Modify the Default Forms

One of the great features of SharePoint is the ability to customize the existing SharePoint item forms. This is a hidden benefit for most users since they never venture on the button that allows for the change to occur.

Often, this is used when adding additional information to a form or when a user wants to connect lists together to filter the results from a web part using the item that is displayed in the form.  See below for the directions to edit the form and best part is they are WEB PART PAGES!  So if it can be done on a web part page, it can be done on a form.

1. Navigate to the list where you want to modify the form.
2. Click on the Modify Form button on the right side of the ribbon.

3. Click add a web part to add additional functionality.

PowerShell vs. STSADM for SharePoint

PowerShell is Microsoft’s next-generation scripting language offering direct access to .NET objects, complex flow and structure capabilities, and an object pipeline that makes passing objects from one command to another extremely easy. As of Spring 2015, the next version looks like it will be #5. 

Using Powershell in SharePoint 2010 and 2013, Almost every aspect can be manipulated using any of the more than 500 out-of-the-box cmdlets or by creating custom cmdlets that can be developed and deployed just like any other core SharePoint artifact.

SharePoint 2010 Management Shell is just a PowerShell instance that loads the sharepoint.ps1 script file.

STSADM is a command line tool used to administer SharePoint. It is easily extendable, allowing developers to supplement the existing 184 out-of-the-box commands with additional commands.

STSADM is still present in SharePoint 2010, but its prominence has been greatly reduced as it is extremely limited. Using STSADM, Conditional logic was difficult to achieve using batch files. If no command was available to manipulate a setting, a custom command would have to be created. And performance was poor because of the inability to re-use objects across command calls.

My recommendation is to learn PowerShell!