Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

Introduction

In late 2003 I joined a Fortune 500 in Jacksonville, Florida, as your typical .NET developer, focusing mostly on ASP.NET. I was immediately assigned the role of technical lead on the new corporate Internet site that would be implemented using Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002. Up to that point I had worked with many homegrown content management systems in previous jobs. I quickly latched on and really enjoyed the flexibility of MCMS. Once that project was launched, I moved into the role of technical lead for our new corporate intranet site, which was to be implemented using SharePoint Portal Server 2003. We quickly had a need for both content management and collaboration, and merged the two products together to create a very impressive implementation for our customer base.

I find it amusing that at the same time we were doing this, the wheels were in motion at Microsoft to take the best concepts and capabilities from MCMS and implement them on the SharePoint platform, resulting in Office SharePoint Server's (MOSS) Web Content Management (WCM) capabilities. After watching the void for a good book on MOSS WCM development topics sit unfilled, and after many people at conferences and community events asked me, "Where is your WCM book?", I decided to do something about it, which resulted in what you are holding in your hands. I am incredibly proud of both this book and those who were involved in the project.

One approach I took in this book was not to dwell ...