8. Create and manage sites

In this chapter

Create sites

Manage site users and permissions

Share sites

Change site themes

Create and use custom site templates

Manage site features

Manage site content syndication

Delete sites

Practice files

No practice files are necessary to complete the practice tasks in this chapter.

SharePoint sites are containers for webpages and apps such as lists and libraries, and features and settings that provide the sites’ functionality. You can use a site as a single container for your data or you can create as many child sites as you need to make your data easier to find and manage. You will frequently find yourself creating sites to allow a group of people to collaborate. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or collaborate on a project.

As discussed in Chapter 2, “Navigate SharePoint sites,” sites are organized hierarchically within a site collection. There is always one top-level site, and there can be one or more child sites. Typically, a top-level site is created for an entire team and therefore has many visitors (people who only read content), a few members (people who can create and update content), and one or two owners. But as child sites and grandchild sites are created, the total number of visitors typically decreases while the number of people designated as members increases.

This chapter guides you through procedures related to creating sites, managing site users and permissions, sharing sites, changing site themes, creating and using custom site templates, managing site features, managing site content syndication, and deleting sites.

The initial site created in a SharePoint site collection is called the top-level site. A top-level site is created from within SharePoint Central Administration because it doesn’t have a parent site. Although the functionality of a top-level site is not different from its child sites, it includes administrative links on its Site Settings page to manage the site collection.

To create a child site, you must navigate to the New SharePoint Site page of the site you want to use as the parent site by selecting the New Subsite link in the Subsites section of the Site Contents page.

On the New SharePoint Site page, you first need to provide a title or name for your new site, a description (optional), and the URL suffix for the new website address.

When you initially create objects like sites, lists, and libraries in SharePoint, you are establishing two name values: the display name—usually labeled Title or Name—and the URL name. Typically, as is the case with sites, there is an option to provide the URL name separately, after the site has been created. The best practices for specifying a URL name are outlined in the “Naming a URL” sidebar later in this section.

After you’ve provided the title, the optional description, and the URL for your new site, you need to choose how to initially provision your site by using one of the SharePoint 2016 site templates.

A site template is used in SharePoint as a blueprint to jump start a new site’s usefulness by auto-generating lists, libraries, apps, and webpages that likely will be most useful in a particular situation. SharePoint provides many built-in site templates. Each built-in site template provisions a site structure for a specific purpose, with relevant apps, and webpages prepopulated with web parts that use the navigation best suited for the purpose of the site template.

The built-in site templates are grouped into three categories: Collaboration, Enterprise, and Publishing. Most of the built-in templates are available for both the top-level site and the child sites within the site collection. There are also several templates that can only be used for provisioning the site collection’s top-level site.

The following table lists the SharePoint 2016 built-in site templates by category.

All collaboration site templates provision a Quick Launch navigation panel that contains links to the parts of the site. However, the apps and pages are provisioned differently depending on the site’s purpose.

The Team Site template provisions a Documents library that is made more visible by placing a web part for it on the site’s default home page for easier collaboration. The Blog site template provides a way to publish a type of journal known as a web log or just a blog. The blog owner creates posts on which other users can comment. Each post is a separate content page, and a rollup summary of these pages is typically presented in reverse chronological order (with newest entries listed first) on the home page of the blog site. Blogs are commonly used as news sites, journals, and diaries. A blog focuses on one or more core competencies of the author and is sometimes used as a soapbox for the blog owner to state an opinion. A blog can also be used as a one-way communication tool for keeping project stakeholders and team members informed.

The Developer Site template provides a site for developers to create and publish Office apps. The Project Site template provisions a site for collaborating on a project, with all information and artifacts relevant to the project available in one place.

The Community Site template provisions an environment for community members to discuss topics of common interest.

The type of top-level site in the site collection in which your new site will be located defines the list of built-in templates that are available for the new site. For example, the publishing templates are not available in the site collection where the top-level site is a team site. For a site collection where the top-level site is a publishing site, the site templates available for child site creation can be restricted by using the Page Layout And Site Template Settings link on the Site Settings page.

You will likely focus, at least initially, on using the built-in site templates. However, it is also possible to save the websites you create as custom site templates that you and others can then choose from the list of custom site templates on the New SharePoint Site page. A custom site template is a way to package site features and customizations and make them available as a foundation for other sites. When you save a website as a template, a custom site template is created by SharePoint and saved as a file with a .wsp extension. This is done by using the Save Site As Template link in the Site Action section of the Site Settings page of any site. Custom site templates saved in this way are initially available only in the same site collection in which they are saved. The “Create and use custom site templates” topic later in this chapter explains how to copy a saved web template into another site collection. All alterations to an underlying built-in template except security-related settings are retained on those sites that are provisioned by using custom site templates.

After you’ve selected a site template, you need to choose from the two options for site permissions that are listed on the New SharePoint Site page.

The default option, Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, checks the parent site’s permission every time the user visits the child site, to determine what the user is allowed to do on that site. When the permissions on the parent site change over time, the permissions on the child site reflect those changes. The other option is Use Unique Permissions. When you select this option as the site’s creator, you break the permission inheritance. You will then be the only user with access to the site, and you will be the site owner with the Full Control permission level.

You also have two other options for assigning permissions to a new site that are less obvious. If you initially select Use Unique Permissions, you will be the only user with access to the site and can make any changes you want. You can then switch to Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, whereby everyone who has access to the parent site (including you) will subsequently have access to the child site by using the permissions assigned on the parent site. If you initially select Use Same Permissions As Parent Site, the parent site’s permissions will be used. Yet if you subsequently switch to Use Unique Permissions, all the permissions of the parent site are copied to the child site. This can save you a great deal of time if most of the people who have access to the parent site also need access to the child site.

After you assign user permissions to your new site, you need to set up navigation options.

Three navigation options can be specified when creating a new site. The first two deal with the visibility of the child site being created within the navigation areas of the parent site. You can choose to show the child site on either the Quick Launch or the top link bar of the parent site, or both. The default of the former is No, and the default of the latter is Yes. In addition, you can specify whether the top link bar of the parent site should display on the top link bar of the new child site. This setting is referred to as navigation inheritance. The default is No.

After you have confirmed your choices, SharePoint creates a new site. The new site is listed in the Subsites section of the Site Contents page of the parent site.

To create a site

1. On the parent site in which you want to create a child site, on the Site Contents page, in the Subsites section, select new subsite.

2. On the New SharePoint Site page, provide the following information for your new site:

• In the Title and Description section, enter the new site’s title in the Title box and, optionally, enter a description for the site in the Description box.

• In the Web Site Address section, complete the new site URL by entering the suffix in the URL name box.

• In the Template Selection section, select the site template you want to base your new site on.

• In the Permissions section, select whether your new site will use the same permissions as the parent site or unique permissions. The default is to use the same permissions as the parent site.

• In the Navigation section, select the following:

• Whether your site will be displayed on the Quick Launch of the parent site. The default is No.

• Whether your site will be displayed on the top link bar of the parent site. The default is Yes.

• In the Navigation Inheritance section, select whether the new site should display the top link bar of the parent site. The default is No.

3. Select Create.

The site will be created in the location that your administrator has set up for Self-Service Site Creation (SSSC) under a predefined path. In a hybrid environment, the location can be in the cloud. Depending on how SSSC is set up in SharePoint Central Administration, there might be more than one location available that you can choose from when you create a new site. Your site might be a top-level site in a site collection, or a subsite.

You can create a personal site by using the New link on your Sites page, which is accessible to you via global navigation from any location within your SharePoint on-premises environment.

In SharePoint Online, you can create a personal site by using the Create Site on the Sites page, which is accessible via the SharePoint link on the global navigation bar. It is available by default.

You only need to provide a name for your new site. The site name will be used as a title for your new site and for the suffix of your site’s URL. All other settings are provisioned automatically. Your site will be created in the location your administrator has predefined. Your site will not inherit the permission settings or navigation settings of other sites.

After the new site has been created, it is added to the list of sites you’re following that is displayed on your Sites page, and you can access this site from any location. You can share the site with other users, add content to it, and generally use its capabilities as you would with any other site that you own.

To create a personal site

1. In the upper-right, in the global navigation bar, select one of the following links to go to the Sites page:

• Sites in SharePoint 2016

• SharePoint in SharePoint Online

2. On your Sites page, select one of the following links to open the Start A New Site dialog:

• new in SharePoint 2016

• Create site in SharePoint Online

3. In the Start a new site dialog, in the Give it a name box, enter a name for your new site.

4. Select Create.

When you create a site, selecting the default option—Use Same Permissions As Parent Site—provides permission inheritance from the parent site to the newly created child site. SharePoint checks the parent site’s permission every time the user visits the child site.

If you select the Use Unique Permissions option when creating a new site, SharePoint initially categorizes users of the new site into three SharePoint groups:

Visitors People or groups who only need to be able to read content on a site

Members People or groups who need to be able to create and edit content, but not create subsites or manage site membership

Owners People who are responsible for all aspects of managing and maintaining a site

Selecting the Use Unique Permissions option breaks the permission inheritance and sets you, as the site’s creator, with sole access to the new site as its owner. After you select Create on the New SharePoint Site page, the Set Up Groups For This Site page is displayed, from which you can add users to the three groups to provide them with access to the newly created site.

You can switch between inherited permissions and unique permissions for a site on its Permissions page. On this page, you can select Stop Inheriting Permissions to switch to unique permissions for the site, or Delete Unique Permissions to switch to inherited permissions.

A site that has unique permissions has no tie to its parent site, so you are allowed to add and remove users from the site regardless of whether they have permissions on any other site. When users are added to a site, they must be added to a SharePoint group or associated with at least one permission level.

SharePoint groups are maintained at the site collection level and represent a collection of users or groups with a defined set of one or more permission levels and a few governing attributes. When a new user or group is added to a SharePoint group, that user or group is granted the permissions of that group in all sites that the group has access to.

Think of permission levels as a named collection of permissions that can be assigned to SharePoint groups or individual users. There are several default permission levels in SharePoint 2016: Full Control, Design, Edit, Contribute, Read, Limited Access, Moderate, Approve, Manage Hierarchy, Restricted Read, and View Only.

The following table provides the list of individual permissions and shows the permission levels they are included in by default. The individual permissions are grouped into three categories: site permissions for site access, list permissions for lists and libraries access, and personal permissions for personal web parts and pages.

When you create a new site based on a site template, SharePoint automatically assigns a predefined set of default SharePoint groups with specific permission levels to the site.

For example, default SharePoint groups in a team site have the following permission levels:

The Visitors group has the Read permission level.

The Members group has the Edit permission level.

The Owners group has the Full Control permission level.

In addition to Visitors, Members, and Owners groups, a community site includes the Moderators group with a permission level of Moderate, and a publishing site with workflow includes the Approvers group with a permission level of Approve.

The following table shows the default permission levels and associated permissions for Visitors, Members, and Owners groups.

Not only can you associate existing SharePoint groups and individual users with permission levels, you can also associate Windows groups (including Active Directory groups and Local Machine groups) with permission levels. This is a very practical approach to providing tight security with minimal maintenance. However, you might not have control over the Windows groups defined in your organization.

Although you can create your own permission levels and even alter all permission levels except for Full Control and Limited, you will likely find the built-in levels to be adequate for most business scenarios. You might also want to provide all users with some level of access to the data on your site—for example, by using permission levels of either Restricted Read or View Only.

The following changes can be made to a permission level:

Update the name or description

Add or remove permissions

You can assign permission levels directly to individual users, but when you have many users, this approach can make it difficult to track and manage who has access to your site. A better approach is to assign permissions to groups, and then assign individual users to the appropriate groups.

After all users and groups are assigned to various permission levels, it is possible—even likely—that someone will be associated with more than one permission level. Rather than enforcing the most restrictive permission level, all associated rights for a user or a group are aggregated, and the cumulative list of unique rights apply. This can be overridden only by policies created in SharePoint Central Administration.

To display the Permissions page for a site

1. On the Site Settings page, in the Users and Permissions section, select Site permissions.

To turn on unique permissions for a site

1. On the Permissions page of the site, on the Permissions tab of the ribbon, select Stop Inheriting Permissions.

2. In the warning message that appears, asking you to confirm your action, select OK.

3. On the Set Up Groups page, in each section, do one of the following:

• If you want to keep using the default group, select Use existing group.

• If you want to create a new group, select Create a new group. Then, in the two boxes, do the following:

a. In the first box, enter the new name for the group or keep the default name.

b. In the second text box, enter the names of the members of the new group, separated by semicolons. You can also use the Browse button in the lower-right corner of the box to browse to the users and groups in your organization and add them to the new group.

c. Validate the names by selecting the Validate Names button (the icon of a person with the check mark in the lower-right corner of the box).

4. When you’re done, select OK.

To restore permissions inheritance for a site

1. On the Permissions page of the site, on the Permissions tab, select Delete Unique Permissions.

2. In the message that appears, asking you to confirm that you want to remove unique permissions, select OK.

To manage permissions for a parent site

1. Go to a site that has inherited permissions, and whose parent site’s permissions you want to manage.

2. Display the Permissions page.

3. On the Permissions tab, select Manage Parent.

To check user permissions for a site

1. On the Permissions page for the site, on the Permissions tab, select Check Permissions.

2. In the Check Permissions dialog, enter the user name you want to check permissions for, and select Check Now.

3. Check the permission levels for the user listed at the bottom of the Check Permissions dialog, and then select Close when you’re done, to return to the Permissions page.

To grant user permissions for a site

1. On the Permissions page for the site, on the Permissions tab, select Grant Permissions.

2. In the Share dialog, make sure that Invite people is selected, and then in the Enter names or email addresses box, enter the names or email addresses of the people or groups to whom you want to grant access.

3. Select Show options, and in the Select a permission level list, select the permission level you want to grant to the people and groups defined in step 2.

4. Do one of the following:

• In the Include a personal message box, add text for an optional email message that will be sent to everyone in the Invite People box.

• If you don’t want to send the email, clear the Send an email invitation check box.

5. Select Share to apply your changes and return to the Permissions page.

To change the user permissions for a site

1. On the Permissions page for the site, in the Name list, select the check box next to the name of the user or group for which you want to change the permission level.

2. On the Permissions tab, select Edit User Permissions.

3. On the Edit Permissions page for this user or group, under Permissions, choose the permission level you want this user or group to have.

4. Select OK to apply your changes and return to the Permissions page.

To remove user permissions for a site

1. On the Permissions page for the site, in the Name list, select the check box next to the name of the user or group that you want to remove the permissions from. You can select multiple users and groups.

2. On the Permissions tab, select Remove User Permissions.

3. In the message box that appears, asking you to confirm that you want to remove permissions from these users or groups, select OK.

To remove a user from a group on a site

1. On the Site Settings page, in the Users and Permissions section, select People and groups.

2. On the People and Groups page, in the Groups section at the top of the Quick Launch, select the group you want to remove the user from.

3. On the group page, select the user you want to remove. Then, on the Actions menu located above the list of users, select Remove users from group, and then select OK in the confirmation message that appears.

To create a permission level

1. Go to the top-level site in the site collection in which you want to create a new permission level.

2. Display the Permissions page for the site.

3. On the Permissions tab, select Permission Levels.

4. On the Permission Levels page, select Add a Permission Level.

5. On the Add a Permission Level page, in the Name and Description section, provide the name and the optional description for your new permission level.

6. In the Permissions section, select the check boxes next to the list, site, and personal permissions that you want your new permission level to include.

7. When you’re done, select Create.

To make changes to a permission level

1. Display the Permissions page for the top-level site in the site collection in which you want to make changes to a permission level.

2. On the Permissions tab, select Permission Levels.

3. On the Permission Levels page, click or tap the name of the permission level you want to edit.

4. On the Edit Permission Level page, do any of the following:

• In the Name and Description section, change the name or the optional description for this permission level.

• In the Permissions section, add or remove permissions for the permission level by selecting or clearing the check boxes next to the list, site, and personal permissions.

5. When you’re done, select Submit.

To delete a permission level

1. Display the Permissions page for the top-level site in the site collection in which you want to delete a permission level.

2. On the Permissions tab, select Permission levels.

3. On the Permission Levels page, select the check box next to the permission level that you want to delete.

4. Select Delete Selected Permission Levels, and if a confirmation box appears, select OK.

To make a copy of a permission level

1. Display the Permissions page for the top-level site in the site collection that contains the permission level you want to make a copy of.

2. On the Permissions tab, select Permission Levels.

3. On the Permission Levels page, click or tap the name of the permission level you want to copy.

4. On the Edit Permission Level page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and select Copy Permission Level.

5. On the Copy Permission Level page, do any of the following:

• In the Name and Description section, change the name or the optional description for your new permission level.

• In the Permissions section, add or remove permissions for the permission level by selecting or clearing the check boxes next to the list, site, and personal permissions.

6. When you’re done, select Create.

Sharing a site means granting access permissions to the users and groups you want to use your site. You can assign different levels of access to different people. For example, when you share your site with users who have the Edit permission level, they can create and modify the site content, including lists and libraries.

When you share your site by using the Share command, the Share dialog is displayed. In the Share dialog, you can add a user to the SharePoint group that has the permission level that you are assigning to the user. For example, you can assign the Edit level to the user, which will add the user to the Members group.

If your site inherits permissions from its parent site, when you add users to your new site, they will also have access to the parent site and the sites that share permissions with it. Because of this, you will need to be an owner of the parent site to be able to share the new child site with other people. If you are not the site owner, you can still use the Share command to invite people to the site, but your request will be sent to the site owner for approval.

If you are the site owner, you can allow the users in the Members group to share the site, and the individual files and folders. You can also can set up the mail address where the access requests are sent for approval. You can manage these settings by using Access Requests Settings in the Permissions page of the site.

The Share command can also be used to see the list of people a site has been shared with.

If a site has been shared with a user and you want to revoke access to the site for this user, you can do so by removing the permissions for the site from this user by using Remove User Permissions in the Permissions page of the site.

To share a site

1. Go to a page in the site, and in the upper-right of the page, select Share.

2. In the Share dialog, make sure that Invite people is selected, and then in the Enter names or email addresses box, enter the names or email addresses of the people or groups to whom you want to grant access.

3. Select Show options, and in the Select a permission level list, select the permission level you want to grant to the people and groups defined in step 2.

4. Do one of the following:

• In the Include a personal message box, add text for an optional email message that will be sent to everyone in the Invite People box.

• If you don’t want to send the email, clear the Send an email invitation check box.

5. Select Share to apply your changes and return to the site.

To see who has access to a site

1. Go to any page in the site, and in the upper-right of the page, select Share.

2. In the Share dialog, select Shared with.

3. In the Share dialog, view the list of people who have access to the site, then do either of the following:

• Select Advanced to go to the site Permissions page to manage site access.

• Select Close to return to the site.

Each SharePoint site can have its own theme, or you can set several sites so that they all have a common theme and are related visually. For the built-in themes, you can change the background graphics, the color scheme, the site layout, and the fonts.

To set up a theme for a site

1. On the Site Settings page for the site, select Change the look.

2. On the Change the look page, select the theme you want to use.

3. In the left panel of the theme design page, you can customize the theme design by doing any of the following:

• To change the background, select Change and browse to the new image you want to use. To remove the background image, select Remove.

• To change the colors used in the design, in the Colors list, scroll through the color schemes, and select the one you want to use.

• To change the layout of the site, in the Site layout list, select a new layout.

• To change the font, in the Fonts list, select a new font.

4. When you’re done, select Try it out to display a preview of your site with its new theme.

5. In the preview screen, do either of the following:

• If you like the look, select Yes, keep it to apply the changes and return to the Site Settings page.

• If you don’t like the design, select No, not quite there to return the theme design page, and then repeat steps 3 through 5.

There are a few site capabilities that are not supported and that can’t be saved in site templates. The following list distinguishes the supported and non-supported capabilities:

Supported Lists, libraries, external lists, data source connections, list views and data views, custom forms, workflows, content types, custom actions, navigation, site pages, master pages, modules, and web templates

Unsupported Customized permissions, running workflow instances, list item version history, workflow tasks associated with running workflows, people or group field values, taxonomy field values, publishing sites and pages, and stapled features

A custom site template allows you to create a solution and then share that solution with your peers, the broader organization, or outside organizations. Custom site templates are used to deploy solutions in other sites or to provide site consistency within an organization. A custom site template is saved as a Web Solution Package file with a .wsp extension in the Solutions Gallery of the site collection. Only the current site is saved as the template; the subsites below the site are not saved.

A user with sufficient permissions to create a child site can select the custom site template from the Custom tab in the Template Selection section on the New SharePoint Site page.

You can save a site as a template by using the Save As Template page that is accessible via the Save Site As Template link on the Site Settings page.

After it has been saved, a custom site template is made immediately available throughout the entire site collection in which it is saved. The site template file can be downloaded from the Solutions Gallery of the current site collection and redeployed to other site collections.

The steps to save and redeploy your site template in another site collection are as follows:

1. Save the site as a template in the solution gallery of its site collection.

2. Download the template .wsp file from the solution gallery of its site collection.

3. Upload the template .wsp file to a solution gallery of a site collection you want to redeploy it to.

4. Activate the site template in the new site collection. After the template has been activated, it becomes available for site creation within the new site collection and is displayed on the Custom tab in the Template Selection section of the New SharePoint Site page.

You can also download a .wsp file from the Solutions Gallery and then open it in another environment or program such as Microsoft Visual Studio, and further customize it there.

To save a site as a template

1. On the site’s Site Settings page, in the Site Actions section, select Save site as template.

2. On the Save as Template page, do the following:

• In the File Name section, in the File name box, enter a name for the template file.

• In the Name and Description section, in the Template name and Template description boxes, enter a name and optional description for the template.

• In the Include Content section, select the Include Content check box to include the content of the site in the site template.

3. Select OK to save the template. If all of the components on the site are valid, the template is created, and a confirmation page is displayed.

4. On the confirmation page, do one of the following:

• Select OK to return to your site.

• Select solution gallery to go to the saved site template in the Solution Gallery.

To download a site template file

1. On the top-level site of the site collection that contains the site template, display the Site Settings page, and in the Web Designer Galleries section, select Solutions to open the Solution Gallery.

2. On the Solution Gallery page, click or tap the site template name, and then in the Do you want to save template file? bar that appears, display the Save menu and select Save As.

3. In the Save As dialog, browse to the location where you want to save the template .wsp file, select Save, and then close the message box that confirms the file download.

To upload a site template to a site collection

1. On the top-level site of the site collection, display the Site Settings page, and in the Web Designer Galleries section, select Solutions.

2. On the Solution Gallery page, on the Solutions tab of the ribbon, select Upload Solution, and then, in the Add a document dialog, select Browse.

3. In the Choose File to Upload dialog box, select the site template file you want to upload, select Open, and then, in the Add a document dialog, select OK to perform the upload.

To activate a site template

1. On the top-level site of your site collection, display the Site Settings page, and in the Web Designer Galleries section, select Solutions.

2. On the Solution Gallery page, select the template you want to activate by clicking or tapping in its leftmost column.

3. On the Solutions tab of the ribbon, in the Commands group, select Activate.

4. In the Activate Solution dialog, on the View tab, in the Commands group, select Activate.

To deactivate a site template

1. On the top-level site of your site collection, display the Site Settings page, and in the Web Designer Galleries section, select Solutions.

2. On the Solution Gallery page, select the template you want to deactivate by clicking or tapping in its leftmost column.

3. On the Solutions tab of the ribbon, in the Commands group, select Deactivate.

4. In the Deactivate Solution dialog, on the View tab, in the Commands group, select Deactivate.

To remove a site template from a site collection

1. On the top-level site of the site collection, display the Site Settings page, and in the Web Designer Galleries section, select Solutions.

2. On the Solution Gallery page, deactivate the template you want to delete.

3. On the Solutions tab of the ribbon, in the Commands group, select Delete. Select OK in the dialog that appears, to confirm that you want to remove the template.

Farm level These features are activated for all sites in the entire SharePoint Foundation farm and are managed by the farm’s central administrators.

Web application level These features are activated for all sites where the web address is the same. For instance, all sites that start with http://wideworldimporters would be managed under the same web application. These features are also managed by the farm’s central administrators.

Site collection level These features are activated only for sites within a specified site collection. Management of these features is accomplished from the top-level site of the site collection and is typically distributed to the site collection administrators.

Site level These features are activated only for the site in which the activation is performed. Management of these features can be done by anyone with the Full Control permission level on the site.

A feature needs to be installed and activated in order to provide its functionality. For example, there are several built-in features that are installed and activated by default in a site collection in which the top-level site is a team site. These features include a Team Collaboration Lists feature that provides collaboration capabilities for a team site by making document libraries and several lists available, a Site Feed feature that provides the site with newsfeed capability, and others. Each SharePoint feature is identified by a numeric, globally unique identifier (GUID).

The site features are managed from the Site Features page, which you can navigate to via the Manage Site Features link on the Site Settings page.

A feature must be installed and activated in scope on your SharePoint server farm before you can begin working with it. For example, when a custom site template is deployed in a site collection, the Web Template feature that provides its functionality is created and activated in the site collection. It is this feature that allows the new template to appear on the Custom tab in the Template Selection section of the New SharePoint Site page.

To activate or deactivate a feature for a site

1. Display the site’s Site Settings page.

2. In the Site Actions section, select Manage site features.

3. On the Site Features page, scroll to the feature, and do one of the following:

• To activate the site feature, select Activate to the right of the feature.

• To deactivate the site feature, select Deactivate to the right of the feature, and then on the confirmation page, select Deactivate this feature to confirm your action.

RSS feeds come at periodic intervals and appear in an RSS reader. You can use RSS to receive updates in a standardized format from several sites at the same time. The reader gathers all updates into a common pool of data that can be searched, sorted, filtered, and grouped by the aggregator as directed. This can be a useful way to roll up data entered into a SharePoint list. By default, every web application in SharePoint is configured to allow RSS feeds for all site collections that they contain.

Site collection administrators can specify whether RSS feeds are allowed on lists and libraries in the sites within the site collection by using the RSS page available via the RSS link in the Site Settings page. By default, RSS feeds are allowed. Each site can then subsequently specify whether RSS feeds are allowed on lists and libraries in the site; they are also allowed by default. If RSS feeds are turned off for a site, no lists in this site are allowed to provide their data in the form of an RSS feed.

If sites do allow feeds, several attributes can be defined that will be included in every feed, as follows: copyright, managing editor, webmaster, and time to live. The time to live defines a period in minutes that instructs the RSS reader to wait at least this long before checking for updates. A shorter period increases the frequency of requests from RSS readers to a site. A longer duration can help reduce the number of RSS reader requests.

To configure RSS feed for a site

1. On the site’s Site Settings page, in the Site Administration section, select RSS.

2. On the RSS page, in the Enable RSS section, do either of the following:

• To enable RSS, select the Allow RSS Feeds In This Site check box, and then in the Advanced Settings section, enter the attributes for the feed in the following boxes:

• Copyright

• Managing Editor

• Webmaster

• Time To Live (minutes)

• To disable RSS, clear the Allow RSS Feeds In This Site check box.

3. When you are done, select OK to apply the changes and return to the Site Settings page.

When you delete a site, you’re also deleting all content and user information that is part of the site, including documents, document libraries, lists, and list data. When you delete a top-level site, you delete all subsites within the site collection and all of the content within those subsites.

When a site is deleted, it is sent to the site collection’s Recycle Bin. The site can be restored from the site collection’s Recycle Bin to its original location only by an administrator of the site collection.

To delete a site

1. On the site’s Site Settings page, in the Site Actions section, select Delete this site.

2. On the Delete This Site page, select Delete to confirm the deletion request, and then in the confirmation box that appears, select OK.

3. On the confirmation page, select Go Back To Site to return to the parent site.

Create sites

Manage site users and permissions

Share sites

Change site themes

Create and use custom site templates

Manage site features

Manage site content syndication

Delete sites

1. Create a subsite that uses the following settings:

2. Confirm that you can navigate to your new site by selecting a link on the top link bar of the parent site.

3. Create a personal site with the name Vendors.

4. Go to the Sites page and validate that your new site has been added to the list of sites you are following.

1. Go to the Buyers site.

2. Turn on unique permissions for the Buyers site and set up the following groups:

3. Remove site permissions from all users and groups inherited from the parent site, so that only your new groups, Buyers Members and Buyers Owners, have permissions to the site.

4. Grant Design permissions to a user.

5. Check permissions for the user you granted permissions to in step 4.

1. Go to the Vendors site.

2. Share the site with a user or a group you want to invite to your site with Read permissions, such as:

• The Everyone group for on-premises deployment.

• The Everyone except external users group for SharePoint Online.

1. Go to the Buyers site.

2. Change the site theme to Sea Monster. Select the design choices that you like most for the background graphics, color scheme, site layout, and fonts.

1. On the Buyers site, save the site as a template with the following settings:

2. Go to the parent site for the Buyers site.

3. Create a new subsite with the following settings:

4. Confirm that the new Finance site is identical to the Buyers site, with the Sea Monster theme applied.

1. Go to the Finance site.

2. Verify the feed functionality by positioning your cursor in the newsfeed box, entering Hello World!, and then selecting Post.

3. Deactivate the Site Feed site feature for the Finance site.

4. Go to the home page of the Finance site. Confirm that the newsfeed box and the Post button are no longer available, and that your post has also been removed.

5. Activate the Site Feed site feature.

6. Go to the home page of the site and confirm that the newsfeed box is displayed and that site feed functionality is available.

1. Go to the Vendor site.

2. Set up RSS feed with the following settings:

1. Delete the Finance site.

2. Confirm that the link to the Finance site is no longer available in the top link bar of the parent site.