I rarely rant, but in some cases I have very little choice. As it seems I had little choice but to rant at this question, statements that I was confronted by time and time again. I call this the "OOTB syndrome". This is usually a symptom which is present in people who have stumbled upon SharePoint recently.
In the context of this post SharePoint = Microsoft Office SharePoint Server = MOSS
"We want to use the Out of the Box (OOTB) functionality of SharePoint to build our web site"
"SharePoint templates are not XXXX compliant"
"It's too difficult to build web sites with SharePoint"
First of all MOSS provides example site templates to provide "examples" of how to use SharePoint for WCM (Web Content Management). These are simply that "examples". If your organisation is looking at building a web site with MOSS then you will need to consider these points.
- What is high priority for the site? Is it presentation and speed to market or structured publishing and management of content?
- What complexity are levels are your developers happy with in terms of creating master pages and site layouts?
- Have your developers tried or used the SharePoint SDK and built custom web parts?
- Do you understand what SharePoint offers for WCM?
Also in a previous post I mentioned about how to approach customizations.
Spencer Harbar from harbar.net has provided his view on this here: http://www.harbar.net/archive/2007/06/21/SharePoint-Egg-Timer-1-quotWe-want-a-SharePoint-site-that.aspx
The bottom line is if you are looking to just build a web site you may be better off getting an alternative which just does it. There are tons out there. SharePoint is not Dot Net Nuke, it is not MCMS (Microsoft Content Management Server), it is not Ektron, it is not Interwoven or Epi Server. It's a technology platform upon which a multitude of applications are built. It's more akin to ASP.NET than to a "competing product" that in reality only competes in one or two feature areas.
But if you are looking for a standardized solution platform that can deliver multiple web sites and enhanced publishing features then MOSS is a very good choice.
If you are starting to build a site on MOSS consider these points...
- Build your own master pages but start with mimimal.master available from TechNet
- Create your own style sheet
- Start with wire frames and identify what fields you need on your pages
- Plan your content types
- Build your page layouts and associate them with your content types
- Build your navigation based on the MOSS navigation menu
- Learn how to use SharePoint Designer
- Designers and UX consultants should have their say at all times for design and UX related stuff
- For what ever it is DO NOT think you are constrained in building a rich functional web sites, if you think that then you should probably start learning and understand that it actually can deliver rich and functional web sites
- Consider building your own publishing site definition (it's not easy but it's an option)
- Read the "SharePoint Products and Technologies customization policy" (Relevant to developers and implementers)
It's easy for backbenchers to whinge about SharePoint does not do X or Y, but for people who take the effort to understand and learn core functionality and API the benefits are huge in terms of becoming an expert in SharePoint as well as understanding the breadth of the capabilities.
Here are some "real world" case studies of MOSS WCM implementations.
Detailed Case Studies
MOSS Has Got Game - Glu Mobile’s Website (www.glu.com) - How We Did It - Part 1
MOSS Has Got Game - Glu Mobile’s Website (www.glu.com) - How We Did It - Part 2
How we did it: PFGC.com -- design, development, and go live in 10 weeks!
Plymouth Hospitals: This site is WCAG 1.0 AA compliant and provides colour contrast and font size options for the visually impaired. To build a site like this in SharePoint the starting point has to be at a custom site definition plus building some smart web parts to render compliant mark-up. The beauty of the SharePoint platform is that it's possible to do these things because it's built on ASP.net.
Hawaiian Airlines: Extreme "Bling" to your SharePoint site by giving it all the latest such as reflections and so forth, where the goal is to entice end users to buy air line tickets or visit Hawaii. This is built as a Publishing web site, which is delivered by the WCM features of MOSS and is primarily an Internet facing public web site.
List of known public web sites built on MOSS aka: SharePoint (Thanks Angus)
Case Studies all MOSS deployments via SharePoint Team Blog
17 More case studies for MOSS
Links for WCM on MOSS