Byrne Tony Byrne

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White paper on SharePoint for public websites

2-Jul-2008

Tags: Evaluating SharePoint, Web Content and Experience Management, Implementation, Information Architecture, Marketplace at Large, SharePoint 2010 WCM

We've critiqued SharePoint's rather awkward web publishing capabilities in different evaluation reports (on Web CMS tools and SharePoint itself). But we also see customers who seek to deploy SharePoint for their public websites, either because they want to experiment with the platform, or because the business side is being forced to use it (often under the misimpression that it will be "free").

The latter case is a bit ironic, because for years some enterprise web teams had to put up with bloated Web CMS tools from the likes of Documentum or IBM in a mistaken effort by IT to overreach and standardize on a single ECM supplier. Now we sometimes see IT throwing SharePoint over the wall to the business as almost a kind of abdication of any involvement.

But using SharePoint for traditional web publishing is not a trivial undertaking. If you go that route, I'll commend you to a very useful white paper published by our partners at J. Boye, which offers some best practices in deploying SharePoint for web publishing. If you've already decided to take the plunge (or someone has decided for you), "Best Practices for Using SharePoint for Public Websites - A Business Person's Guide" can help you sort out how you should (and should not) proceed.

Some of the advice is germane to any web publishing automation effort, but that's exactly the point: whatever its unique particularities, employing SharePoint does not suspend the need for essential project management. If anything, the complexity of the platform and array of implementation choices puts a premium on dotting your i's and crossing your t's.

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