Creating and Modifying Web Pages in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007

Chapter at a Glance

With Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can create a number of different file formats, some of which you may not consider to be pages; for example, text and cascading style sheet files, and others you may not have heard about before reading this book.

In Chapter 3, "Customizing a Web Page", you learned how to customize a nonpublishing page, which merges together a master page and a content page. In particular, you investigated the home page of a SharePoint team site.

In this chapter, you’ll investigate the differences between pages on the SharePoint team site and a Basic Meeting Workspace site, and how to create content pages for both collaboration and Meeting Workspace sites by using SharePoint Designer. In this chapter, you will use both the browser and SharePoint Designer to create Web Part pages. You’ll learn that Web Part pages are just Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 content pages and that any SharePoint content page can contain one or more Web Parts. You’ll also learn how to change the appearance of pages by adding and removing Web Part zones, the containers for Web Parts, as well as adding and removing Web Parts.

Creating a Basic Meeting Workspace Site

In Chapter 2, "Working in SharePoint Designer", you created a site hierarchy by using the team site definition, and in Chapter 3, "Customizing a Web Page", you explored the home page of a team site. Before we create a new page, we are going to explore a different-looking SharePoint page, the home page of a SharePoint Basic Meeting Workspace site. The Meeting Workspace does not contain a Quick Launch bar and uses a second row of tabs, called Pages, which you can manipulate in the browser by using the Add Pages and Manage Pages options on the Site Action menu. These additional pages are stored in a hidden document library called pages (Workspace pages).

Using the browser, you can add only 10 of these Meeting Workspace pages before a message is displayed stating that you have reached the maximum number of pages for the workspace and that you must delete a page before a new one can be added. This is a limitation of the browser interface; you can create additional Meeting Workspace pages by using SharePoint Designer.

Before you create a Meeting Workspace page, as with any site, you must familiarize yourself with that site.

Both the team site home page and the Basic Meeting Workspace home page are ASP. NET 2.0 content pages but associated with different master pages. When you opened the team site home page in Chapter 2, the name of the master page was default.master, whereas sites based on Meeting Workspace site definitions use a master page named MWSDefault.master.

The team site home page and the Basic Meeting Workspace home page have a main content region, PlaceHolderMain, which contains Web Part zones and Web Parts. However, the Meeting Workspace contains the following two additional regions in which you can add content:

• The PlaceHolderLeftNavBar content region, which is located to the left of the page (where the Quick Launch bar is situated on a team site). This region includes a Web Part zone labeled MeetingNavigator that contains the Meeting Series List View Web Part (LVWP).

• The PlaceHolderTitleInTitleArea content region, which includes a Web Part zone labeled Meeting Summary, that also contains an instance of the Meeting Series LVWP.

In this exercise, you will create a Basic Meeting Workspace site by using SharePoint Designer, and you will then explore the home page.

1. On the Common toolbar, click the New Document arrow, and then in the list, click Web Site.

   

   New Document

   

   The New dialog box opens.

2. In the left-most pane of the New dialog box, click SharePoint Templates if it is not already selected, and then click Basic Meeting Workspace.

   NOTE

   As SharePoint Designer retrieves a list of site definitions from the Web server for this particular site collection, you may be prompted for your user name and password. The list of site definitions returned depend on how the server administrator has configured your installation. You may see a different site definitions, especially if you modify a number of sites within a different of site collections.

3. In the Specify the location of the new Web site text box, type http://teams.consolidatedmessenger.com/meetings and then press . If prompted, type your user name and password, and click OK.

   The Create New Web Site dialog box briefly appears and then a new SharePoint Designer program window opens displaying the meetings child site. The title of the site is taken from the name of the site template.

4. In the Folder List task pane, double click default.aspx.

   The home page of the meetings site opens as a second tab in the document window.

   

   As with the team site home page, the main content of the page is held within the PlaceHolderMain (Custom) content region, which for this home page contains three Web Part zones denoted by two blue borders, labeled at the top as Left, Center, and Right. The relative address of the master page is listed in the upper-right corner of the page.

5. In the Folder List task pane, right-click pages (Workspace Pages), and then click Properties.

   The Document Library Properties dialog box opens.

6. Click the Settings tab of the Document Library Properties dialog box, and notice that the Hide from browsers check box is selected.

   

   TIP

   To administer the Workspace Pages document library you need to access the library’s Settings page. Click the Security tab, and then click Manage Permissions Using The Browser. On the breadcrumb of the Permissions page that opens, click Settings. The Customize Workspace Pages page opens, from which you can manage the settings for this document library.