Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

498 Part VI: Administration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
installation creates three top-level areas called News, Topics, and Sites. These can be
deleted or modified at will, and additional ones can be created as well. You can
think of an area as both a category as well as a team site that will contain content
pertinent to that category. In any deployment of SharePoint Portal 2003, the true
challenge lies in deciding how to categorize content and organize the navigational
structure of the portal site.
One of the main features a portal area page has that a regular team site page
does not is its association with the Portal Site Map, which defines the portal site’s
navigation structure. Figure 18-9 shows that on the News area page, and on every
other area page, there is a horizontal navigation bar of links running along the top
of the page as well as a vertical navigation bar along the left side called Current
Location. As just mentioned, these navigation bars are automatically updated to
reflect the structure defined on the Portal Site Map.
F18XR09.bmp
Figure 18-9 The portal site News area page with focus on the navigation bars
When administrators follow the Manage Portal Site Structure link found on the
task bar below the Current Location navigation bar, they are taken to the Portal Site
Map page, which shows a tree-like view of the area page hierarchy. The top level is,
of course, the home page. Any portal areas that fall one level indented below the
home page will show up as links on the top navigation bar. Any area pages that are
placed at levels below the area in focus will show up on the left-hand vertical navigation
bar (assuming that the area has not been excluded from portal site navigation
on the Display tab of the Site Settings page for the area). This page allows the
administrator to create new portal area pages, manage existing ones, and alter the
navigation bars of these pages simply by dragging and dropping the areas to different
locations in the tree structure. The Portal Site Map can be seen in Figure 18-10,
with the News area node expanded. Notice the relationship between the structure
shown on the map and the display of that area page in Figure 18-9.