Navigating in SharePoint

Many SharePoint tasks involve navigating through several web pages. I provide the navigation path based on the links on each page. For example, "choose Site Settings Go to Site Administration Delete this site means click Site Settings on the navigation bar, click Site Administration on the next page, and finally click Delete this site . Each of these links takes you to a new page, and sometimes you have to search a bit to find the next link. I use this abbreviated style because I think the alternatives are more wordy, but not much clearer.

If you get lost trying to follow the path, you can enter the address of the page directly in your browser's Address bar. The figures that accompany tasks show the addresses of most important pages. For example, this is the address of the page used to delete a site:

http://wombat1/newsite/_layouts/1033/deleteweb.aspx

In this case, you'd want to replace //wombat1/newsite/ with the address of the site to delete. Using the address bar is also a handy shortcut for repeating a task on multiple sites: to delete multiple sites, just change the site name as described and repeat for each site you wish to delete.

Getting the Code Examples

The code examples are available on my web site at http://www.usingsharepoint.com/Samples. You may want to bookmark that site in your browser so you can see the examples in action while you're reading. In addition, there is a version of code samples that can be installed on your own server as a template at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/essentialsp.

Although installing the samples yourself is a little complicated, it gives you complete access to the source and lets you make changes. You don't need to install the samples right away, though: get comfortable with SharePoint first.

You are free to use the samples in this book in your own work but not to claim them as your own. Ditto for sections of text in this book. It is always polite to credit the source of your quotes so that other can find (and possibly buy) the book if the find it useful. If you have questions about your use of samples, please email permissions@oreilly.com.

If You Need Help

In addition to the help that can be found through my web site and those of O'Reilly, Microsoft, and Google, here are some otherSharePoint resources:

The newsgroups microsoft.public. windows .sharepointservices and microsoft.public.windows.sharepointservices.development are actively supported by the SharePoint community.
The FAQ at http://wss.collutions.com answers a lot of specific questions.
The site at http://www.wssdemo.com provides excellent examples of ways to handle content in SharePoint.
A Resources section at the end of each chapter cites sources for help that is specific to the material coverered in that chapter.

Font Conventions

This book follows certain conventions for font usage. Understanding these conventions up front makes it easier to use this book.

Plain text: Indicates menu titles, menu options, menu buttons , and keyboard accelerators (such as Alt and Ctrl).
Italic: Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, program names , file extensions, pathnames, directories, and new terms where they are defined.
Constant width: Is used for all code listings, commands, options, variables , attributes, properties, parameters, values, XML tags, HTML tags, the contents of files, the output of commands, and anything that appears literally in a SharePoint page.
Constant width italic: Indicates text that should be replaced with user -supplied values.
Constant width bold: Indicates additions in the code examples.
Constant width strikethrough: Shows deletions from the code examples.