New to Developing SharePoint Web Parts and Features

Question

I recently Developed a really simple web part scoped to site (or at least it's feature is). I also created a feature that up[on activation is suppose to create a new content type.

That's fine and dandy, accept when I deploy the solution to my Dev environment I get the following screen, after going to Settings -> Manage Site Features -> Activate Feature Name

Now the screen seems pretty simple, I managed to find where the webconfig file was and I did change its already <customErrors mode="Off" /> to <customErrors mode="Off" />

What I don't understand is:

• How do I create a page that displays errors instead of me seeing this page?
• Where would this page that I create, according to the image, live? Would my web part create a new layout?

I am a complete newb when it comes to SharePoint development and its error pages it throws. I have to learn on the job so I am turning to the community for help on this one.

Answer 1

Here's a quick and dirty way of setting this up:

http://navdeep19.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/sharepoint-2010-how-to-create-custom-error-page-for-sharepoint-website/

I'm not the biggest fan of dumping stuff directly into the 14 hive (I would wrap an application page up in a solution instead) but that at least should give you the Powershell to get started. And if you wanted to customize error pages for different HTTP responses, here's a decent guide to how to do that:

http://www.ngpixel.com/2010/12/23/sharepoint-2010-custom-error-pages/

Answer 2

It seems that SharePoint application page is throwing the exception so you need to enable <customErrors mode="Off" /> for application pages to read the full error message. You can fairly easily enable the full errors by manipulating web.config located in 12/14/15 hive layouts folder i.e. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS

You can even set your own Custom Error pages as depicted in the following blog

Answer 3

There's more than just one config file for SharePoint sites. It'll need changing in all.