The SharePoint Community in general is so wide and so diverse, it is difficult to create a simple way to organize information across different types of SharePoint sites. The SharePoint audience is maturing, making it necessary to provide content that crosses the boundaries between SharePoint End User, IT Pro and Developer.

IT Pro and Developer content is not appropriate for EndUserSharePoint.com content. There has to be some way to keep the original purpose and focus of EUSP while providing other types of SharePoint resources for a maturing audience. From this realization came the kernel of an idea for a reorganization of community, not just the site.

The SharePoint Community: End User, IT Pro, Developer

Joel Oleson (SharePointJoel.com), Jeremy Thake (SharePointDevWiki.com) and I (EndUserSharePoint.com) are working together on a new vision for a SharePoint Community site.

For the past few months, we have been working with Marcy Keller (The SharePoint Muse) to build a SharePoint 2010 site that will house all of our content under one roof: End User, IT Pro and Developer. By combining resources, we will be able to provide content across the entire spectrum of SharePoint users.

Today, Joel, Jeremy and I are announcing that our concept is quickly becoming reality. We’d like to let you in on the process, where we are in the implementation and how you can plan on particpating.

Infrastructure

The combined sites are housed on a 2010 platform provided by fpWeb.net. The team at Metalogix wrote a migration engine for us that moves content from the EndUserSharePoint.com WordPress blog into 2010 publishing pages, and associates the existing comments with each article. The Metalogix app has also made it possible to migrate from Jeremy’s Confluence wiki site into a SharePoint wiki.

Each of the content areas (End User, IT Pro and Developer) resides in its own site collection on a multi-server farm on fpWeb. This segregation of areas makes it possible for various user levels to find appropriate content without having to sift through articles and resources not of interest.

The entrance of the site is a magazine style aggregator that combines content from all three areas content areas. When a reader clicks on an article or resource, they are moved into the area from which that content comes from.

What Happens to Our Existing Sites

A major point of discussion between us was “What do we do with our existing sites?” Should they be deleted after migration to avoid confusion? This didn’t seem like the best solution since one of the major drawing cards for each of our sites is the amount of “Google Juice” they have gathered over the years, plus the number of RSS feeds and hardcoded links that point to existing content would become broken.

We decided the existing sites will not go away, they will be archived. EndUserSharePoint.com and SharePointJoel.com will still exist in their current domains at RackSpace, but will be locked down from accepting comments and new content. The content and location will still exist, but point to the new community site for participation in comments and authoring of new articles.

Creation of New Content

EndUserSharePoint.com uses many authors to provide a daily flow of articles. Joel recently wrote an article, What’s Up in SharePoint Land, complimenting me on the community model of content creation that we use on EndUserSharePoint.com. Community generated content makes it possible to have a wide diversity of topics on the site. It lets us expand into new areas such as Business Process Management and Social Community Building within SharePoint without losing focus on the End User.

With the new community site, we are making this a formal process within all three content areas. Each content provider will have its own dedicated authors.

I have put together a team of authors who will be providing content exclusively for EUSP. Each has a specific area of expertise that, when added to the mix, creates a much more comprehensive whole. In a follow up article, I will introduce you to each of the twelve authors who will provide articles and resources for EndUserSharePoint’s area of the site.

How You Can Participate

Many people have become part of the EndUserSharePoint .com community by providing us with articles about projects they have worked on or ideas they have come up with. We have over 70 people who have provided content on the site. Our policy is that we are open to looking at any article that might be appropriate for the SharePoint Community. Now with IT Pro handled by Joel and Developer content handled by Jeremy, we won’t have to turn down articles because they aren’t appropriate for End Users! We can just push them over to the other areas.

In addition to contributing articles, there are other ways you might consider participating in the community.

Stump the Panel: SharePoint Q&A is an incredible resource for End Users of SharePoint. The team of people providing answers on a daily basis has made it one of the most useful areas of the site. Even if you don’t want to answer questions yet, checking in on a regular basis will give you visibility into common problems site managers and site collections managers are dealing with. There are also forums for specific types of content such as the solutions provided by Christophe Humbert and Marc Anderson.

Ken Price is working with us to organize and coordinate a SharePoint Web Parts Wiki. We are creating an area where every web part will be documented by the community. This includes what versions of SharePoint a web part exists in, how it is used and configured, and uses cases provided by anyone who has used the web part. Ken will be moderating the content to make sure no comment spam is getting through, but we’re going to open this up so that anyone that wants to participate can help build it out.

The SharePoint Community Calendar is expanding to hold not just SharePoint events, but a comprehensive list of SharePoint User Groups around the world. One of the most used areas of the calendar is for tracking down User Group events. By having a list of the user groups listed and pointing to their sites, we can now integrate that information into the events calendar. Natasha Felshman is keeping track of all the information and updating it on a daily basis so that it doesn’t become stale and out of date.

Conclusion

Joel, Jeremy and I are extremely excited about combining our existing sites and expanding them into a much larger community effort. We sincerely hope you will join us as the community site becomes a reality in the near future. Joel (SharePointJoel.com) and Jeremy (SharePointDevWiki.com) are posting articles on their sites to explain their vision of the new community, too.

You can keep up with our progress on either of the current sites: EndUserSharePoint.com, SharePointJoel.com, SharePointDevWiki.com. We will be watching for your comments, suggestions and participation since this is an ever changing project as the SharePoint Community grows, morphs and matures into something that was never imagined at the beginning our journey.

Thanks for staying with us.

Mark Miller
Founder and Editor
EndUserSharePoint.com

Jeremy sent Marcy and me a note pointing to an article by Tom Wilson: “Guys just read Tom’s post on this . I think you should do something similar too to stand out from the crowd.”

Marcy sent back an extended response, which I think might be useful for those deciding when and where to start messing with basic, location based interfaces. The discussion is about the ribbon in 2010, but it could be about moving or altering any major interface piece.

From Marcy
I’ve spent a few hours diving deep into the ribbon over the past few days. You have no idea how far I’ve come in my knowledge of the Ribbon and 2010 elements since we last spoke. I even have custom graphics to help teach and train. I’m excited for the SP Designer 2010 book to be released but it’s impact on my availability is frustrating.

I wish I had a little more time this past week to review more design and content stuff. This is when you guys need me! This is my sweet spot! You are all moving at 100 miles an hour!

I’ve read Tom Wilson’s article, Ribbon Customization: Changing Placement, Look and Behavior, and think it’s great to see what can be done, but I’m not convinced on his reason…nor yours. Is standing out the most important thing or is functionality? Isn’t there something else that can be done to stand out?

Microsoft built an entire architecture and platform around the ribbon. I’d like to test it out the way it was intended first. And then see if it needs to be redesigned. It’s a functional element, not just for looks. Moving it has implications that should be well thought out.

Key Points

• Any break in the positioning decreases usability for your audience. All day every day they will be working with the ribbon in another location. Your users are going to also be using Office 2010 products.
• Moving the ribbon on task oriented site, such as a Wiki, is risky. There will be little annoying cognitive decisions about navigation when moving from program to program. For those of us that will be using SharePoint 2010 in more than one environment (ALL of your authors), it will be confusing, irritating, nettling, discombobulating. As Steve Krug has put it, “Don’t Make Me Think!”

I like that Tom proved it possible. I even think his design is slick. But just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it is good design. We should definitely prototype it first. Just move the position and not brand it. Let’s test it if you really want it.

It might be interesting. We could even implement on a subsite as an example… but for actual use? I don’t’ know.. would you want to make something harder to use to make it prettier on the eyes? I can tell you that sometimes it’s worth it. I’ve got some rockin shoes that aren’t functional. But I have to be hard pressed to wear them.

So let me know what you want to do. Test and prototype a new ribbon or get used to the one MS shipped? I will be on board either way.

I had a conversation with Marcy Keller last night about the best way to expose the amount of content we have on EndUserSharePoint.com when migrating to SharePoint 2010. I hadn’t even thought of an alternative to using a blog, but she’s convinced me that a publishing site is a viable alternative.

We have about 10 authors posting content on a regular basis, so publishing pages give them the ability to come in and hammer out a new page pretty easily. There’s a built-in rating system which will be nice, too.

The main problem I have with the idea is how are people going to comment on the articles? There is no built-in comment system for publishing pages. I gave Jeremy Thake from SharePointDevWiki.com a quick poke and he said he’d check on alternatives.

I’m working on the idea of findability of content with the publishing pages by building a Content Type that will allow for segmentation of the data through search:

• User Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
• Topic Area: (Lots)
• Audience: Information Worker, Site Manager/Power User, Site Collection Administrator
• Platform: WSS, MOSS 2007, SP2010
• Etc (Suggestions?)

Also, there’s a basic problem with SharePoint blogs in that you can’t embed objects, so there goes the inline video and audio shows.

That’s just the quick ideas, but the more I think of it, the more I like publishing pages, as long as Jeremy gets the commenting system worked out.

Suggestions? Comments? Are we on the right track?

I hit my first stumbling block when building out the architecture for the new SharePoint 2010 site. I don’t like the default publishing page, so I figured I’d go in and delete the areas on the page that were hogging the entire space. No go. These are fixed areas that can’t be deleted or moved.

I tried everything I could think of… change the page type, look for web part zones, delete the areas. Nope. This 2010 thing is a real beast. I hit twitter to see what I could find out.

Within a matter of minutes, John Ross and Randy Drisgill jumped in. Read from the bottom of this one to follow the thread.

Oh, no! I’m going to have to change all of my SharePoint habits because of this new Ribbon thing-a-ma-jig. Evidently I’m not the only one. Even Michael Doyle, aka SharePoint Ninja, is flailing a bit.

So I started poking around on the Ribbon, and sure enough, there it was: The Page Layout Button.

I’m still not crazy about the hoops I had to jump through to get there. I’ve gotten used to my old rocking chair, SharePoint 2007. Guess I’m going to have to learn some new tricks. I’ll keep you posted.

This is the first of a series of articles documenting the process of moving content from a WordPress blog, a bbPress PHP forum, and a SharePoint 2007 MOSS site into SharePoint 2010.

On May 13th I wrote an article describing the growing pains EndUserSharePoint.com is having. We’re closing in on 1600 articles and 11,000 comments, making it nearly impossible to find anything on the site. Not only that, it’s hard to find specific areas of content based upon user level. My answer: let’s move to SharePoint 2010 to see what it can REALLY do for an End User.

I look at 2010 as another platform for displaying information, making that information more findable and learning a bit along the way on how it works. I’ve started by laying out the infrastructure of the new site, including locations for existing content, along with placeholders for new content.

I started creating the placeholder sites yesterday and will document the pitfalls as they come up. Stay tuned…

This is the second in a series of short presentations exploring what’s new and improved in SharePoint 2010. You can find previous (and future presentations) in the SharePoint 2010 Handbook online at http://www.sharepointsharon.com/resources/handbook-2010/