Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 20: Working with Information Components in SharePoint Products and Technologies 577
You should not delete the top-level areas—such as Home, Topics, News, or
Sites—because the built-in logic of some components depends on these areas existing.
If you don’t want these areas to appear on the top navigation bar, navigate to
the area and click Change Settings. On the Display tab, check the Exclude From Portal
Site Navigation check box.
Tip You might experience an operation time-out problem if you try to
delete a large number of portal areas—for example, if you try to delete 500
or more portal areas at the same time. You’re more likely to experience this
issue on a server that uses a slower processor. If you experience this problem,
delete a smaller number of portal areas at any one time.
You can also use the Portal Site Map page to alter the location of an area by
using drag and drop. If you needed to reorganize the location of several areas, it
would be quicker to use the Portal Site Map page, rather than the Change Settings
option, for each area involved. You can also limit the view of areas displayed on the
Portal Map by selecting a different view, using the drop-down box next to the Show
button, or choosing the Filter option on the area’s drop-down menu.
Area Architecture
Each area is created as a subsite off the root of the portal site in a set of subdirectories.
The subsite Web directory hierarchy is completely independent of the portal
area hierarchy that is visible through the browser and the Portal Site Map page discussed
earlier in this chapter. Using a product such as Microsoft FrontPage 2003, you
can see the out-of-box portal area subsites (such as News, SiteDirectory, Topics, and
ExternalNews) and the first level of Web directories (C1, C2, and C3), as illustrated
in Figure 20-12.