Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Out of the Box

Creating an Intranet Home Page
Opening the top-level URL (http://servername), we see the default site based on the Team Site template, which Figure 1 shows. The logon control in the upper right corner, which reads “Welcome WINDOMAIN\administrator” in Figure 1, drops down to reveal a small but welcome change in SharePoint Services 3.0: the ability to quickly log on as another user and easily access your user profile information. Because SharePoint Services 3.0 is a .NET application, it accepts any .NET membership provider for authentication. By default, SharePoint Services 3.0 uses Windows authentication, meaning that all authentication is performed by your local server and its Active Directory (AD) domain. However, you can also use other membership providers, including the ASP.NET SQL Membership Provider. Authentication for each SharePoint Services application is managed in Central Administration.

Where SharePoint Services 2.0 placed actions clumsily in a top-of-page bar, SharePoint Services 3.0 consolidates actions into toolbars and drop-down menus. Click the Site Actions menu box on the upper-right side of the window to expand the drop-down menu. Select Site Settings, which opens a significantly improved dashboard of site-administration options, as Figure 3 shows.

In Site Settings, look for the options listed beneath Users and Permissions. You'll see the Site collection administrators link, which you'll use to add an additional administrator for the site collection. Click People and groups to begin assigning access to the site. You'll see three default groups displayed: the Owners group, which has full control of the site and its content; the Members group, which can contribute to the site; and the Visitors group, which has read access to the site. For each group, navigate to Settings, Group Settings to rename each group to make it more meaningful for your users, then, on the toolbar, click New, and choose Add Users to add members. For the intranet home page, the Members group might include your communications team.

Allow Access to the Intranet Top-Level Site
While you're adding members to a group, note that you can click Add all authenticated users. For example, you'd probably want to add all authenticated users to the Visitors group so that all employees could read the intranet home page.

Alternatively, you could enable anonymous access, at least to the intranet toplevel site. To do this, open the Central Administration page, select the Application Management tab, and click Authentication Providers. Click Default and modify the authentication provider settings to enable anonymous access. Then, back in the Site Settings of the site itself, click Users and Permissions, Advanced permissions, and select Settings, Anonymous Access to determine what level of access non-authenticated users can have to the site. For an intranet, you might choose to let anonymous users access the entire site. If you choose to restrict anonymous access to lists and libraries, you'll need to continue and enable access for anonymous users to each appropriate list and library. Remember that subsites inherit permissions, so you'll want to disable anonymous access to departmental or team/project subsites, which are likely to contain more sensitive information than the intranet home page.

In SharePoint Services 3.0, you don't need to use standard IIS tools to enable or disable anonymous access. In fact, as of press time, you must use Central Administration to fully enable authentication for anonymous access. From configuring service account credentials to backing up and restoring sites, you'll find welcome new support for SharePoint Services administrative tasks within the Central Administration and Site Settings pages.

A Bit of Branding
To customize the intranet site, click the Team Site link in the upper right corner of any page to return to the Team Site, then click Shared Documents in the Quick Launch navigation bar (on the left side of Figure 1), click Upload, and upload two logos: one large (about 150 pixels wide) and one small (about 20 to 24 pixels high). When you're done, you'll see the two pictures listed in the Shared Documents library. Right-click the names of the pictures and choose Copy Hyperlink. Paste the hyperlinks into Notepad—we'll need them in a moment.

While you're still in the Shared Document Library, click the Settings menu in the toolbar and choose Document Library Settings. You can fully manage and customize all lists (and document libraries are a type of list) by using this Settings page. Use the links in the General Settings section to change the title of the document library to something like “Intranet Site Elements” and to remove it from the Quick Launch view, since users won't need easy access to the library.

Return to the home page again by clicking Team Site in the upper-left corner. In SharePoint Services 3.0, the top and left panels of a SharePoint site help you navigate. The top panel's navigation bar, which Figure 1 shows below the URL, represents the site structure by default. Initially, you'll see only one tab for the top-level site, in this case, the Home tab. But as you add sites, each site becomes a tab. Additional navigation is enabled by the site's left navigation panel, which contains the Quick Launch view by default.

You can also navigate using the “breadcrumb control,” which shows the path to the current page. Figure 3 shows the breadcrumb to the Site Settings page: Windomain Intranet>Site Settings.

Unlike SharePoint Services 2.0, in version 3.0 the Quick Launch view appears on every page, and both the top navigation and Quick Launch bar can be easily edited or hidden entirely at the Site Settings page. Click Site Actions and select Site Settings, Look and Feel, Quick Launch. Click the Edit icon and delete the headings Documents, Discussions, and People and Groups, and the Tasks list. Change the heading “Lists” to “Company.” Check out the results by returning to the home page. Alternatively, return to Site Settings, Look and Feel, and, from the Tree View link, disable the Quick Launch altogether, since the top navigation tabs will provide navigation to departmental sites.

To modify the site title and to paste in the hyperlink to your small logo as the icon, use Site Settings, Look and Feel, click the Title, description, and icon link. Experiment with color schemes by using Site Themes to find an appropriate Web-site color scheme.

Return to the home page and click Site Actions, Edit Page. The home page, a section of which Figure 4 shows in Edit Mode, is an example of a Web Part page. To modify a Web Part's properties, click the Edit link. Here is where you can change the Site Image to link to your large logo.