Chapter 12: Customizing SharePoint 2007

In this chapter, you learn how to configure and manage the MS Office SharePoint Server 2007. You may recall from previous chapters that MOSS is an optional add-on to the WSS platform. It will enable you to build more advanced sites, such as portals, intranets and Internet sites, along with the WSS team sites. MOSS will also make it easier for users to navigate between sites and sharing information within the whole organization. The objectives for a portal site are different than for the team sites, thus new functionality is needed: You could say that the portal site is the place where a few people create and manage information directed to many, whereas the team sites are the places where a group of people create and manage information that is directed to the other members of this group.

MOSS Site Templates

When adding MOSS to WSS, you get basically three things: more advanced site templates, more Web Parts, and more features such as global searching, User Profiles, and My Site. Contrary to previous versions of SharePoint, there is no difference in the basic code between a WSS site and a MOSS site; the difference is in the functionality available in that sit. For example, when creating an Internet-facing web site, you need control over its content, as when an author adds content to this site and a manager has to read and approve this content before it goes public. You may also need to keep track of the version history, so you can see how a specific web page looked like before, and possibly revert to that version. All of this, and more, comes with MOSS site templates. This kind of control is usually not necessary when creating web sites for sharing information within a group or project. In fact, it will only be an annoyance, since all group members will have an easy way of updating the information on the team web site; this is what you use WSS site templates for.

In the following table, you can see the most important differences between site templates for WSS and MOSS.

Open table as spreadsheet

Functionality	MOSS Site Templates	WSS Site Templates
Adding/Modifying Content on Web Page	Full web content management: Whenever the page is opened in Edit mode, the page is automatically checked out.	No web content management: All editing on this page will immediately be available for all user who can access the page.
Approval of modifications	Active by default: Before a modified page goes public, a user with Approval permission must approve the page.	No approval procedure
Support for Workflows	Yes. For example, a modified page can start a workflow to ask one or more users for comments about this page.	No
Version History	Yes. Every time a page is updated and approved, a new major version is created. You can list and look at previous versions, and revert to any of them.	No
Master Pages for configuring the look and feel of top menus, logos and the navigation bar	Yes	Yes

This chapter focuses on the MOSS and how it works. To follow the instructions in this chapter, you will need at least one portal site, such as the Collaboration Portal. Use the instructions in Chapter 4 to create this portal site.