Essential SharePoint 2007, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7. Creating My Sites, Blogs, and Wikis

My Sites, blogs, and Wikis fall into an area called personalization features—features tied to a user's identity, which help maintain the user's presence on the Web. Managers often ask why SharePoint includes these features, and then they ask me to disable them: the last thing they want is for an employee to start a blog. I understand that point of view, but I feel the benefits of these sites outweigh the risks. Specifically:

• My Sites can replace personal storage on network drives and provide communication across teams and projects.

• Blogs allow subject experts to share their knowledge.

• Wikis are a way to easily create online Help, reference, and employee resources.

SharePoint is all about leveraging the community to get work done and share the results. In this chapter, I'll cover applications for these site types and describe how to control their use.

Tip

My Sites are only available in MOSS.

Creating My Sites in MOSS

My Sites define your identity on the intranet. They are a place to share information that doesn't fit neatly into a project or department site. They are also a great place to prototype lists and experiment with SharePoint. Many companies provide network drives for files that users need to share, and My Sites are a great way to replace those.

As employees become proficient at using SharePoint, they can extend their use of My Sites to fill these advanced needs:

• Create their own portal for accessing internal and external resources.