Design and build sites for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007
This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.
The goal of this guide is to provide prescriptive guidance that can help you and your team build custom enterprise sites by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 — such as company-wide portal sites or Internet presence sites. Custom sites based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 combine coded elements, such as workflows, document converters, and Web Parts, along with content, such as master pages, layout pages, graphics files, and Web pages. Best practices for developing these sites include setting up multiple environments for developing, integrating, piloting, and deploying coded elements and content from one environment to another. Therefore, coordinating the development and deployment of an enterprise site based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a complex activity. This guide describes the ways you can set up the multiple environments used in the development process and the methods for deploying content and code from one environment to another.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes many customizable features and capabilities across multiple product areas, such as business intelligence, forms, workflow, and document management. The levels of expertise required to perform customization tasks ranges from software developer to site designer to information worker. The content that describes these customization tasks for various audiences is available across multiple Microsoft Web sites, such as Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet. Rather than duplicate that content here, this guide includes Feature roadmap pages for most customizable product areas. Each roadmap page for a product area provides links to customization resources for members of all audiences who might be implementing the customizations.
This guide includes the following sections:
About designing and building sites
This section provides overview materials for site architects, planners, and designers to help them understand the end-to-end Office SharePoint Server 2007 site-development methodology and site-customization options. Individual topics discuss the following subjects:
Determining the best customization approach for your project.
The elements of a Web site based on Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The recommended environments in which development should occur.
The tools and processes used by a development team to design, build, and deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites.
The recommended roles to fill in the team that is responsible for designing and building the site.
Typical enterprise site customization scenarios.
Although the primary focus of this guide is creating a new custom site based on Office SharePoint Server 2007, we also include topics describing considerations and techniques to keep in mind when upgrading custom sites based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 to Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Set up the server environments
This section delineates the multiple recommended environments in which to develop, integrate, test, and pilot a custom solution based on Office SharePoint Server 2007. For each environment, this guide provides the steps required to deploy the environment and provides special setup and configuration considerations based on the environment's role in the development process.
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This section describes how both code and content customizations are packaged and deployed from one development environment to another. This includes describing the tools used by developers, designers, and authors to package and deploy solutions and content, along with tips and best practices that promote robust, well-tested, secure deployments from one environment to another.
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Feature roadmap pages provide links to content and resources related to Office SharePoint Server 2007 feature areas such as workflows, forms, document management, or business intelligence. The feature roadmap pages in this guide particularly point to customization resources for site architects, designers, and implementers. A team customizing an enterprise-level portal or Internet site should be aware of all methods of customizing a feature, including using the Office SharePoint Server 2007 user interface, using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, and writing custom code. To present this range of options, roadmap pages link to feature-related content and resources aimed at each audience that might participate in customizing an enterprise portal or Web site, including information workers, site designers, developers, and the architects who plan the project. Each roadmap page will be updated with additional links as more resources are published: