Understanding Web Part Pages

A Web Part page allows you to create a page that can have multiple types of information displayed to your users all at the same time. You can have a stock ticker, a document library, a list of links, a discussion group, and many other sources of content all directed to the end user simply by creating a Web Part page and adding the Web Parts to it.

Creating a Web Part Page

To create a Web Part page in Windows SharePoint Services, follow the these steps:

1.	From the home page of the site, select Create from the top menu bar.
2.	Under the Web Pages section, choose Web Part Page by clicking on it.
3.	Enter a name for the Web Part page in the Name field. This name will be suffixed by the .aspx extension.
4.	Choose a layout template for the Web Part page, as shown in Figure 21.4. The template chosen determines how many zones your Web Part page will have. The next section of this chapter provides more information on the different zone options. Figure 21.4. Choosing a template for a Web Part page.
5.	Under Save Location, choose which document library to place the Web Part page in.
6.	Click Create.

CAUTION

Choose wisely when considering what types of zones to add to your Web Part page. Web browsers with less screen resolution, such as 1024x768 or less, may not see all the data in the zones, and it may make your site visually unappealing. Be sure to test different combinations of zones and Web Parts on different client resolutions to find what works best for your site.

The final step in the creation of the Web Part page is actually adding the Web Parts to the page itself. After it is created, the page opens with the zones that you chose, as shown in Figure 21.5. Add the Web Parts you feel necessary.

Figure 21.5. Adding Web Parts to a newly created Web Part page.

Working with Web Part Page Zones

Each Web Part page, and SharePoint site home page, for that matter, contain distinct bounded regions where Web Parts can be added to. These regions are known as zones. The zones control how Web Parts are displayed to the end user, and there can be many zones on a particular page, as illustrated in Figure 21.5. When creating a Web Part page or a SharePoint site, it is important to understand the differences between the zones. The different types of zones are as follows:

• Full page zones This type of zone covers the entire Web Part page and is the type of zone that you want if you need your Web Parts to take up all the real estate on the page.

• Header and footer zones These zones go to the top and the bottom of the page. If there is a great deal of data in the middle, the user may have to scroll down to get to the Web Parts in the footer zone.

• Column zones These zones are taller than they are wide and can be useful for displaying information that looks best when displayed vertically. Normally these types of zones appear on the left and right sides of a page.

• Row zones These zones are wider than they are tall and can be used to hold Web Parts that display information better in this fashion.

NOTE

Zone width, height, and other criteria can only be modified from a Windows SharePoint Services compatible editor such as Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003.

It is important to understand how zones work because they are an integral part in the Web Part pages that you will create in your SharePoint site.