Managing Web Content - Optimizing - Essential SharePoint 2013: Practical Guidance for Meaningful Business Results (2014)

Essential SharePoint 2013: Practical Guidance for Meaningful Business Results (2014)

Part II. Optimizing

Chapter 14. Managing Web Content

SharePoint has continued to evolve into a premier Web content management (WCM) platform—more than ever with the 2013 release. SharePoint 2013 has added a significant number of features that enable an organization to host its Internet presence using the same set of technologies that many organizations—probably yours—already own.

WCM is one of the focus areas that is getting attention in SharePoint 2013 because it offers a rich functionality suite to manage, repurpose, deploy, and analyze content distributed to an Internet-based community. In addition, Microsoft has loosened its licensing model, no longer requiring a separate, costly server license to host Internet-facing sites on SharePoint. This can dramatically reduce the overall costs of using SharePoint for external publishing sites.

In this chapter, we will look at the WCM enhancements and how they can be used to build your publishing site.

Why SharePoint for Internet-Facing Web Sites?

Before we dive into some of the functionality associated with WCM, let’s look at some of the key reasons why organizations use SharePoint for their publishing sites:

Image Ease of use. Part of the appeal of SharePoint has always been its low threshold for entry. Users can be very quickly trained to use specific functionality and require very little training for uploading and managing content.

Image You already own it (business users). Organizations that have already invested in SharePoint as part of an internal collaboration or communication initiative can leverage that very same software to manage Internet content with no additional training.

Image You already own it (IT). Again, for organizations already familiar with SharePoint it is much easier to quantify IT support for a publishing site. IT knows how to manage and maintain a SharePoint environment because they already do that for internal use.

Image Leverage list data. Web sites do not have to be a collection of static HTML content. SharePoint allows you to easily leverage list and library data for content presentation. This makes it easier to deploy and maintain dynamic content presentation without having to manage the underlying HTML.

Image Search. SharePoint has a native search engine that will support the discovery experience associated with looking for keyword matches on your Web site. There is no need to purchase third-party search products to integrate into your WCM solution.

Image Content repurposing. The life cycle of a document can transcend the boundary of the corporate firewall. What was once created through employee collaboration can ultimately provide high value to partners, clients, or customers. By leveraging SharePoint for intranet, extranet, and even Internet use, content can be shared naturally, via workflow, from one system to another.

And these are just a few reasons. Because of these and many others, SharePoint has gained tremendous momentum in the WCM space. SharePoint 2013 takes advantage of that momentum and raises the bar associated with what companies can do with their Web sites. It is now easier to leverage native capabilities in SharePoint to create a highly dynamic, rich, aesthetically pleasing corporate Web site.

What’s New in SharePoint 2013?

Those who are familiar with WCM in SharePoint will be excited to learn that several features are improved in SharePoint 2013 and new features have been added. Let’s take a look at some of these:

Image Content authoring. There are many improvements to the content-authoring experience, starting with the content editor control. For example, a content editor can now copy content directly from Microsoft Word and have the document styles match the page styles. Small changes like this can make the difference in getting proper adoption for content-editing tools—and content is king when it comes to an Internet-facing site.

Image Multilingual sites. While variations are nothing new with SharePoint 2013, one of the more significant improvements is the integrated translation feature. This feature can use the Machine Translation Service connecting to Microsoft Translator or can facilitate exporting/importing the content for third-party translation. This means that you can automatically translate your content into multiple languages.

Image Cross-site publishing. Remote publishing in SharePoint 2010 required two separate farms. This was cumbersome at best and was an unacceptable expense to many. With cross-site publishing in SharePoint 2013, you can store and maintain your publishing content in the authoring site collection and then publish it to multiple destination publishing site collections—all within the same farm. This feature leverages built-in search functionality and the new Catalog Web Parts. With cross-site publishing you can

Image Share a list or a library as a publishing catalog

Image Display that catalog using search

Image Combine cross-site publishing with variations to provide multilingual sites

With the concept of catalogs and search Web Parts that can display core data in multiple areas, cross-site publishing is no longer restricted to a single site collection, or even a farm for that matter. Another great benefit of cross-site publishing is the ability to organize your source site independent from your destination site. This capability can benefit large sites with complex security requirements. For example, you will probably want to present content in your source site in a way that is logical for the content creators (e.g., based on your company’s organization charts). However, you may choose to publish the content to one or more destination sites in a completely different hierarchy—one that is more end-user-friendly.

Image Catalogs. Any list or library can be designated as a catalog. Why is that useful? Content from catalogs can then be displayed on other sites using smart search analytics and recommendations. For example, you may want to centrally define a catalog of products or articles and then leverage that catalog to display purchasing and/or reading recommendations on various pages throughout the site.

Image Web analytics. The new analytics engine in SharePoint 2013, based on search, features greatly improved performance, along with new reports such as popularity trends, most popular items, and historic usage.

Image Search. With the new Content Search Web Part, you can easily leverage search to display content from multiple site collections. Unlike the Content Query Web Part, which is restricted to aggregating content within a single site collection, the Content Search Web Part enables you to look across site collections—mainly since it queries the search index, rather than the content databases themselves.

Image Navigation. Leveraging term sets, you can supplement the existing site navigation by using managed metadata. This allows you to take advantage of the term store features such as translations, ownership, and maintaining terms in a single, easy-to-update location. In SharePoint 2010, customers found themselves writing custom code to build a functional and stylish navigation menu that was created dynamically based upon site metadata. In 2013, this functionality is available out of the box by leveraging term sets.

Image Branding. To the user, a branded site is just a single composition that simply looks good and works. To the developer (who owns the code) and designer (who owns the look and feel), a branded site is a set of artifacts that are often owned by two different groups. SharePoint 2013 provides for greater separation of the designer and developer roles by supporting a wider array of standard tools, allowing designers to focus on designing a site using the tools that they prefer (e.g., Dreamweaver). This design can then be imported as a package to be applied to a site, at which point the developer can add controls and other technical aspects to the page—rather than having to build the page from scratch or forcing the designer to use a specific tool.

Image Device targeting: A major shortcoming in SharePoint 2010 was inadequate channel support for devices such as phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The new device-targeting feature allows you to specify layouts that are specific to the device that the reader might be using. For example, an airline might have a full-featured page for laptops but display only flight status and check-in when a mobile device is detected. This provides the optimal experience for users so that on a small-screen device, the page isn’t cluttered or too small to read. Layouts can be added or updated as new devices come on the market.

Image Friendly URLs. URLs that were indecipherable by the user can now be converted to something much more readable. Using managed navigation and category pages, for example, you can produce a URL such as www.contoso.com/products/bicycle. Notice that there is no more mandate for “Pages” in the URL, as previous versions of SharePoint required.

Image Digital asset management. Using photos and videos has been greatly improved, enabling the use of video thumbnails and image renditions, whereby different-size versions of the same image can be displayed in different situations automatically. For more detail on videos and renditions, see the next section, “Additional Features.”

Additional Features

Beyond the highlights mentioned so far, there are a number of additional features worth exploring when it comes to content management in SharePoint 2013. These include

Image Image renditions

Image Video management

Image Content Organizer

Image Search engine optimization (SEO)

Image Usage analytics

Let’s dig a little into each of these items.

Image Renditions

Image renditions allow you to display different versions of the same image in different situations. For example, you may want the full-size version of the image displayed on an article page, and a thumbnail version of the image displayed in a highlight section on the home page.

When you upload an image to a library, SharePoint will create a variety of renditions based on rendition templates (see Figure 14-1). When you add the image to your page, you can then select which rendition to use from the ribbon control (see Figure 14-2). In addition to having multiple renditions, you can edit the rendition and define a cropped area to display instead of the full image.

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Figure 14-1 You can see the renditions of an image in a picture library by selecting Edit Renditions from the preview window

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Figure 14-2 Once you add the image to your page, you can select which rendition to display from the Pick Rendition control in the ribbon

Video Management

Video management is one of many improvements included in the SharePoint 2013 asset library. The Video Content Type (see Figure 14-3) supports a thumbnail which can be taken from a video frame or from a separate image—even for cat videos. Similar to pictures, the Video Content Type also supports renditions. You can even link to external videos by saving embed code.

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Figure 14-3 The asset library Video Content Type makes managing videos a lot easier by supporting thumbnails and renditions

Content Organizer

The Content Organizer allows you to define rules-based logic to help determine where new content should be stored on your Web site. First, let’s look at how to enable it. Under Site Settings, pick Content Organizer Rules. If you don’t see it under Site Settings, the feature may not be activated; go to Site Features and activate it.

Rules can be based on any fields available to you on the specific page. These rules can help define where new content will be stored. Think of it as a wizard that understands your site topology. Figure 14-4 shows an example of a rules creation page.

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Figure 14-4 Users can create rules to determine where new content will be stored on the Web site

This is a very nice way of controlling how new content is stored on your Web site. By setting up a few key rules, you can dictate the automatic placement of new content. This allows for consistency in how content is presented and maintained by enforcing an overall content topology.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps users find information and is a key element in site adoption (or rejection). To access the SharePoint 2013 publishing site SEO configuration options, access the site home page and select “Edit SEO properties” from the Edit Properties ribbon. This opens a page where you can add content that will improve the SEO of the site (see Figure 14-5). You can use the Meta Description and Keywords fields to add terms that will be picked up by search engines like Bing and Google, making your site easier to find on the Internet.

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Figure 14-5 SharePoint 2013’s new SEO features allow you to better describe and add properties to a page, which helps search engines find the page on the Internet

Usage Analytics

If you have a public-facing company Web site, or an internal corporate portal, knowing how your audience interacts with the content on your site is important to your ongoing improvements. SharePoint 2010 analytics were useful but had performance issues on large sites. With a new analytics platform, SharePoint 2013 has addressed these concerns while also adding many new features to better surface site usage details.

SharePoint Server 2013 includes the following default usage events:

Image Views

Image Recommendations displayed

Image Recommendations clicked

In addition to the default events, you can create your own custom events. An example of a custom event might be how often a page is viewed from an iPad.

Using these events, analytics performs the following analyses:

Image Usage counts

Image Recommendations

Image Activity ranking (leverages search)

The analytics provide these reports:

Image Most Popular Items displays ranking per usage event for all items in a library or list. An example of this is the most viewed document in a library.

Image Popularity Trends produces an Excel report that shows the count (daily or monthly) per usage event for the item or site.

Web Content Management: The Basics

SharePoint 2013 offers the capability to manage Web content (pages, images, and HTML) in an easy way. This allows business users to author and publish Web content without having to involve IT or a Web master for each and every new page or update to a page. This enables your Internet site to take on any look and feel (unlike the default SharePoint UI that most people think of) and scale to the requirements of the world’s most popular Web sites. For business users to change their page, it’s as simple as clicking the Edit icon (the pencil icon at top right) in the toolbar or selecting Edit from the settings (gear) menu. They will then see their page change to “edit mode” (see Figure 14-6), where the familiar ribbon interface of Office will allow them to easily make content and formatting changes directly in the browser—eliminating the need for IT involvement. The one thing to remember is that your list of Web page editors should be well defined—and armed with guidance and policies that adhere to your overall governance strategy for Web content.

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Figure 14-6 Making edits to a Web page is easy with SharePoint 2013; a content editor simply edits content right inline on the page

Finally, the page can be run through an approval process, ensuring that changes are reviewed before going live to the Internet. The ribbon provides options for publishing directly, publishing on a schedule, or putting the page through an approval process (see Figure 14-7).

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Figure 14-7 Initiating a workflow on a page or pushing out changes for publishing is done with the ribbon functions at the top of the page

There are entire books dedicated to creating, managing, and hosting Web-content-managed sites, so we won’t try to recreate that information here in a few pages. Instead, we’ll provide the basics of how SharePoint provides Web content management features and our recommendations on what to watch out for.

Publishing Sites

There are different kinds of site templates within SharePoint (collaboration, enterprise, publishing, custom). The Publishing Site templates provide additional features that enable business users to create and manage Web content on a page (or create brand-new Web pages). For some people, this may sound a lot like a wiki site. Isn’t a wiki site also an easy way to create new Web pages and update existing Web pages? Yes. The main difference is that wikis are geared toward sharing ideas within a community. Wikis provide Web pages that can be quickly edited to record information and then linked together through keywords, but they are far less powerful than the full-fledged Web-content-managed pages. For example, take a look at www.xbox.com. This is not a wiki—it is a highly stylized Web site with a number of controls to keep it branded properly. In publishing sites, contributors can work on draft versions of pages and publish them to make them visible to readers. Publishing sites also include document and image libraries for storing Web publishing assets such as site pages and images. You can find the Publishing Site with Workflow template within the Publishing tab of the new site wizard (see Figure 14-8).

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Figure 14-8 The Publishing Site template provides page layouts that contain field controls so that business users can add content without affecting the design of the page

The Web publishing features are provided by the SharePoint Publishing feature. This means that you can add publishing features to any SharePoint site. Try the following: Create a regular SharePoint team site. Next, click the gear icon and then select “Site settings” (see Figure 14-9). Under Site Administration, select Site Features. Enable the Publishing feature by clicking Activate next to SharePoint Server Publishing (see Figure 14-10). Go back to your site; it will look the same at first. But if you look more closely, you’ll notice some key changes. For example, in the Site Actions menu, Design Manager has replaced “Change the look” (see Figure 14-11), and you will see additional apps on the Site Contents page.

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Figure 14-9 Site settings are available by clicking on the Site Actions menu (gear icon)

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Figure 14-10 The Publishing Site feature can be activated in Site Settings

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Figure 14-11 After enabling the Publishing feature within a site, users with appropriate permissions will see publishing options such as Design Manager as well as more apps

Although the Publishing feature can be used with any SharePoint site, you’ll probably plan to use it more for consumer-based sites. Previous versions of SharePoint provided starter templates, such as the Internet Presence template, and the previous Publishing Site template, which contained stub-out images and content as well as sub-sites for search, news, and other items. These templates were also branded out of the box. The reality is that site designers removed all of that content and design and replaced it with company branding and content. Microsoft has now acknowledged this by focusing on getting you set up quickly to apply your own brand and implement content. Instead of the typical SharePoint starter content home page, the first publishing site you will create starts with a task-based page that will walk you step by step through the process of creating your branded site (see Figure 14-12).

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Figure 14-12 The first publishing site you create offers links to all the areas you need to focus on as an information architect or designer

Once you have completed the tasks to build and add content to your site, you should remove the task list that is composed of two Web Parts that are easily deleted. You might also want to consider creating your own “starter” site if you plan to work on multiple publishing projects.

Branding a SharePoint Site

So far we’ve taken you through some functional elements associated with content on your site. However, there is still a big part of WCM related to defining and managing the user experience (UX). In fact, some would argue that the user experience is the true measure of the overall success of an Internet-facing Web site.

What is UX? A user’s experience on a Web site can be segmented into four categories: branding, usability, functionality, and content. One segment is no more important than the others; they all need to be optimized for users to embrace and appreciate the overall experience of interacting with a Web site. To this point we’ve touched upon how SharePoint 2013 offers certain functional elements to make it easier for visitors to navigate and discover information, where the focus has been on making it easy to update and present important content on the Web site. Let’s extend our discussion into a key UX segment: branding.

Does Figure 14-13 look like a typical SharePoint site? This is a standard SharePoint publishing site to which we have applied custom branding. By using SharePoint 2013 and its adherence to standard branding techniques, it’s easier than ever to make great-looking SharePoint sites.

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Figure 14-13 A SharePoint site does not have to look bland. Applying a slick design greatly enhances the user experience

Branding is an essential part of any Web site. It defines the aesthetic appeal and visual presentation of your Web pages. At the highest level, branding provides visitors with an engaging experience (which increases the likelihood that they will buy your product or at least return for another visit). To create a strong impact, remember that branding is about consistency: consistency among the Web pages (in terms of color palette, content organization, layout, and navigation) and consistency with the brand identity (as it relates to an organization’s other public materials like print collateral). In addition, graphics, collateral, and multimedia are all part of branding and are used to add value to the overall experience.

With regard to SharePoint 2013, you have to consider the following elements to help you define and build your brand:

Image Master pages

Image Page layouts

Image Web Parts

Image Themes

Image Design Manager

Master Pages

Master pages define the look and feel and standard behavior that affect all of the Web pages in a site. For those familiar with SharePoint 2007 or 2010, master pages function similarly in SharePoint 2013—but the way you create them has changed somewhat. The concept is that a master page defines a template for how content will be presented, and that template is applied to all associated pages so you don’t have to keep building pages from scratch. In addition, the use of a template makes the propagation of changes to all pages quick and seamless.

When you create a new publishing site, you have two master pages to choose from: Seattle and Oslo. There does not appear to be much difference between the two other than page layout (Seattle displays a Quick Launch menu on the left; Oslo does not).

If you browse to the Master Page Gallery, you will also see a master page called “v4.master”—this master page supports upgrading from SharePoint 2010 sites.

To change the master page associated with your site, go to Site Actions → Site Settings, then select “master pages.” You can change the master page by altering the selection shown on the master page administration screen, as seen in Figure 14-14.

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Figure 14-14 You can alter the selected master page for your site by changing the option on the master page screen

If you are planning to create a custom master page, you can use the new Design Manager to either start with a “minimal” master page, or you can create a new master page from existing HTML.

The core feature of Design Manager is that it converts your HTML design into a SharePoint master page. To render successfully, a SharePoint master page must contain many ASP.NET elements and elements that are specific to SharePoint. When you convert an HTML file to a master page, Design Manager creates a .master file that contains all of these required elements, so you don’t have to know about them (at least not right away). During conversion, some HTML markup, such as comments, gets added to your original HTML file.

After the conversion, your HTML file and the SharePoint master page are associated, so that when you edit and save the HTML file in your mapped drive, the master page is updated automatically. In Design Manager, the HTML master page has a property named Associated File that determines whether changes to the HTML file are synced to the .master file.

As we mentioned, Design Manager also provides an option to begin your design by using a minimal master page. In this scenario, you don’t have to begin with an HTML design; instead, you can create an HTML master page that contains the minimum page elements necessary to render the master page correctly in SharePoint, and then build out your design by editing the HTML master page.

Page Layouts

Master pages are an essential component of a good Web site as they establish a consistent look and feel. However, content presentation across an entire Web site might need to be different. For example, a home page is presented differently from a news page or a product detail page. That’s where page layouts come in. Page layouts are page templates that define how a page should look, the fields that are available, and exactly which collections should be present on the page (such as lists and libraries). In the construction of a Web site, you would develop a collection of page layouts for the various ways you want to present content. In SharePoint Web sites, you activate the Publishing features to enable the use of publishing page layouts. The use of these page layouts allows content submitters to work directly in their browser for content management and submit changes for approval when done. While it is possible to create a new page layout through the browser UI, you should use SharePoint Designer to modify it.

Do you need custom page layouts? For most custom publishing sites, the answer is probably yes. Think of the master page as the wrapper around all of your Web site pages. This wrapper enforces a consistent look and feel as it relates to content or graphics that are shared across all these pages (i.e., header, footer, navigation, etc.). Page layouts are simply a type of content stored in SharePoint that controls how content is presented and is unique to the page, or at least the type of page (see Figure 14-15). As mentioned, you might have one page layout for your home page, another that is used on your various product pages (which may show different content but should show it in a similar way to other product pages), another that is used when only simple HTML is needed, and another when you are pulling data from SharePoint lists.

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Figure 14-15 Content Types are stored in the Master Page Gallery. The properties allow you to associate a master page with a Content Type


Note

For more information on the SharePoint 2013 page model, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj191506.aspx.


After you create a new Content Type, you can create a new page layout from it. Before you do this, make sure your Content Type has any additional custom Columns that you might need for your content presentation. Now, in SharePoint Designer 2013, open the Web site for which youwant to create the page layout. From the menu, select New → SharePoint Content. From the dialog box, click SharePoint Publishing. Click Page Layout and find your new Content Type from the list of Page Layout Content Types. That’s it. Give your new page layout a name and title and customize the organization of content. Once it is saved and published, you can use this page layout as the base template for pages that you will create for your Web site.

Web Parts

There are many Web Parts provided with SharePoint that you can leverage to build your site. When editing a page, you can add a Web Part in any Web Part zone or insert a Web Part in a page content editor. Without exhaustively listing all the Web Parts that you can use, Table 14-1 highlights the ones that offer the most for a publishing site.

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Table 14-1 SharePoint 2013 Web Parts Most Commonly Used in Internet Publishing Sites

Themes

Traditionally, SharePoint themes have provided a quick way to apply lightweight branding to a SharePoint site—much in the same way you would switch between design templates in PowerPoint. While themes have been available in many previous versions of SharePoint, they were rarely used, mainly because the options were limited (i.e., “all or nothing”) and they included only the most basic of formatting—primarily CSS styling for colors and fonts.

With SharePoint 2013, theming has been completely redesigned to make the experience more powerful and a lot easier. The user interface to manage and apply the themes has a fresh and simple look. To see this interface, perform the following steps:

1. Open Design Manager. The Welcome page displays.

2. On the Welcome page, click “Pick a pre-installed look.” The “Change the look” page will appear (see Figure 14-16).

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Figure 14-16 The “Change the look” page allows you to select from a variety of themes to be applied to your site

After selecting your theme, you will be able to further refine it by selecting such properties as color, layout, and fonts (see Figure 14-17).

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Figure 14-17 Once you select your theme, you can modify it by selecting a different color scheme, site layout, and fonts

The “try it out” link gives you the ability to preview your theme applied to your site before you commit to it (see Figure 14-18).

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Figure 14-18 Previewing your theme lets you take a quick look to see what it may look like when applied to your site

Design Manager

While the individual components of branding have changed little in SharePoint 2013 (master pages, page layouts, and themes), the most significant change from previous versions is how to implement these elements to brand your site. As we’ve mentioned previously, SharePoint 2013 offers a new feature called Design Manager as part of a publishing site. Design Manager (see Figure 14-19) allows you to create a custom branded design using the Web design tools that your design team is used to (Dreamweaver, for example).

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Figure 14-19 The Design Manager in SharePoint 2013 makes it easy to implement a custom design as part of your brand

With Design Manager, you can

Image Manage device channels

Image Upload design files

Image Edit master pages

Image Edit display templates

Image Edit page layouts

Image Publish and apply a design

Image Create a design package

Managing Device Channels

With your users relying more and more on mobile devices, it is critical that you provide an acceptable experience for users who may access your site from a tablet or phone or an alternate browser. This was very challenging (if not impossible) in earlier versions of SharePoint. SharePoint 2013 addresses this using Device Manager and device channels (see Figure 14-20).

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Figure 14-20 The device channel manager ships with a default channel. You can add several more channels to support iPhone, Windows Phone, and other devices

Upload Design Files

This function of the Design Manager is a simple page to explain where your uploaded design files should go (the Master Page Gallery). It is a little odd that there is not an upload control right on this page.

Edit Master Pages

This page displays the master pages. It allows you to upload HTML pages and have them converted to SharePoint master pages. You can also create a minimal master page directly from here.

Edit Display Templates

Search results and other search-related Web Parts rely on display templates to control the appearance and behavior of search results. This page displays all the site control templates. All of these control templates are stored in the Display Templates folder of the Master Page Gallery.

Edit Page Layouts

This page displays existing page layouts and also allows you to create a new page layout.

Publish and Apply Design

Once you have all the design elements in place, you can apply them to your site from this page. Clicking the link to assign master pages brings up the Site Master Page Settings page (see Figure 14-21), where you select the master page for each device.

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Figure 14-21 When setting the master page for your site, you can do so for each device channel. You can also set the theme and an alternate CSS URL

Create Design Package

With your new design in place, you may want to save it and apply it to a different site. Design Manager allows you to save your design as a complete exportable package. This will create a SharePoint solution file (.wsp) that can be imported and applied in another site. This solution file contains all the master pages, page layouts, and other elements that make up the design. To import a design package, navigate to the Design Manager Welcome page and click the link to import a design package.

The Content Editor Experience

One of the themes you will hear a lot about with SharePoint 2013 is the notion of a richer user experience. Let’s take a minute to explain what that means. Fundamentally, when we talk about ease of use with SharePoint, it is centered on allowing users to gain the most functionality with the least amount of intrusion (defined as required training or tools). SharePoint 2013 handles this by offering improvements in two key areas. The first, as discussed previously, is the ability to make many, if not all, page edits right on the page (i.e., fewer clicks). This allows users to easily see the impact of the changes without having to go to a different page or tool to do so. More important, for SharePoint users who don’t use Internet Explorer, this experience also holds for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. Users with the appropriate permissions can get to this mode in one click and begin to make changes immediately.

Another important improvement in the user experience is the ability to better manage rich content. The Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) is still a very powerful native Web Part based solely on its simplicity. Just type in the box and format the content accordingly—no Web development or HTML skills required! However, in some ways the CEWP is not needed with WCM. With SharePoint 2013, you can add content practically anywhere on the page. You are now entering data in field controls, not the CEWP text box, and have more freedom to decide where and how HTML is presented.

While the field control worked well in SharePoint 2010 also, it has been much improved for SharePoint 2013. A bit of a downfall of previous versions was the lack of support for pasting in content from editors such as Microsoft Word. Previously, the result of pasting in content was veryunpredictable and often simply would not work at all. Now, when you paste in content, the styles associated with the layout will be applied to the pasted text. This makes bulk editing a lot easier, as often when you are loading a new site you will be loading the content from other Web sites or Word documents. You also have the options to control how you paste from the paste icon. You can choose to Paste as is, Paste Clean, or Paste Plaintext. A feature as simple as this is very welcome to a Web site content manager. Figure 14-22 shows the new field control in action, whereby a content editor can edit right in place using a WYSIWYG interface.

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Figure 14-22 Users can make text changes on a page by using the improved field controls

What does this have to do with WCM? Simple. It allows more freedom to manage the content on the Web site, and it allows more users to be empowered to make changes and to easily deploy those changes right to the Web. This offers the potential to change the way companies manage their Internet-facing content. Intranet site was altered with the enablement of the employee community, There is a potential with SharePoint 2013 to change the way Internet-facing content is managed and, more important, by whom.

Managed Navigation

Managed navigation in SharePoint 2013 enables web designers to build navigation for a publishing site by using a managed metadata taxonomy (the term store). In SharePoint 2010, you had to either base navigation on the structure of a site, or use a custom method like a site map provider. By using managed navigation, you can design site navigation around business concepts, maintained by the people who know that business the best. Managed navigation also enables you to create friendly URLs (no more “Pages’’ in the URL), which can help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and simply make more sense.

To use managed navigation, you simply enable it under Navigation Settings on the site collection. (Managed navigation is enabled by default for Publishing site collections and Enterprise Wiki site collections.) When managed navigation is enabled, two additional settings are also enabled: new pages are automatically added to navigation, and friendly URLs are automatically created for new pages.

Managed navigation works by enabling you to map your terms to global and local navigation, along with an automatically generated page. You can define the page that is generated by setting attributes on the term in the navigation term set itself. You can specify values for a friendly URL, a target page (the page to show when the actual URL is visited), and a catalog item page (which allows you to specify a page that is loaded when a visitor views an item from the product catalog that is tagged with the term). Figure 14-23 shows an example of a term set that is used for managed navigation mapped to a sample page layout.

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Figure 14-23 Managed navigation enables you to use a term set for your global and local navigation, providing a more dynamic and easier-to-maintain technique for managing your navigation taxonomy

While managed navigation is great for dynamically controlling your navigation taxonomy, the key downside is that your navigation will only work within a single site collection. In addition, the lack of publishing and approval workflows means that changes take effect immediately. For example, there is no version control on terms. If you make a change to a term, you can’t later revert the change back to an earlier version of the term. In addition, there is no publishing workflow on terms. As soon as you make a change to a term, the new term will appear in navigation (unless you hide the term(s) from navigation until the content is published and indexed by search).

Our recommendation is to leverage the managed navigation feature if you want to have consistent navigation within a site collection (for example, in an intranet or Internet site), mainly since it allows you to de-couple the actual structure of your site from the navigation itself—an extremely useful capability. And although you’ll be able to change your navigation easily, don’t be tempted to change it without planning. You must carefully plan your global navigation taxonomy since you don’t want your primary global navigation to change often—it will just confuse users.

Managed navigation is great for dynamically keeping your detailed (local) navigation up-to-date, maintaining your navigation separately from your site structure, and for creating sites that show catalogs of information, since you can combine friendly URLs, automatically generated product pages, and search keywords for an easy-to-use interface for users. Just beware of the limitations.

Planning for Web Content Management

Before you jump into building your new site, step back for a minute and think through all the factors that you need to consider for your site:

Image Plan for publishing. When considering how you want to publish your content, you need to consider if you want to do it in place or use a push model.

Image In-place publishing uses the same site for authoring and publication. This is the preferred method if you do not need to author in multiple locations.

Image Cross-site publishing allows you to use one site collection to author your content, then publish it to one or more target site collections. With this model, the publishing sites do not need to have the same design as the author site. This allows you to provide a different experience for authors and consumers.

Image Plan for content. When considering your content, you need to think about the variety of page layouts that you need. At a minimum, you will need a home page layout and one or more inner page layouts. If you chose to use cross-site publishing, map out the content source and destinations.

Image Plan for navigation. A clean and functional navigation is critical for your site. You need to consider your global navigation as well as page navigation (or quick links). With SharePoint 2013, you can leverage the Managed Metadata Service and term stores to build your navigation. Plan your term sets to use for global and faceted navigation.

Image Plan for devices. With more and more users accessing sites from phones and tablets, you need to factor these devices into your site. Plan for page layouts for the various devices that you intend to support.

Image Plan for branding. Branding is an important consideration for any published site. Consider whether you are going to use standard master page deployment or the new Design Manager.

Image Plan for multiple languages. If you intend to provide content in multiple translations, you need to plan for implementing variations and how you are going to support the translations. Even if you do not initially plan to deploy more than one language, if it is a possibility in the future, you should implement variations now so the ability is in place.

Image Plan for search. Search is critical for any Web site, and with SharePoint 2013 you have no excuse to not provide a great search experience.

Image Plan for content approval. With any publishing site, it’s often easy to leave the approval process to the last minute. The earlier you can think about and plan for this, the better, so you are not scrambling at the end to implement your process. To plan for approval, you need to consider the flow process. Will the default publishing approval be sufficient? Who will be involved?

Putting It All Together: A WCM Strategy

OK, let’s say you have read the previous pages, are an existing SharePoint user (internal only), and are excited about the potential of using SharePoint 2013 to refresh your Internet presence. Where do you begin? Let’s start with some key questions about the current site:

Image How much of your current Web content is static HTML?

Image Do you post documents on your Web site?

Image Who manages and approves content on your Web site?

Image What is the process for submitting new content to your Web site?

Image Do you track user activity on your Web site?

Image What is the competitive advantage of having a new Web site?

Image Who “owns” the Web site?

Image How much external content is repurposed from internal content?

Do you know the answers to all of these questions? If not, the first step is to assemble a team of representative internal resources who, collectively, can answer them. Once you have these answers, you are ready for design sessions. The goal of these sessions is to lay out an overall information architecture for your Web content, defining what goes where, who will manage it, how content is deployed, and how you will monitor user activity. Think about some of the new features highlighted earlier in this chapter. All may not be right for you, but because your organization has already invested in SharePoint, you will recognize obvious gains by leveraging an existing technology and empowering another group of users and consumers. Here are additional questions to ponder once you have more details on your SharePoint Web site:

Image How will your users use search to find content?

Image Should you “push” content from the intranet to sections of the Web site?

Image How important is the site branding?

Image Will the site be in multiple languages?

Image Will there still be a Web master or will ownership be distributed?

Image What is the long-term vision for the Web site?

Think about how your employees have changed the way the business processes work inside your organization as SharePoint has been widely used. Extend that now to include changes in how your customers or prospects learn about who you are and what you do based on the content that you present. Dynamic organizations have dynamic Web sites. It’s time to stop apologizing for your old static Web site and realize that it is an asset that can be leveraged for competitive business gains.

Key Points

This chapter provided some suggestions for using the WCM features of SharePoint 2013. In general, there are many features to take advantage of for your site. Some of our recommendations are:

Image Leverage the Design Manager to separate your design from your content.

Image Plan your content distribution, and leverage cross-site publishing to reuse content in multiple sites.

Image Use Content Organizer rules to automate the placement of new content.

Image Optimize your site design and content for multiple devices using device channels.

Image Enable more users to participate in the management of Web-based content.

Image Optimize your content by analyzing the usage reports and set up key alerts for monitoring activities.