Creating Sites

The catalyst for organizing your data into different site containers will often be the same catalyst for creating multiple subdirectories on the file system. You may have too much information to use a single container and still locate your information easily. If all of your files were kept in the root of the hard drive along with the operating system files and other program files, the list of files would be difficult to sort through, work with, and manage. Just as you would create subdirectories to organize your file system data, you will likely create child sites to help organize your Windows SharePoint Services data in logical ways.

The initial site created in a Windows SharePoint Services site collection is called the top-level site. Top-level sites are created from within SharePoint Central Administration because they doesn’t have a parent site. Although the top-level site is functionally the same as its child sites, it includes administrative links on the Site Administration page to manage site collection functionality.

To create a child site, you must navigate to the New SharePoint Site page of the would-be parent site. See the Layouts Directory sidebar that follows for details on how to gain direct access to the destination directly from the browser’s address bar.

Layouts Directory

The administrative pages of Windows SharePoint Services’ sites are kept in a common folder called _layouts. By using the Web site address in the address bar of your browser, you can quickly navigate to administrative pages that are buried relatively deep within a site’s administrative links.

The following table displays examples that are typically found on the home page of every Windows SharePoint Services site.

Web Site Address (URL)	Administrative Page
http://[site]/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx	All Site Content
http://[site]/_layouts/create.aspx	Create Page
http://[site]/_layouts/settings.aspx	Site Settings

Open table as spreadsheet

The following table displays the same examples for a child site.

Web Site Address (URL)	Administrative Page
http://[site]/[childsite]/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx	All Site Content
http://[site]/[childsite]/_layouts/create.aspx	Create Page
http://[site]/[childsite]/_layouts/settings.aspx	Site Settings

Open table as spreadsheet

Note that the suffix for each Web site address is the same regardless of how deeply you delve into the site hierarchy. Therefore, you can directly access the New SharePoint Site page by typing the following Web site address directly into the browser’s address bar: http://wideworldimporters/_layouts/newsbweb.aspx.

When you initially create objects like sites, workspaces, lists, and columns in Windows SharePoint Services, you are establishing two name values: the display name, usually labeled Title or Name, and the URL name, also known as the internal name. Typically, as is the case with sites, there is an option to provide the URL name separately. Comply with the best practices outlined in the following sidebar when specifying the URL name.

Naming a URL

Follow these best practices when initially establishing a URL for objects in Windows SharePoint Services. For example, providing a URL name of Todd Rowe for a new child site would result in the following Web site address in the browser’s address bar: http://wideworldimporters/Todd%20Rowe. Subsequently, providing a URL Name of My Cool Docs for a new document library within that site would result in the following Web site address in the browser’s address bar: http://wideworldimporters/Todd%20Rowe/My%20Cool%20Docs. Notice that replacing the spaces with underscores improves the appearance of the Web site address: http://wideworldimporters/Todd_Rowe/My_Cool_Docs.

• The URL name should be descriptive, intuitive, and easy to remember.

• The URL name should be concise. There is a limit of total characters available for the entire Web site address, so you will eventually encounter problems if you consistently use long URL names.

• The URL name should not contain spaces. Spaces in the address bar are replaced with %20 and take up three characters each. Spaces also make the Web site address difficult to use in an e-mail and difficult for others to read. To reduce frustration and improve readability, an underscore can be used in place of a space.

• The URL name should be used consistently. Out of the box, tasks are found in a list called Tasks, contacts in a list called Contacts, and so on. Similarly, if you frequently create a document library to house proposals, consistently using a name such as Proposals will aid others in locating that content. Of course, you cannot have two lists with the same name in a site. Therefore, you may need to differentiate by prefixing the name, such as Customer_Proposals and Product_Proposals.

When creating a list or column, the field -generically labeled Name-is used to populate both the display name and the URL name. Because other best practices can be initiated for a specific organization, it is wise to establish your own naming conventions as early as possible. This should help prevent unintuitive, verbose, space-laden, and inconsistent objects from being created in the first place.

From the Template Selection area of the New SharePoint Site page, you can choose to initially provision your site by using one of the 10 built-in site templates. Each site template provisions lists, document libraries, and Web pages pre-populated with Web Parts that use the navigation best suited for the purpose of the site template.

Site templates are grouped under two tabs: the Collaboration tab and the Meetings tab.

The first three site templates listed on the Collaboration tab-Team Site, Blank Site and Document Workspace-all have the same latent capabilities and Quick Launch navigation. The Team Site template provisions a Shared Documents library and four lists: Announcements, Calendar, Links, and Tasks. The Blank Site template, as you might surmise, has no lists or document libraries and contains only the Site Image Web Part. The Document Workspace template provisions the same document libraries and lists as the Team Site, but makes the Shared Documents library more prominent by placing a Web Part for it on the site’s default home page. It also places a Members Web Part on the default home page.

The next two site templates listed on the Collaboration tab, Wiki Site and Blog, were not available in the previous release. These two templates are new to Windows SharePoint Services; they were frequently requested additions to the list of built-in site templates.

By using the Wiki Site template, you can provision a container to hold primarily HTML content pages. Designated users can easily edit any content page in the site and link existing pages together or create links to new content pages. If a link is found to an uncreated page, a user can follow the link and create the page. In this way, a wiki site provides a low-maintenance way to record knowledge. Subject matter experts can capture their knowledge in context with similar knowledge. Other examples of the use of wiki sites include a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and their answers, idea pages, best practices or current best approach (CBA) documents, help desk or call center knowledge bases, and building an encyclopedia of knowledge. One of the initial pages in a new wiki provides good instructions on how to work with the content pages in the wiki.

Use the Blog template as a way to publish a type of journal. The blog owner creates posts on which other users can comment. Each post is a separate content page, and a rollup summary of these pages is typically presented in reverse chronological order (newest entries listed first) on the home page of the blog site. Blogs are commonly used as news sites, journals, and diaries. A blog focuses one or more core competencies of the author and is often used as a soapbox for the blog owner to state an opinion.

Blogs can also be used as a one-way communication tool for keeping project stakeholders and/or team members informed. Blog site content can be syndicated using an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. RSS feed-aggregating software allows people to subscribe to the content they are interested in and have new and updated posts delivered to them. Using these tools, people can aggregate the content from many blogs (or any Windows SharePoint Services list) into one common reader where posts from selected authors can be sorted, filtered, and grouped. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 can aggregate a few RSS feeds; there are also many vendors that give away or sell RSS feed– aggregating software.

The five Meeting Workspace templates listed on the Meetings tab are variations on a theme. Unlike all the previously described site templates, they don’t have a left navigation area. In addition to the traditional list types such as Document Library, Picture Library, Tasks, and Discussion Board, they can provision unique lists, such as Agenda, Attendees, Decisions, Objectives, and Things To Bring.

Tip 

The 10 built-in templates are actually configurations of the four underlying site definitions: STS, Wiki, Blog, and MPS. Additional configurations and even alternate site definitions can be created in the underlying files by the managers of your Web servers. Built-in configurations can also be removed or altered. If you see more than two tabs, you may have Microsoft Office SharePoint Server installed and/or your company may have created their own custom templates.

You will likely focus, at least initially, on utilizing these built-in site templates. However, it is possible to save sites you create as custom site templates that you and others can choose from the Template Selection area of the New SharePoint Site page. This is done by using the Save Site As Template link in the Look And Feel area of the Site Settings page of any site. Sites saved in this way are initially only available in the same site collection in which they are saved and show up under the same tab as the site template on which they are initially based. The “Saving and Using a Site Template” section later in this chapter will explain how to copy a saved Site Template into another site collection. All alterations except security-related settings are retained on those sites provisioned by using saved custom site templates.

When creating a new site, there are two obvious permission options available. The default option, Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, checks the parent site’s permission every time the user visits the child site to determine what the user is allowed to do on that site. As the permissions on the parent site change over time, the permissions on the child site also reflect those changes. The other option is to Use Unique Permissions. When you click this option as the site’s creator, you are initially the only user with access to the site and are then associated with the Administrator permission level.

Important  

If you choose Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, it is possible to have the right to create a new site but not have the right to delete it. However, if you choose Use Unique Permissions, you are the site’s administrator and as such will always have the right to delete the new site.

Two other permission options are not as obvious. If you initially choose Use Unique Permissions, you are the only user with access to the site and can make any changes you wish. You can then switch to Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, whereby everyone, including you, who has access to the parent site will subsequently have access to the child site using the permissions assigned on the parent site. If you initially choose Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, the parent site’s permissions will be used. Yet, if you subsequently switch to Use Unique Permissions, all of the permissions of the parent site are copied to the child site. This can save a great deal of time if most of the people who have access to the parent site also need access to the child site.

Three navigation options can be specified when creating a new site. The first two deal with the visibility of the child site being created within the navigation of the parent site. You can optionally choose to show the child site on either the Quick Launch or top link bar of the parent site. Both of these options default to Yes. Conversely, you can specify whether the top link bar of the parent site should display on the top link bar of the created child site. Again, this option defaults to Yes.

See “Using the Book’s CD” on page xix for more information about using the site templates provided for each chapter in this book.

In the following exercise, you will create a child site that the buyers at Wide World Importers will use for collaboration. As a team, the buyers need a centralized place to consolidate their announcements, links, and general discussions as well as track the status of their purchases and the list of current suppliers. You will use the Team Site template to initially populate the new child site.

OPEN the top-level, would-be parent site from which you’d like to create the new site. The exercise will use the http://wideworldimporters site, but you can use whatever site you wish. If prompted, type your user name and password, and click OK.

BE SURE TO verify that you have sufficient rights to create a site. If in doubt, see the Appendix on page 435.

1. On the Site Actions menu, click Create to display the Create page.

2. In the Web Pages area, click Sites and Workspaces to display the New SharePoint Site page.

3. In the Title textbox, type Buyers to establish a display name for the new site.

4. In the Description textbox, type a description, such as Site for general buyer collaboration, to help users understand the purpose for the new site.

5. In the URL name textbox, type buyers for a Web Site Address.

This determines the value in the browser’s address bar that users will see when they visit the site. Refer to the Naming a URL sidebar earlier in this section for best practices regarding naming conventions.

6. On the Template list, click Team Site.

Tip 

If you have installed the practice files from the book’s CD, you will also see Wide World Importers at the bottom of the list of templates on the Collaboration tab.

7. Click the option button defining the type of permissions that you want to initially use on the site. For the Buyers site, use the default permission Use same permissions as parent site.

Keep the default navigation and navigation inheritance options. All of the Navigation option button options have Yes selected. In this way, both the parent site and the created child site will have navigation on the top link bar, and the parent site will also have a reference to the child site in the Quick Launch.

8. Click the Create button to create the new site with a default set of lists, document libraries, and Web pages pre-populated with Web Parts for the buyers to use on the new site.

Important  

Clicking the Cancel button returns you to the Create page and will not create the site.

9. On the top link bar, click Home to return to the parent site.

CLOSE the browser.