7.2. Blogs
Weblogs, also known as blogs, are a very useful way to deliver content to an interested audience on a regular basis. Unlike the early days of the web, blogs have easy-to-use tools for publishing new content. Paired with RSS, the readers of a blog can easily get the latest post from your site using the aggregation tools discussed earlier in this chapter.
Blogs were created in the late 1990s and with the advent of XML, RSS shortly followed. Together blogs and RSS started gaining popularity and each year, more and more people started using them. Even though the stereotypical blog user is a teenager, many blogs and blog communities have formed in the Microsoft technology field and have become a popular way of getting up-to-date information about upcoming technologies and ways of using current ones. Microsoft sites like MSDN and TechNet give readers the ability to get to know more about what Microsoft is doing straight from the employee's mouths.
7.2.1. Overview of Blogs
Blogs are very simple by nature. The typical blog has a main page for delivering content in reverse chronological order. Blogs also allow the author to categorize the content so that readers can pick and choose what is most relevant to them. To add to a blog, owners log in to a secure portion of their site and using a simple HTML creation tool, publish new content easily. Other techniques, such as using third-party tools located on the owner's machine to publish content via well-known weblog APIs to the blog server, are gaining popularity. Microsoft Office Word 2007 can be used as one of these tools.
Blogs are not just for letting people know about your vacation. They are also a good medium for technical information such as coding techniques, new tools you found to make development easier, and information about current projects. These different categories require a blogging tool to have different security layers for divulging information due to the sensitive nature of some of it. With the typical blogging tools available, this security layer is absent; so proprietary information is typically kept outside of a blog.
In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, weblog tools have been added to allow users to use this technique of posting information to other users paired with a security layer to give only authenticated users the information they are allowed to see. Since blog content lives in SharePoint, new RSS features are available so that users can subscribe to the blog using their aggregators to get the latest data as it changes.
Using SharePoint, companies can use this technique to easily publish data about projects, teams, the business, and executives to their employees using tools they already have in their environment. Information that was once scattered over an intranet using different techniques can now be placed in a central repository, and with enterprise search, users can now easily find the content they have access to.
Blogs and teams go hand in hand in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. When a team uses SharePoint to collaborate, there is a need to publish small amounts of data along with larger documents. Before, members could use documents or announcements to publish this form of data, but it was never easy to create the content or let others on the team know where the content was. The blog feature in SharePoint adds another avenue to publish content, allowing only individuals who have access to the data to review it.
Teams are not the only members of a company that can benefit from the use of blogs. Many companies are now getting executives involved as well. Laying out corporate strategies, energizing employees, announcing mergers and acquisitions are all different pieces of information that could be published in an executive blog while still giving the executive the assurance that this information will be kept secure.
7.2.2. Creating a Blog Site with WSS 3.0
These are the steps to create a blog site using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:
Click on the Site Action button in the top-right corner of the parent site where the blog resides.
From the drop-down list, click the Create Site link (see Figure 7-4).
Fill out the New SharePoint Site page.
Follow the steps to add a site to SharePoint.
Select the template Blog in the list on the Collaboration tab (see Figure 7-5).
Click the Create button when you are finished.
Once you have created your blog, you need to customize it to fit your team. This includes adding the appropriate categories, setting blog permissions, changing the theme, and adding other links to important blogs. Figure 7-6 shows us a sample of a new blog site created in this way.
Figure 7.4. Figure 7-4
Figure 7.5. Figure 7-5
Figure 7.6. Figure 7-6
7.2.3. Customizing a Blog and Adding Categories
You will typically customize a new blog site to better fit your needs. The look and feel of your blog should fit the characteristics of the team or person it represents. Changing the theme of your blog is quite simple, and the following steps will walk you through the process:
Click on the Site Actions button and select Site Settings.
Under Look and Feel, click the Site theme link.
In the list of themes, select the one you like, using the preview window to decide.
Click the Apply button.
Now that you have a new look for your blog, set up the categories to help organize the articles. Categories are held in a SharePoint list and to change this list, click on the Categories header on the left side of the blog. After the list view has loaded, click the New button above the view. Insert the title of the category in the text box on the New Item page and press the OK button. Now you can assign blog posts to that category if the topic of the post relates to the category.
To edit a category, load the category list view and click on the Edit icon on the right side of the list. After the edit page loads, change the title of the category and click the OK button. If you would just like to delete the category at this time, click the Delete Item link above the title text box.
7.2.4. Setting Blog Permissions
Because of its rich feature set, a SharePoint blog site offers many ways to filter content based on security settings. You can set permissions on who can post, read posts, write comments, add to lists, and upload content to its libraries associated with the blog. The following steps walk you through setting permissions on the blog you just created.
Since some data within an internal-use blog may be sensitive, SharePoint allows you to set permissions that regulate which users are allowed to read or manipulate the blog, as described in the following steps:
Under the Admin Links, use one of the following options:
For post, click Manage posts.
For comment, click Manage comments.
For categories, click All content, and under Lists, click Categories.
Inside the Settings menu, click List Settings.
In the Permissions and Management section, click Permissions for this list.
Inside the New menu, click Add Users.
If the New menu is not available, the list's permissions are inherited from the parent site. Under the Actions menu, click Edit Permissions. You will then be alerted that you are about to create unique permissions for the list and asked if you want to continue. Click the OK button. Return to step 4 after this.
Inside the Add Users section, find or type the groups or users you want to add permissions for in the Users/Groups field.
In the Give Permissions section, select the options for your users or groups.
Click the OK button.
The technique to setting the edit access to the blog involves five steps:
Under the Admin Links, use one of the following options:
For post, click Manage posts.
For comment, click Manage comments.
For categories, click All content, and under Lists, click Categories.
Inside the Settings menu, click List Settings.
Under General Settings, click Advanced settings.
Inside the Item-level permissions section, use the appropriate option for Edit access.
Note to set read access, select the specific option for Read access.
Click the OK button.
7.2.5. Creating and Managing Blog Posts
Once you have all the permissions set, you are ready to start publishing. SharePoint includes fairly simple tools for writing articles, but you can also produce content via Microsoft Office Word 2007 or any other tool that can produce HTML streams. Let's walk through the steps creating a new blog post using SharePoint:
From the homepage of the blog, click Create a post under Admin Links.
Create a title for the post and place it in the Title box.
With the rich content editor, create the content for the post inside the Body section.
Select a category from the category list that best represents this post.
If an alternative publish date is required, select it using the date tools in the Published section.
Click the publish button or Save as Draft if the content is not finished.
Congratulations, you are now a blogger. Now you might want to modify your new post. One mistake many bloggers commonly make is editing their post without identifying their updates.
This mistake mainly affects RSS subscribers because RSS feeds are modified once a new post is available. If something changes, the post will then be marked for review again in their aggregator if they have already read through the post. Without an update technique, the reader will have to review the entire message and find what has changed. To get around this, bloggers use an Update header at the bottom of the post and add their new changes using a red font.
The following steps use that technique to modify the post:
From the homepage of our blog, click Manage posts under Admin Links.
From the drop-down list within the title of the post we just created, click Edit item.
Move to the bottom of the post and create a new line.
With the font color tool, change the color to red.
Enter [Update: I am modifying this post] on the new line.
Click the Publish button at the top or bottom of the page.
7.2.6. Configuring Content Approval for Blogs
Most blogging tools offer content approval. Because of a new form of spam known as Comment Spam, blog comments are a new medium for spammers to get their content out. These spam comments are not typically designed to drive a blogger to their site, but to use the blogger's search engine optimization to help boost their sites up in a search engine's ranking algorithms. If a blog is not public, this will not need to be a concern of yours.
Comments are not the only place you can enforce approval. In a group blog, team members will be allowed to create content, but it must be reviewed by the lead. For an executive blog, an assistant might be required to review a post for grammatical errors before it is published. Due to all these requirements, content approval is made available for posts, comments, and categories. If articles published to this blog need approval, execute these steps:
Under the Admin Links, use one of the following options:
For post, click Manage posts.
For comment, click Manage comments.
For categories, click All content, and under Lists, click Categories.
Within the Settings list, select List Settings.
Inside the General Settings section, click Versioning settings.
Within Content Approval, select Yes to turn on content approval.
Click the OK button.
Now that you have turned on content approval, it's time to walk through the steps to approve or reject an item:
Under the Admin Links, use one of the following options:
For post, click Manage posts.
For comment, click Manage comments.
For categories, click All content, and under Lists, click Categories.
Click on an item in the list using the Title column.
Click Approve/reject Item from the bar at the top of the page.
Inside Approval Status, select Approved, Rejected, or Pending.
If a comment is required to why this option was selected, enter it in the Comment box.
Click the OK button.
7.2.7. Changing Skins of SharePoint Blogs
Personalization is important to many bloggers. Since this is a place to display information about themselves and their work, it needs to look the way they prefer. With SharePoint, it is very easy to change the theme of your site, but this section walks through the steps for those who are not familiar with the process:
From the home page of the blog, click the Site Actions button.
Click the Site Settings link from the list.
Under the Look and Feel section, click the Site Theme link.
From the list of options, click one and preview.
After your final selection, click the Apply button.
7.2.8. Changing RSS Settings for a Blog
Although you can view a blog site by pointing your browser at it, as we discussed earlier, RSS is one of the most powerful features of today's blogging world. RSS aggregators work in the background of the user's machine to ensure that the user is alerted to the arrival of useful articles in a timely way. However, in a SharePoint environment, the use of a blog may be slightly different from that of the typical public blog. Because of this, you will learn the process of toggling RSS feeds on and off for a SharePoint blog. Figure 7-7 demonstrates the RSS settings for a site.
Navigate to the default page for the SharePoint blog.
Click the Site Actions link in the top-right corner.
Click the Site Settings link in the menu.
Under the Site Administration section, click the RSS link.
At this point, you may enter the copyright, managing editor, webmaster, and time to live for the feed in the appropriate fields.
Click the OK button to publish your changes.
If you disabled the RSS feed, when you visit the default page for the blog you will notice that the RSS icon and subscription link are missing from the Quick Launch bar.