Sharepoint Master Page Look and Feel

Sharepoint 3.0 has a great new feature called master pages, same technology as the underlying .net framework 2.0. One of the short comings of Sharepoint is the semi mechanical look and feel of the default home page, but thankfully with some good html and css knowledge you can create a Sharepoint site that looks as good as it functions. Suggestions:

1. Use Sharepoint Designer when designing, vs.net 2005 is not a good choice, save that for heavy lifting like workflow and web part development.
2. Use the minimal master page :http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa660698.aspx, don't try to dig around - start from a good templeate.
3. Use the built in versioning of Sharepoint.
4. Be creative, you've got a killer set of functionality so make the site rock.

Links :

Microsoft Office: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101551701033.aspx

MSDN : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms476046.aspx

iAffari: http://www.iaffari.com/

sharepoint and infopath

This is our first post on blogger.com so I thought I would start off with something dear to my heart - sharepoint services 3.0, windows workflow foundation and InfoPath. These 3 technologies can help bring your current business process from paper to paperless in a matter of days. Sharepoint services 3.0 is the free portal software built into windows server 2003. Sharepoint services also includes the windows workflow foundation which brings workflow capabilities into your organization - and again this is free. Finally we have infopath - this is great form based technology that use XML to store data. So now that we've got these great technologies how can they help your business? Think of all of those word documents and excel spreadsheets that get passed between your users - by taking those and converting them to infopath you now have an electronic version. Add in digital signatures and voila the paper is replaced. Now by saving the infopath forms to a sharepoint form library you can add workflow and reporting.