Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2007 Bible

Customizing SharePoint Sites

SharePoint sites by default have a consistent look and feel and are created from templates that are included with the out-of-the-box installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. SharePoint Designer provides the tools you need to customize your sites to meet your branding and visualization needs. Utilizing the master page capabilities of ASP.NET 2.0 you can build and change entire SharePoint sites quickly and easily.

As you create team sites, department-level sites, blog sites, and various other SharePoint-based sites from the wide variety of included site templates, you may find that they function and look adequate for your immediate needs. In some scenarios, however, you might find it useful or important to customize the look and feel of a page, site, or entire site collection. For example, if you want to create a site to publish materials to get your organization’s field sales team trained and excited about new services your company is offering, you can create the site from a SharePoint Team Site template. Then you can use SharePoint Designer to add graphics, change colors and fonts, rearrange the layout, and apply changes to the navigation across the site or on individual pages. The next section will walk you through the steps to accomplish these tasks.

Note

Your screen may look different than the screenshots in these steps depending on which task panes you have open. If you do not see a task ...