Working with Windows SharePoint Services

Windows SharePoint Services is a powerful tool that gives users the ability to organize and access information, manage documents online, and provide online collaboration tools in a simple to use browser-based environment. It is part of the Windows 2003 Server system and is one of the more exciting technologies to come out of Microsoft. It represents the future of Web sites and Web services and (I predict) will quickly be embraced by the business workforce and information worker.

NOTE

There are a number of SharePoint related products and services in addition to Windows SharePoint Services. Be careful not to confuse different products in the same family line.

You can read about the entire SharePoint product line at http://sharepointfamily.frontpagelink.com.

Whereas Windows SharePoint Services provides a powerful means to run a next generation Web site completely, independent of any Web development package, the teaming of Windows SharePoint Services with FrontPage 2003 needs to be understood and explained.

The traditional Web site model allows for the approach of editing content on a development server and publishing to a live site described previously in this chapter. The dynamic and constantly changing nature of a Windows SharePoint Services Web site simply prevents such an approach. FrontPage 2003 was built with this fact in mind.

You can open a Windows SharePoint Services Web site directly from FrontPage 2003 as you can another Web site with FrontPage extensions. FrontPage 2003 allows you to work directly with site data and both edit and produce data-driven pages at the site.

Appendix C of this book goes into great deal about how these two products work with each other.

NOTE

More information about Windows SharePoint Services can be found online at http://sharepointatmicrosoft.frontpagelink.com.

For detailed directions on using FrontPage to edit/update content on a Windows SharePoint Services Web site, see "Windows SharePoint Services 2.0," p. 943.