Custom Master Page and My Sites

My Sites are often branded with a custom master page, using feature stapling to apply the customisations. The SharePoint Team Blog contains a good description of how to do this.

However, there is a gotcha with updating the MasterUrl and CustomMasterUrl properties of the My Site. The default value for these properties gives the full path to the master page catalogue and default.master page: /personal/user/_catalogs/masterpage/default.master

Therefore rather than replace the entire path when setting the master page simply replace the string “default.master” with your chosen custom master page:

var masterPageUrl = web.MasterUrl.ToLower();
masterPageUrl = masterPageUrl.Replace("default.master", "mycustom.master");
web.MasterUrl = masterPageUrl; 

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