WSS log file, there is an error “Exception System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range.”

The web part activates properly, but when I add the web part, I get an error importing the web part. After playing around with it for several hours, I figured out that the problem was URL based. If add the web part when I am browsing the fully qualified name like “http://myserver.mydomain.com/myspace”, it will throw that error when I add the web part. However, if I add the web part when I am browsing “http://myserver/myspace”, it works just fine.

If you go to Sharepoint Central Admin and select Operations->Alternate Mapping, you’ll see the URL mapped to your application. You must use the mapping listed here or add additional ones.