SharePoint Web Part Maintainence

This is one of those things that you don't realize is there until your page throws an error because of a troublesome Web Part in a page. This should be a link within the program that would allow you to enter the WP Maintainence page, but it's not.

The skinny: to enter WP Maintainence on any of the Pages in SharePoint, add ?contents=1 to the end of the URL (assumming there is no ? already, otherwise make ? into a &)

Example: http://mytestsite:2555/mysubsite/default.aspx?contents=1

And that's it. You should now be able to see all of the Web Parts on the page, which segways into my next item regarding SharePoint Web Part Maintainence. It is a good practice to pull open this page after you have been uploading and testing Web Parts. The reason why is that the web page never really gets rid of the Web Parts, even if you closed them from the page. SharePoint just turns them "Off".

So, get into the Web Part Maintainence page of the "page in question" and check the check box of any Web Part not in use on the page and click the "Delete" link at the top. This will keep your page from "Ghosting" the Web Parts on that particular page. You will know if you have "Ghosted" Web Parts if you open a custom page in SharePoint Designer (SPD). SPD will show all of them "greyed out".

Hope that helps.