Summary

This chapter discussed the key feature of SharePoint - the site.

• It discussed the differences between a site, a site collection, and a workspace. It then looked at the various templates and usage scenarios of each. The five categories of site templates are Collaboration, Meeting, Enterprise, Publishing, and Custom.

• Your choice of a site template depends on your requirements. In addition, you can create your own set of templates to suit your needs. Establishing a set of common templates reduces the confusion of having each site owner create all the required elements on his or her own, and provides a consistent interface and environment. This helps drive user adoption, learning, and acceptance.

• The chapter then turned to alternatives within sites that control elements, such as the navigation and regional settings. You can also enable features to extend the functionality of your site. Using features, you can transform a standard team site to contain more advanced functionality, such as web content publishing and approval. By familiarizing yourself with the various templates and the features that are available with each, you can make decisions on what features you can enable to improve the user experience and functionality of your sites.

• You can use master pages to customize your site, but if the changes you make aren’t desirable, you can restore the site to its original state. This protects your site from unwanted changes.