Customizing the sharepoint search control

There are a couple ways of doing this.

1. Modify ..\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\ContentLightup\Controls\searchArea.xml
2. Modify ..\12\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\searcharea.ascx
3. Create a new feature and control
4. Create a new feature that changes parameters for "SmallSearchInputBox"

I believe option 4 to be the best as it uses Microsoft.SharePoint.PortalWebControls.SearchBoxEx class and you don't need to create a new control.
There are a large number of properties you can use to customize the control and you should find the one you're looking for microsoft.sharepoint.portal.webcontrols.searchboxex_properties.
So how do we customize it? Create a new feature.

1. Create a new directory anywhere eg: C:\RPSearchFeature
2. Create a new manifest.xml in C:\RPSearchFeature with the following:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <Solution
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
    SolutionId="GENERATE_A_GUID" 
    ResetWebServer="True" 
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <FeatureManifests>
     <FeatureManifest Location="PortalSearch\feature.xml" />
    </FeatureManifests>
   </Solution>
   

3. Create "C:\RPSearchFeature\PortalSearch\feature.xml" with:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <Feature  Id="7095f774-1efa-4879-b074-ff211f5559c7"
             Title="Small Portal Search"
             Description="Smaller search bar without scopes"
             Version="12.0.0.0"
             Hidden="FALSE"
             Scope="Web"
             DefaultResourceFile="core"
             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
     <ElementManifests>
       <ElementManifest Location="elements.xml"/>    
     </ElementManifests>
   </Feature>
   

4. Create "C:\RPSearchFeature\PortalSearch\elements.xml" with:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <Control
     Id="SmallSearchInputBox"
     Sequence="25"
     ControlClass="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SearchBoxEx" 
     ControlAssembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
     <Property Name="SearchResultPageURL">/search/results.aspx</Property>
     <Property Name="FrameType">None</Property>
     <Property Name="DropDownMode">HideDD_NoScope</Property>
     <Property Name="TextBoxWidth">140</Property>
     <Property Name="ShowAdvancedSearch">false</Property>
    </Control>
   </Elements>

5. Wrap the feature up in to a solution "SearchFeature.wsp" with cabpack
6. Deploy the solution.
7. Enable the feature (Scope is web, but you can change it to site if that suits you).

The instruction that will enable these parameters over the default is the sequence number. The default sequence is 99, so anything below 99 will load first. The parameters I'm using set the "SearchResultPageURL", hide the scope drop down and remove the advance search link.

Application Event Log: Unable to connect publishing custom string handler for output caching.

After adding the Reports Services virtual directories to a sharepoint site/web application you see the below in the event log.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Publishing Cache
Event ID: 5785
Date: 21/05/2008
Time: 3:01:52 PM
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
Unable to connect publishing custom string handler for output caching. IIS Instance Id is '1957155781', Url is 'http://localhost/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx'.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Cause: microsoft.sharepoint.publishing.publishinghttpmodule is trying to cache an unmanaged path.

Fix: Remove this httpmodule from the ./ReportServer virtual directory web.config.

Steps:
1. Open the web.config file (D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\Reporting Services\ReportServer\web.config)
2. Locate the <httpModules> node, if it's not there create it below the <httpHandlers> node.
3. Add the following <remove name="PublishingHttpModule" />.

Everytime you call a report or the reportserver URL/web service SharePoint tries to turn caching on and it's not a managed path it throws an error, so we need to remove the module in the reportserver.

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