UPDATE

Don’t use the Sharepoint Solution Generator, so far we have not been able to upgrade the site definitions through a solution without it killing existing sites based on the site definition.

I have seen many different ways of doing this, but I found the following method seemed to work for me, using the “SharePoint Extensions for Visual Studio 2005” and the “SharePoint Solutions Generator“

  • Use the “SharePoint Solution Generator” to create a site definition project.
  • Open the project and add your custom master page to the “Site Definition” folder

  • Open up “onet.xml”
  • Add the following node to the “ListTemplates” section
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<ListTemplate 
    Name=”mplib” 
    DisplayName=”$Resources:MasterPageGallery;” 
    Description=”$Resources:global_onet_mplib_desc;” 
    SetupPath=”global\lists\mplib” 
    Type=”116” 
    BaseType=”1” 
    Path=”GLOBAL” 
    Hidden=”TRUE” 
    HiddenList=”TRUE” 
    NoCrawl=”TRUE” 
    Unique=”TRUE” 
    Catalog=”TRUE” 
    OnQuickLaunch=”FALSE” 
    SecurityBits=”11” 
    AllowDeletion=”FALSE” 
    AllowEveryoneViewItems=”TRUE” 
    Image=”/_layouts/images/itdl.gif” 
    AlwaysIncludeContent=”TRUE” 
    DocumentTemplate=”100” 
/>
  • Add the “MasterUrl” attribute to the “Configuration” node with a value of “_catalogs/masterpage/project.master”, where project.master is the name of your custom master page. This means all the pages using the “~masterurl/default.master” token will use the URL defined to point to your custom master page
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<Configuration 
    ID=”0” 
    Name=”Default” 
    MasterUrl=”_catalogs/masterpage/project.master“
>
  • Add a “Module” node to the Modules section of the configuration called “MasterPage” that will reference the module definition in the “Modules” section of the onet file
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<Module Name=”MasterPage” />
  • Add a module definition to the “Modules” section of the onet file. This will copy the custom master page file into the master page library when the site is provisioned.
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<Module 
    Name=”MasterPage” 
    List=”116” 
    Url=”_catalogs/masterpage” 
    RootWebOnly=”FALSE“>
    <File 
        Url=”project.master” 
        Type=”GhostableInLibrary” 
        IgnoreIfAlreadyExists=”TRUE” 
    />
</Module>
  • Save the onet file and then deploy the project into your environment using the deploy option in “SharePoint Extensions for VS 2005”
  • When you create a new site from your site definition it should now use your new master page.

Below is a screen grab of the onet.xml file with all the changes highlighted