Enabling Publishing on a Team Site

So far the examples in this chapter have worked with the Publishing portal site template. This is primarily because this template contains many of the components and elements you need to create a web-facing site. However, you may need to make use of publishing features within a standard team site or workspace, and to do so means you have to enable the Publishing feature, as is demonstrated in the first Try It Out in this section. Switching on the publishing features means you can transform any team site into a publishing site, complete with content approval workflow and new lists and libraries. Figure 13-36 shows a site before the Publishing feature. In Figure 13-37, after the feature is enabled, you see new workflow as well as new elements in the menus and new controls, such as the Create Page option in the Site Actions menu.

Figure 13-36

Figure 13-37

In the section “Customizing the Look and Feel of a WCM Site,” you learned how the master page can control the appearance of an Internet or intranet portal. This is true for a team collaboration site as well; in addition to master page customizations, SharePoint 2007 makes extensive use of cascading style sheets (CSS) that allow you to make subtle changes to the background colors and fonts on a site. One way CSS is used is through site themes. A theme is not permanent; you can change the site again by simply applying another theme, and the new theme will overwrite the already applied theme. The second Try It Out in this section shows you how to apply a theme to a site.

Try It Out-Enable the Publishing Feature on a Team Site

In this example, you have a team site that your ski company is using to create content and track progress across various initiatives. However, to track team announcements and news, you decide to enable the Publishing feature on the site. To do this, you visit the Site Settings page for the site and selected Activate for the Publishing feature on both the site collection level and the individual site level.

Tip 

When you enable the Publishing feature on a collaborative site, such as a team site or a blank site, you can no longer save that site as a template. This is something you should be aware of before making the choice to enable specific features or functionality on existing sites.

1. From the SharePoint Central Administration site, create a new site collection from the Application Management tab using the Team Site template called “Ski Team Site.”

2. From the main page of your new team site, select Site Actions Site Settings.

3. Select Site Collection Features from the Site Collection Administration links.

4. Click the Activate button next to the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature.

5. Select Site Features from the Site Administration links of the Site Settings page.

6. Click the Activate button next to the Office SharePoint Server Publishing feature.

How It Works

When you enable the publishing feature, this creates new lists and libraries, automatically adds content approval workflow, and expands the Site Actions menu so that you can create pages.

Try It Out-Apply a Site Theme

This example shows you the various site themes that SharePoint has to offer. You can apply these themes via the browser to change the sites colors. To change the theme itself, you need to modify the CSS for the theme using a text editor such as SharePoint Designer.

1. Select Site Actions Site Settings Modify All Site Settings.

2. Under the Look and Feel section, select Site Theme. The Site Theme window appears as shown in Figure 13-38.

   
   Figure 13-38

3. Locate and select the name of a theme. In this example, select the theme Verdant.

4. Click Apply to change the look and feel of your site.