Implementing Your Site Structure

After you have decided on your portal site structure, you can implement it by creating the root sites necessary to support your individual namespaces. Each root site created on your portal infrastructure requires a unique TCP/IP port. The first site you create will use port 80; because that is what port browsers expect to use, you do not need any further customization so that users can type a friendly URL. For any additional sites, you need to do a domain name server (DNS) entry to support the namespace and friendly name.

Creating your root sites

For each of your root sites, follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Application Management tab.
2.	Click Create or extend Web application in the SharePoint Web Application Management page.
3.	Click Create a new IIS web site and change the port setting to 80 if it is not already in use so that users will not have to specify the port number in the URL. Port 80 is the standard port expected by Web browsers. If you are creating additional top-level sites and port 80 is already taken, enter a port that is not in use or let SharePoint pick one for you.
4.	Select the NTLM or Negotiate (Kerberos) as the appropriate authentication provider in the security configuration section. NTLM is recommended for ease of configuration, but if you choose Kerberos, it must be supported by your environment. (Kerberos has performance benefits in large farm environments.)
5.	Click Create new application pool in the application pool section.
6.	Type the name of your application pool or use the default name in the Application pool name field.
7.	Enter your Web application identity account credentials in the username and password field in domainusername format. For more information about the Web application identity account, see Chapter 2.
8.	Verify the database information in the database name and authentication section.
9.	Click Windows Authentication in the database name and authentication section.
10.	Specify the search server in the search server section. For information on configuring the search server, see Chapter 2.
11.	Click OK.
12.	Verify that your new Web application has been created on the application created page.
13.	Open a command prompt window, type iisreset, and then press Enter.

After your Web application has been created, you can proceed with creating a site collection for it. Follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Application Management tab.
2.	Click Create Site Collection.
3.	In the Web application drop-down menu, select the Web application that you created in the previous steps.
4.	Enter a title and description for your site.
5.	Click the Create site at this URL option and then choose root in the URL path in the web site address section.
6.	Enter the username for the site collection administrator in the primary site collection administrator section.
7.	Select a quota that you have configured for that site collection, or “no quota” in the quota template section. For more information on site quotas, see “Defining Site Maintenance Policies” in this chapter.
8.	Select your template for the site collection from the available templates in the template selection section.
9.	Click OK.

Implementing your friendly names

For top-level sites that are not created at port 80, you will want to create friendly names so that users do not have to enter the port number in the URL like http://<namespace>:<port number>. You configure the friendly name by setting the default access mapping for the Web application and a domain name system (DNS) entry so that the friendly name is mapped to the appropriate TCP/IP address.

To implement friendly names for each site that is not on port 80, follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Operations tab.
2.	Click Alternate access mappings in the Global Configuration section.
3.	Click Add incoming URLs.
4.	Select the appropriate Web application from the drop-down menu, enter the friendly name in http://<friendlyname> format in the New default zone URL protocol, host and port field, and confirm that Default is selected in the zone dropdown.
5.	Click OK.
6.	Request that the administrator of your DNS servers add a host record that maps the friendly name to the IP address of the front-end server(s).

Implementing navigation

In this release of SharePoint, notice the changes to the navigation scheme. On the left side of the page, you see that the quick launch bar links to content within the site you are viewing, and also links to other sites as tabs along the top portion of the content area, as shown in Figure 3.16.

Providing cohesive and consistent navigation is important to the usability of portals. The SharePoint navigation control allows child sites within a site collection to use the navigation of the parent site to keep this navigation consistent.

You can modify the navigation at the parent site level to provide navigation to the key content pieces. That includes the ability to add links to external content as appropriate, trimming the navigation to hide items that are not key, and reordering the navigation items. To modify your navigation, follow these steps:

1.	Open the parent site of your site collection and select Modify Site Settings from the Site Actions menu in the top right corner.
2.	Click Navigation from the Look and Feel menu.
3.	Select the Show pages check box if desired. This setting is not recommend for larger sites because it can create a navigation list that is too long and cluttered.
4.	Use the control in the Navigation and Editing and Sorting section, as shown in Figure 3.17, to add, hide, or move the order of navigation items. The global navigation section shows all items for the top bar navigation. The current navigation section shows items for the left navigation. If you want to add a link, it is added at the same level as the sub-sites. Figure 3.17. The SharePoint navigation control
5.	Click OK.

After you have configured your parent site navigation to meet your portal needs, you can configure the sub-sites to use the same navigation. To do this, follow these steps:

1.	Open the sub-site that will inherit the parent navigation and select Modify Site Settings from the Site Actions menu in the top-right corner.
2.	Click Navigation from the Look and Feel menu.
3.	Select Display the same navigation items as the parent site radio button in the Global Navigation section.
4.	Select Display the current site, the navigation items below the current site, and the current site’s siblings in the Current Navigation section to use the lists and libraries of the current site in the left navigation.
5.	Use the control in the Navigation and Editing and Sorting section to add, hide, or move the order of left navigation items.
6.	Click OK.

Configuring the Site Welcome Page Any site with publishing features turned on cannot be saved as a template and used. If you turn on the publishing feature after a site is created, you need to set the welcome page to the correct page that you want to use. Sites created without the publishing feature on create a default.aspx in the root directory of the site. Sites with the publishing feature turned on create a default.aspx in the pages library of the site. If you want to change which page to use for the welcome page, follow these steps: 1. From the Site Actions menu in the top left corner, select Site Settings. 2. Click Welcome Page from the Look and Feel menu. 3. Enter the URL of the page that you would like users to first see when they visit the site. The URL must be a page in the current site.

Turning on site features

Based on the site template that you choose, SharePoint turns on the site features to support the template. You can change the site features after the site is created if you need additional features. The available site features for both MOSS and WSS are

• Team Collaboration Lists: Provides team collaboration capabilities for a site by making standard lists such as document libraries and issues.

• Mobility Shortcut URL: Provides a shortcut URL (/m) to a mobile device-accessible version of the list.

The site features available for MOSS sites only are

• Office SharePoint Server Enterprise: The Office SharePoint Server Enterprise License includes features such as the business data catalog, forms services, and Excel services.

• Slide Library: Create a slide library when you want to share slides from Microsoft Office PowerPoint, or a compatible application. Slide libraries also provide special features for finding, managing, and reusing slides.

• Translation Management Library: Create a translation management library when you want to create documents in multiple languages and manage translation tasks. Translation management libraries include a workflow to manage the translation process and provide sub-folders, file versioning, and check-in/check-out.

• Document Center Enhancements: Provides tree view navigation for a site.

• Office SharePoint Server Publishing: Office SharePoint Server Publishing.

• Office SharePoint Server Standard: Features such as user profiles and search, included in the Office SharePoint Server Standard License.

To activate or deactivate site features, do the following:

1.	From the Site Actions menu in the top left-corner, select Site Settings.
2.	Click Site features from the Site Administration menu.
3.	Select Activate for any features that you want to activate or Deactivate for features you want to disable.