SP2010 - site collection feature not activating on MySite creation

Question

I've created a new feature in a pre-existing project, closely modelled on features that are already within that solution. These features activate automatically when a new MySite is created, but the new one doesn't. It's correctly installed, correctly scoped (at sitecol level) and can be manually activated through PowerShell or in the UI, but it doesn't happen automatically when the MySite site collection is created.

Any thoughts at all would be most welcome - thanks.

Answer 1

you've mentioned the old features in your solution that are somehow activated automatically. This is mostly likely possible because of the so called Feature stapler. This feature stapler allows you to automatically activate custom features when a certain site template is created. You can try searching for "FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation" word withing all xml files of your solution. This xml file might looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

  <FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="91a39059-e694-4c80-8341-e18db90c0c58"
                                 TemplateName="SPSPERS#2"/>

  <FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="d666a9ef-5317-44cb-8bff-57ebda1435f7"
  TemplateName="SPSPERS#2"/>
</Elements>

As you will probably see, this file already contains one or more feature associations. You just need to add yet another one for the feature that needs to be activated. Here is a sample:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kunal_mukherjee/archive/2011/01/11/feature-stapling-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx

Answer 2

Have you looked to see if the other features are defined in the Site Template and you may need to add this new feature to the site template? See Feature stapling here...

You could also look into the feature ActivateOnDefault however The ActivateOnDefault attribute does not apply to site collection (Site) or Web site (Web) scoped Features.