Nicole Bird, Web Analyst Roanoke County, VA April 22, 2009

1997 IT Director developed and maintained first Intranet and Internet sites 1998 Grew by assigning Dept Webmasters, who used Front Page 98 for content IT still reviewed and published content until IT Director left. Then publishing fell to Depts.

2000 I became County Webmaster. Standardized all Internet and Intranet webmasters on FP Minor facelift of Internet. Attempted consistent branding using Frames Our team, Enterprise Services Division formed. Removed Intranets that were dups of Internet sites. Purchased MCMS. Hired consultant to produce base site and templates.

2004 Released MCMS Internet site with template branding. WMs had a single content placeholder to do with as they pleased. Began researching SharePoint Minor facelift of Internet. Enforced branding with tighter editor options and style sheets for the 26 Internet sites. Began researching MOSS Have hired a consultant to review our plans and give us a Best Practices overview.

WCM in its broadest term is to publish content created by content authors to a production website. To ensure it is done correctly, timely, and enhances your business processes you should implement a content publishing process.

IA covers categorizing the content that visitors will come to your site for, and defining how it is organized and presented Common questions to answer are:  Who are your users? How do they want to use your content? Are there logical groups of users?  How many top level site collections do you need? What are the subsites? Do you need multi-tier staging/publishing and/or content approval? What are the security requirements?  Do you have a brand, and should it be common across all sites? Can you utilize Master Pages, Page layouts, Style Sheets?... Full list can be found in the Resources Section >webmonkey

 Survey existing systems – If you are replacing a WCM, analyze the usage logs and see what works & what doesn't. If your current architecture isn't working, determine what needs to change. If a pg 3 levels down isn't visited, find out why.  Survey User Requirements – Conduct a survey of your users: are you getting the information you’re looking for? Is it where you expect it? Is it called what you thought? Avoid business/internal terms that customers are not familiar with.  Survey Business Requirements – Don't assume you know your business rules. Ask the people who create the content, what the business use is. Also helps determine need for security, physical topology, branding, etc. Flesh out Internet vs. Intranet, cross- department services. When you are done, document it. The AI content will feed your design decisions

 Understand pros/cons of Site Collections  Understand properties the propagate from site to subsite, as well as properties you can override in subsites  Consider security requirements if any content is not anonymous  Take advantage of SharePoint’s rich OOTB Navigation based on site structure. (next pg) More information in the resources section> Prescriptive Guidance.

A typical page render: 1. Welcome.aspx page is requested 2. Page layout associated with page is retrieved 3. Master page associated with site is retrieved 4. Controls in page layout render content from page’s fields into the page Inherited from WSS Field Control Field Control Field Control Versioning Check-in&- out Content types Access control Workflow 2 Stage Undelete Link Fix-up etc.

Field Control Field Control Field Control Page Layouts are templates that define how content items are arranged on a page. Content Providers pick a page layout based on type of content they have. Field Controls Ensure they follow set format when placing text

Field Control Field Control Field Conrol Field Control Global branding/ Chrome is the Common frame: Navigation Logos Search Box Login control Editing controls CSS references Help …any other control you build

Your WCM system must include “Controlled Publishing” processes that enable authorized persons to manage the content. SharePoint provides:  Check in / out – prevents conflicting edits by multiple authors.  Versioning – drafts are minor, published are major.  Page Scheduling – Can set Publish and Expire dates (MOSS only)  Document Converters – “Smart Client” allows authors to repurpose Office documents into web pages.  Workflow – pages can be routed after edits.  Approval – Usually the end of the workflow, but if no workflow, this is the ultimate publish of the page.

 Is this an Intranet (authenticated/different rights across site) or Internet (anonymous/read-only)?  Do you need multiple server farms to provide isolated development, testing, staging, and production environments?  What is the resource requirement for request and search query throughput? more info for your Server Admin under Resources...

 Ensure you have someone with experience in Microsoft security, DMZ, firewalls, ports, etc. on your WCM team!  See Module 4 in the reference item WCM Resource Center 6 part demo

 MOSS Core Files (CSS, JS) – could cause download time to be secs slower. Can either delay the load, or load only when needed.  Use validated (X)HTML, CSS – Consider keeping full CSS in dev, but minify the published version.  Optimize your custom controls and code.  Utilize IIS Compression, Site Output Caching, Page Layout Caching, Disk-Based Caching for BLOBS, and Web Part Caching as appropriate.

 Can customize Content Presentation ◦ Field Controls, Navigation, Site Variations  Can customize Content Editing ◦ Page Editing Toolbar: ◦ HTML Editor Field Control: ◦ Check out Telerik and AKS if OOTB isn’t enough

Resources MS WCM Resource Center for MOSS – This presentation is based on my training on the 6 part demo. Prescriptive Guidance for WCM by Andrew Connell, MS MVP – First few pages are general, share this with your.NET developer Configuring and Deploying Anonymous Publishing Sites by Andrew Connell – Performance, Tuning, Securing tips Bob Mixon's take on Site Collections collections-and-when-to-use-them.aspx collections-and-when-to-use-them.aspx Heather Solomon, MS MVP – Most SharePoint MVPs refer to Heather as the SharePoint Branding Diva. Check out her Minimal Master, as well as a commented structure of the Core.css file. Information Architecture Series by WebMonkey – Beginning process to help cull out the information design of your site part Master Page series in Sharepoint Magazine. This link is part 6, which contains other 5 links. sharepoint-site-definition-master-pages-and-sharepoint-part-6-of-6http://sharepointmagazine.net/technical/development/incorporating-a-master-page-into-a- sharepoint-site-definition-master-pages-and-sharepoint-part-6-of-6

Resources (cont) MS TechNet Internet Presence Scenario for MOSS: Planning and other Worksheets – Microsoft's attempt to help you sort out pieces of SharePoint implementations. us/library/cc aspx For WCM, look for "Plan Web site structure and publishing“ us/library/cc aspx Michael Gannotti, Why use MOSS for WCM? (don't watch if you get carsick!) Ian Morrish, who runs wssdemo.com has some good info on WSS WCM as well: Windows-SharePoint-Services.aspx Windows-SharePoint-Services.aspx Information on performance and capacity planning, including test cases and sample scenarios, Plan for software boundaries: Estimate performance and capacity requirements for Internet environments Caching: For Google fans! Try out “Let me Google that for you!”

 Other items discussed:  If you can’t get enough Sharepoint news, here is a great aggregated RSS feed:  Check out the Yahoo group on Sharepoint (originally created for their students but is now public) tdiscussions/ tdiscussions/  Forget to mention at the meeting! If you must try WCM with WSS please check out this site: This is a free CMS alternative to MOSS built on top of wss 3.0.