I wrote a blog post which adds an extra step which is required to display the new column in the new and edit form - for more information take a look - http://jopx.blogspot.com/2007/05/sharepoint-2007-how-to-create-custom.html

Another good article for making sure that the new columns appear in the new and edit form.

http://blogs.provoke.co.nz/Ari/archive/2007/04/18/creating-a-custom-sharepoint-2007-list-definition.aspx

it should also be noted that you have to put a reference to sharepoint in the Elements.xml. Id est:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

i have a problem with this when i select create and select the list i get a error if i look in the event log 2 things i see access denied for the hosts file and i see a runtimefilter error

does anybody have a idea in the rigth direction?

[MollyBos - MSFT] Please post questions to the newsgroups or forums. Try the Sharepoint Development forum for this one: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.sharepoint.development_and_programming.

I built custom list definitions in a feature (with visible fields!), based on the generic list, in two ways.

The first is quick and easy, but is less flexible so the result might not be exactly what you want. The second can give a cleaner result, but is a lot more involved.

The approaches followed were;

1. Use the SharePoint 3 Extensions for VS 2005 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3E1DCCCD-1CCA-433A-BB4D-97B96BF7AB63&displaylang=en - I'd go for this (at least as your starting point) if you need customisation such as different forms - or,

2. Read through the blogs above and trial and error it yourself! I did that and have documented my process, for the most basic custom list (no forms or custom content types), at: http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mossms/archive/2008/03/10/custom-list-feature.aspx .

In approach 2 there are quite a few steps to follow to get fields to show, nobody (outside of MS?) is 100% sure which are really required and it is easy to miss a step or make a mistake! As everyone wants a slightly different end result I'd get it working in the most basic form first as above, then only add and test small incremental changes.

Hope this saves someone else the pain involved in getting it right!

<a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mossms">http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mossms</a>

The text makes the suggestion to copy a schema.xml, but does not instruct you to change the list name. The example has the modified name.

<List Name="SimpleList" Title="Simple List" BaseType="0" Direction="" Url="">

If one does not change the list name, the following error may occur:

"One or more field types are not installed properly. Go to the list settings page to delete these fields."

This method doesn't use site content types (ContentTypeRef's), but instead it defines the content type directly on the list schema. A better practice (in my opinion) is to define content types separately and just reference them on lists. This allows for centralized management of content types.

As far as I've understood, referencing site content types does, however, add an undesireable side-effect: All fields from your content types that are included in the <ViewFields> element must be redefined in the <Fields> element, effectively doubling the already cumbersome process.

"Give it a Type value that is above 10000 and different from any other custom list definitions used in your deployment"

This is wrong and directly contradicts http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms462947.aspx where it says:

"This identifier must be unique within the feature, but need not be unique across all feature definitions or site definitions."

Certain functionality (such as thumbnailing in a custom Picture Library is dependent on the list template having an ID of 109, irrespective of the feature that it is defined in.