Customizing a Departmental Site


This next section will look at some of the standard ways organizations can change a departmental site to suit their needs.

Changing the Theme of the Site

This is the most basic change that can be made to a site and will affect all of the different pages in the site. Unfortunately, many of the color themes are just too colorful and casual, and many companies want their SharePoint sites to match corporate color schemes that are already in use.

To change the theme of a site

1.

Click Site Settings.

2.

Click Apply theme to site.

3.

Click on the different themes in the list to see the preview in the left hand Preview screen. For this example we'll choose Sky. Click Apply.

Using FrontPage 2003, it is easy to make some standard modifications that clients tend to request.

From the home page of the site (best to use a new empty site rather than to experiment with a live site with live data) access the File menu and choose Edit with Microsoft Office FrontPage.

Before making any changes, right click on the default.aspx home page, and click Copy. Then right click in the Folder List and click Paste. This will copy the default.aspx file and increment it with the number (1) before you start to modify (and possibly break) the existing page.

Then, as indicated by the numbers in Figure 20.23 perform the following steps on the items indicated

1.

From FrontPage 2003 click on the "little people" icon in the upper right-hand corner, and press Delete.

2.

Click on the vertical words "Quick Launch" and press Delete.

3.

Right-click on the blank area indicated in Figure 20.23 and select Table Properties. In the Background section, select an appropriate color from the drop-down menu next to the word Color (in this case choose white from standard colors) and click OK.

TIP

If the marketing department has specific colors that they have approved, you can also enter in a hex number for the color. To do so, perform step 3, but instead of selecting a specific color from the Color drop-down menu, click More Colors and enter a value in the Value box (such as ff6600 for an bright orange)and click OK.

Or if you click on the Custom button in the More Colors window, you can enter the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance or Red, Green, and Blue codes. From this window you can add the color to the custom colors for the site, which makes it easier to apply in other places.

4.

Click the text "ProServices2" (or the name of your site) and delete the text in this field. Click in front of the word "Home" and enter the appropriate text (in this case "Professional Services").

5.

Right-click on the link bar, and then click on Link Bar Properties. Click the Help link in the Links window, and click Modify Link. Change the link to another SharePoint site that can provide help desk level support, FAQs, instructions, and so on. Click OK once the URL is correct, then click OK again to close the Link Bar Properties window.

TIP

Another link that some administrators like to remove is the site settings link. This link may confuse users who might try to use these tools only to be prompted for a password because they don't have the required rights. The administrators then simply need to remember the URL for the main site settings page (siteURL/_layouts/1033/settings.aspx).

6.

Click the Windows SharePoint Services logo and click Delete.

Figure 20.23. FrontPage design view of home page.


Once these steps are complete, click on the Save button in the toolbar or access the File menu and choose Save. Figure 20.24 shows the results of these quick changes.

Figure 20.24. Updated view of modified page.


Unfortunately, these changes only affect the home page, not the other pages in the site, so they would either need to be repeated on all of the other pages in the site (or at least the ones that the users will be accessing) or you will need to change the Cascading Style Sheet used by the site.

However if the theme itself is modified, the changes will affect the whole site collection.

If the administrator or web designer wishes to delve deeper into the territory of branding a site, some required reading on the subject can be found on Microsoft's site. If the following URLs have changed, search for "branding SharePoint" at www.microsoft.com:

  • Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site: Part 1, Understanding the Use of a Corporate Brand (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_SP2003_ta/html/Office_SharePointApplyingCorporateBrand.asp).

  • Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site: Part 2, How to Apply Your Own Corporate Brand (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_sp2003_ta/html/Office_SharePointHowToApplyBrand.asp).

In addition, the three articles at the following website delve more deeply into the processes involved in modifying Cascading Style Sheets:

  • Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals: Parts 1 3 (part 1 includes links to parts 2 and 3) (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_SP2003_ta/html/ODC_SPSCustomizingSharePointSites1.asp)




Microsoft SharePoint 2003 Unleashed
Microsoft SharePoint 2003 Unleashed (2nd Edition) (Unleashed)
ISBN: 0672328038
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 288

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net