SharePoint: Question of the Day
Author: Eric Alexander, Moderator, Stump the Panel
Today’s topic from Stump the Panel comes from Ninel. He writes:
I was told to create a blog site, but the blogger does not want to have categories. I was able to remove the Categories web part from the left navigation panel, but when creating a new post I have to select the category. Can I remove this and not have categories at all?
Yes this can be done, but before I go into the solution, I wanted to take a minute to say that this is not necessarily a wise decision. Blogs generally ebb and flow with their content as events happen. Having no way to classify types of posts can cause reader confusion. Additional authors may come into the mix with different ideas and knowledge areas leading to trouble differentiating content.
No categorical structure means that a user has to sift through many posts trying to find what they are looking for instead of being presented with buckets of knowledge. Imagine EndUserSharePoint.com with no classifications in it. How difficult would it be to find a particular post on the Dataview Web Part by Laura Rogers?
Classification is imperative to the functionality of any good blog. With that said, if you do need to remove the Category column, here is your method.
WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007
- Click on the link to Manage Posts.
- Click the Settings button and click the List Settings option.
- Click on the Categories link in the fields area
- Click the Delete button.
In SharePoint Foundations/SharePoint Server 2010
Here you have to think about one question. Are any other blogs going to be created in this site collection?
If NO
- At the root of the site collection, go to Site Actions, Site settings
- From the Galleries section, click Site Content Types.
- Find the Post content type and click it.
- Click the Category link.
- Click the Delete button.
If YES
- From the top level of the blog, click Manage Posts.
- Click the List tab in the ribbon UI and click the List settings link.
- Click on the Advanced Settings link.
- Set the allow management of content types to Yes and click OK.
- On the resulting page, click the Post hyperlink in the content type section.
- Click on the Category link.
- Either delete the column or set the status to hidden (this is my preferred option as I have stated some of the benefits of categories above).
Author: Eric Alexander, Moderator, Stump the Panel
Eric Alexander is a SharePoint Administrator working in the Higher Education sector. He wears many hats in this role and enjoys leveraging SharePoint to build solutions to solve problems across campus. You can find him on Twitter as PirateEric and lurking in the Stump the Panel forums.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/EricsSharepointAdventures
So often we’re asked how to do things in the forums that we feel are really bad ideas. I think it’s important to point these things out, as Eric and many of the rest of us usually do. This often provokes frustration on the part of the asker, but it’s where the real value of the answer really is, IMHO.
Good answer, Eric!
M.
Especially with some people being new to Sharepoint, they don’t understand the rammifications of the desired action down the line.
+1 to Marc’s point. Also, I find this series an excellent idea, there’s a lot of information buried in forums that deserves more visibility.
Going to try and find periodic articles to post as well as bring stickies to the forums.
Eric, that’s just great!
My two cents: include in your post a link to the original thread, as the discussion could bounce back based on your post.
I have to agree! Great answer! I like the question of the day idea as well.
I love the way this is explained Eric. Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it *should*. It almost seems like the solution should be a wiki, since the bloggers don’t want to be hassled with categories. But who knows…
I’m looking forward to more of these, for sure!
Eric,
I know what you are talking about because just last week I asked a question in reference to a survey. Our CIO wants to create a ‘Customer Survey’ for our Information Management Division (IMD), but doesn’t really know the ‘End State’ (What he wants). I gave my suggestions but since it I’m only the SharePoint Administrator I could only listen to what was going on in the meeting. The issue I have where I work, the staff really doesn’t understand or want to understand how and what SharePoint can do for the hospital (I work in a military hospital). You see I face the ‘frustration’ and ‘should and could’ mention by Marc and Matt.
Hi, I posted this question.
I was asked to remove categories because this will be a small blog between a few people.
Byt the way, I’m a female, not male.
Thanks.
Hey Ninel,
A quick question: Are comments a factor for this blog or would a Multi-Textbox with versioning work for communication?
Sorry about that, I couldn’t infer from your name your sex. Requirements are unique to your organization.
If it were up to me, I would go the route of setting the visibility to Hidden and use a workflow to set a category based on who authored the post. Since you said it was executives, if created by CEO set category to CEO, if marketing director, set to marketing, etc.
Matt: Comments are required for this blog.
Eric: I did as you recommended and set the visiblity of the Category field to hidden instead of deleting it.
Thanks for your help.
Can MS Access 2010 publish an entire database to SharePoint 2007, in the same way that it publishes to SharePoint 2010…?
Thank you,
Joe