I just had the pleasure to present at the Sleepless in Dallas event. Contestants receive 8 hours of training in SharePoint and then are split into teams. The teams receive a challenge and then have all night to design, develop and present a solution using what they learned.
My presentation on SharePoint Master Pages and Page Layouts. I covered how to create and troubleshoot master pages. The tool that I created to facilitate the process is my Page Anatomy master. You can download the file and use or customize as you see fit. One thing I notice is sometimes the master does not load correctly because the import process changes the URLs on the ~/_controltemplates/ references and removes the "~/". After you import the page you may need to fix the references.
- To apply the Page Anatomy master page import the page to the master page gallery of your publishing site.
- Check in and approve the page.
- In Site Settings | Master Page choose PageAnatomy.master.