A working notebook, kept in public.

The notebook began in 2010 as a place to record problems that were worth remembering. The entries follow a working life in SharePoint infrastructure: designing farms, moving content, tuning search, checking SQL, renewing certificates and learning why a perfectly reasonable design can still fail in production.

At the time the site was most active, Benjamin worked as a SharePoint infrastructure consultant in London. The archive contains 44 entries written between 2010 and 2016. Some describe products that are now historical. All of them are kept because the reasoning often outlasts the version number.

What belongs here

The common thread is operational judgement. A note might cover a database setting, an authentication loop, a conference session or a failed installation. The useful question is usually the same: what evidence would tell you that the design is working, and what would tell you that it is not?

Product documentation is the authority for current behaviour. Older entries are a record of what was true, or believed to be true, at the time. Read them with the date in view and test before applying anything to a live platform.

Independence

Building Blocks has no affiliation with Microsoft. The views are Benjamin's own and do not represent an employer, client or partner.

Corrections and contact

Corrections are welcome. Write to [email protected] with the entry, the point that needs attention and any evidence that would help.

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