Section 1.5. Organizing Sites

1.5. Organizing Sites

SharePoint sites are organized into folders, just like any other web site, but there are some terms SharePoint uses that should be explained up front:

Virtual server

The root location for one or more web sites. SharePoint can host multiple virtual servers on a single server. Each virtual server can have its own domain name . For example, www.usingsharepoint.com and www.mstrainingkits.com are hosted on the same SharePoint server.

animal 1-5. Adding members and setting permissions from a web page in SharePoint

Site collection

A group of top-level sites on one virtual server. Site collections allow separate administration of related sites.

Top-level site

The primary web site for a domain. Each virtual server can host many different top-level web sites, which in turn contain subsites. If SharePoint is set up to allow self-service site creation, other top-level sites may also exist in the //domain/sites/ folder.

Subsite

A site within a top-level web site. Subsites are used to control access and organize the content within a site; members of the top-level site may or may not have access to a specific subsite.

Page

Sites contain web pages that present their content. Most SharePoint pages are web part pages ( .aspx ), but you can also add HTML pages or other content to SharePoint sites as document libraries.

List

A table of related data. Lists are used throughout SharePoint: announcements, contacts, discussions, and other types of content are implemented through lists. Users can also create lists using Excel and link the contents of those shared lists to other documents in Word and Excel.

View

The way a list is displayed. The default view of a list is to display the data in columns that can be sorted or filtered, but you can also display lists in calendar form or as a spreadsheet-like data grid. Views can include criteria to display only certain columns or rows and may group items to create expandable tree-views.

Virtual servers, top-level sites, subsites, and lists create a hierarchy that is illustrated in Figure 1-6.

animal 1-6. SharePoint's terms for organizing content