Chapter 9
Page Layouts
With the release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), Microsoft has introduced the Publishing Feature to the already impressive array of functionality available to SharePoint sites. Publishing empowers content authors to create their own HTML based Web sites in MOSS using only their Web browsers. Page layouts are not only the mechanism that provides this ability, but they also work together with master pages to create the user interface for all publishing pages. To fully customize a MOSS Web site, designers must have a strong understanding of master pages, which were covered in the previous chapter, and a good working knowledge of how page layouts are created and ultimately utilized in MOSS. By the end of this chapter, you should have a good understanding of what page layouts are and how they are created in MOSS. The chapter concludes with a walk through of creating a welcome page layout that can be utilized to create a home page suitable for the Internet master page design that was created in the previous chapter.
To try out the ideas in this chapter, you will need to have a full-blown MOSS server. A simple Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) server will not fit the bill because it does not include the Publishing Feature or page layouts.
What Is a Page Layout?
While traditional SharePoint sites are very good at allowing teams to collaborate and share many types of documents with ease, large organizations often need to share information ...
