Sharepoint Designer Tutorial: Working With Sharepoint Websites

Get started with SharePoint Designer and learn to put together a business website with SharePoint

SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web design program, which has replaced FrontPage, and is the ideal environment for working with pages on a SharePoint site.

This book is ideal for people new to SharePoint Designer who need to put together a working SharePoint site as quickly as possible. If you who want to get started, and finished, as quickly as possible, this book is for you. You won't just learn how to use SharePoint Designer; you'll see how to use it to put together a SharePoint site.

This book will introduce you to the SharePoint Designer environment, and lead you through the key features as you complete important SharePoint customization activities. Throughout the book, you will be developing an example site for a wine business, and you will see what help SharePoint Designer offers, and step through clear instructions to get things done.

The book begins by familiarizing you with the Designer environment and helping you to connect to your SharePoint site. You will then learn how to add and format content, and use SharePoint's workflow tools to collaborate with other content creators before learning how to connect to different SharePoint data sources.

You will also learn to use ASP.NET Web Parts in your SharePoint site to create calendars, graphs, integrate with Exchange Server, and add powerful search tools to your site.

What you will learn from this book

• Installing SharePoint Designer and connecting it to an existing SharePoint installation
  
  
• Finding your way round the SharePoint Designer environment
  
  
• Creating a SharePoint site, adding basic content, and publishing your page to SharePoint server
  
  
• Formatting your pages with Cascading Style Sheets and Master Pages
  
  
• Allow collaboration between different content creators
  
  
• Use workflow features to manage the publication of submitted content
  
  
• Creating forms that allow users to edit, add, and delete records in data stores
  
  
• Adding Web Parts to your site for calendar and schedule, charting, graphing, and data entry, search
  
  
• Implementing ASP.NET controls in your pages
  
  
• Embedding Exchange data into your applications
  
  
• Adding search forms and result lists to your pages, and using search Web Parts

Approach
This book takes you through the development of a SharePoint site for a wine business. The development involves adding features to the site using SharePoint Designer, and for each of these features you will find screenshots and easy to follow instructions.

Who this book is written for
This book is ideal for people new to SharePoint Designer who need to put together a working SharePoint site as quickly as possible.

No experience of SharePoint Designer is expected, and no skill with creating SharePoint sites is assumed.

About the Author
Mike Poole owns and runs 2F3 Internet, which he established in 1997 to specialize in providing Microsoft-based web development and IT training.

He has received a much acclaim for his web development from many satisfied customers including the BBC, British Medical Association, Microsoft, and six different agencies of the Scottish Government. His work has won him awards from Scottish Enterprise (winner of best e-commerce site) and Microsoft (IM bot competition finalist and winner in both UK and international phases).

Mike has also written and taught courses in Microsoft Excel and Web Development at Edinburgh University.

His current technological interests include creating highly efficient/scalable database solutions and integrating online solutions into virtual environments.