Do SharePoint web design without using SharePoint Designer

=A Blank Canvas= Microsoft SharePoint comes packed with features. It has been designed to cover many different tasks, prompting some in enterprise IT circles to call it a "category killer" - a suggestion that SharePoint can be used for a broad range of functions that traditionally would have been fulfilled by lots of different applications from different vendors.

The one slight downside to SharePoint being able to do these many different things is that a new SharePoint site is a blank canvas - it requires the site owner to apply some thought and creativity to showcase and make obvious the point of that particular site.

The SharePoint Challenge
For the last ten years most corporate IT users have collaborated and shared information online in two ways; through email, and by storing office files on fileshares or within traditional Document Management Systems. SharePoint provides capabilities that offer advantages over these traditional approaches, however, unless signposted, these features can often be lost on most users, with the result that SharePoint simply becomes a straight replacement for their previous fileshare or Document Management System. ''SharePoint has so much more to offer! So how do you make your team mates aware of how they could/should be using it?''

Don't Alter the Codebase!
In many organizations the standard approach to changing the look and feel of SharePoint has been to redesign sites using SharePoint Designer, a Microsoft tool that lets you hack right into the SharePoint computer code and change it to meet your needs. In ProjectCollaborate.org we think that nine times out of ten this approach isn't warranted because SharePoint already provides out of the box features designed to enable you apply web design to your site, and you don't need to be a computer programmer to use them.

5 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Using SharePoint Designer

 * 1) You probably don't need to use it - see following sections.
 * 2) When something needs to be changed on your site only a techie with knowledge of SharePoint Designer can do it.
 * 3) It's really easy to screw up your site with SharePoint Designer - and while your SharePoint support team would probably be more than happy to help you restore it - is it really the best use of their time, especially if you didn't need to use SharePoint Designer in the first place?
 * 4) It might change the user experience of SharePoint, so somebody who is used to using SharePoint as intended needs to learn how your particular site functions.
 * 5) The more you customize SharePoint, the more work and the greater impact when you want to move to a new version of SharePoint.

=Step 1 - What's the Point (of your site)?=

Get Some Stimulus
You know what it's like, that moment when you see a new SharePoint site, the typical reaction goes something like this, "Hmmm...yes...that sure is a nice bunch of lists!". Yes, the infamous SharePoint 'wall of lists' doesn't do much to encourage uptake of your site! SharePoint sites don't typically provide any text or images to provide context or simple instructions on how to use the site, but there's no reason why they should remain the case.

In ProjectCollaborate.org we look to the World Wide Web for inspiration. People have been successfully collaborating and sharing information online on the web for years and there are standard ways of laying out features that we typically make use of in SharePoint.

Don't Accept the Default!
Let's take a look at an example of where we used some inspiration from a World Wide Web site to rework part of our SharePoint site. In the screen shot below we see the default screen served up by SharePoint for an online forum we are building.



Now take a look at how the equivalent function is displayed on a website. Their version includes some text providing context - why and how you should use this application, as well as where to go for further help.



Using standard SharePoint tools we can do a simple make-over on our forum to mirror this style.



We've only made some quick and simple changes, however we've now more clearly signposted what this aspect of our site is for, and how to use it.

=Step 2 - Make the Changes to your SharePoint TeamSite= Hopefully you now have some inspiration for how you want to present your site - now to the hands-on bit!

To view the tutorial click here.

=See also=
 * Import a Web Part into a SharePoint page - useful if you have already defined a web part and wish to reuse it on another page/site.
 * Use the same content in many Content Editor Web Parts