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Prepared by Ian Matthews December 30, 2003 - Revised February 25, 2004 Microsoft's new "Windows SharePoint Services 2.0" (WSS) is an excellent web based collaboration tool which has very limited documentation and support. The purpose of this page is provide fill some of the gaps. NOTE: This information below is offered with no guarantees and we accept no liability. VERSION AVERSION: In recent years Microsoft has produced a number of products which compete in the Web Server Extension space. FrontPage Server
Extensions
The 'full version' of STS was called SharePoint Portal Server 1.0. SPS 1.0 was unstable (I believe this was because it ran off an Access database); one associate of mine could not keep it running for more than two months without having to repair it. While SPS 1.0 did provide more functionality than STS, it was limited and garnered Microsoft few sales. Both of these products are have been replaced. Windows SharePoint
Services and Windows SharePoint Portal Services WSS is free to all those who own Windows 2003 Server.
I have not used SPS 2003 but after discussions with my colleagues who have, I believe that the 'free' WSS contains about 80% of SPS 2003 functionality. If you want to see an introductory video on the SPS click HERE. SPS 1.0 has become MS Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Even though the 'free' WSS 2.0 was based on SPS 1.0, I consider WSS 2.0 to be a new product because it has so many new features. For more detail download the Administrators Guide HERE and read the Planning, Upgrade Considerations section. It should be made clear that WSS does not require a web page editor (like Front Page 2003). Without FrontPage 2003, you can access about 95% of WSS capabilities through its web interfaces. If you want to use FrontPage to edit WSS sites, you NEED to have the FrontPage 2003 or newer; FrontPage 2002 does work with some WSS functions but MS does not support it and I have not had good experiences with it. While WSS and SPS 2003 do support many of the functions found in FrontPage Server Extensions, there are several important limitations. For instance, they do not support ASP pages, linking to an Access database to display dynamic database content on a web page or even hit counters. You can not run both FPSE and WSS on a single a site / virtual server but (contrary to some documentation) you can run both FPSE and WSS on the same IIS 6 server. Both WSS and SPS store nearly all of there content (including any custom .HTM pages you build in FrontPage) in a SQL (or MSDE) database. WSS and SPS 2003 are not intended for anonymous access, although you can re-configure them to allow anonymous access. All of these factors mean that I will continue to build standard public websites using FPSE2002. If a site requires collaboration, I will create a sub-site (like private.commodore.ca) and add a link to a site/new virtual server on the core site. In this way users can get the best of both worlds. (FYI, private.commodore.ca does not exist... it was just an example.) Still Confused? Perhaps this chart will help:
WSS INSTALL ISSUES: Basically, there are three ways to install WSS:
You should also not that there is a way to upgrade from MSDE to SQL but why not just install it correctly the first time. Note that under all three options you CAN NOT select the WSS install location. The path is hard coded so don't waist your time trying to get WSS to not run from C:\ . MSDE install location can be selected if you perform a command line install; see Single Server Deployment in the Administrators Guide. WSS is incompatible with FPSE / FPSE2002 / SharePoint Team Services. This was an area of confusion for me. The bottom line is that you CAN have these older extensions installed and running on your other sites / virtual servers in IIS6, BUT they must not be running on any sites you want to run WSS. Upgrading existing FPSE / STS sites is a pain in the butt. You are really going to need a good reason to upgrade to go through the effort. There is no 'in-place upgrade'; the whole process is command line. Because WSS is so different from FPSE & STS, I don't think many sites will be upgraded. TEMPLATE OPTIONS: After your install is complete, you can extend a virtual server by starting IIS6, right clicking on the site, selecting ALL TASKS, SHAREPOINT CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION. Then signing in as any user in the Administrators NT group. Select EXTEND OR UPGRADE..., select the site/virtual server you want extended, and chose EXTEND AND CREATE... The other option EXTEND AND LINK... is only for use with server farms or pre-existing sites (i.e. you deleted a site but kept the content.) On the next screen, I like to create my own App Pool and Database (so I can see what is going on via IIS6 and SQL Enterprise Manager) but you do not have to. Once completed, you will click a link which will take you to your new site and be prompted to select a template to apply. The problem is that there is virtually no explanation of what each template looks like. Here is that detail:
Presumably, MS will be producing more of these templates if the product takes off. Other companies like CorasWorks are already producing templates for sale. SITE MANAGEMENT: There are five critical pages to managing your site:
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: I strongly recommend that new administrators take the 40 minutes to watch the "MS Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services: End-to-End Security Model" presentation. You can find a newer and longer version of this presentation HERE. Nearly all data and configuration files are stored in a database (either SQL or MSDE). Therefore, it is difficult for you to see the files you are working on without FrontPage2003 or SQL's Enterprise Manager. If you are working on a DC, you will need to add AUTHENTICATED USERS (with default permissions) to the NTFS share that IIS6 is using for the site/virtual server. Others have told me that they found the short Microsoft demo of WSS to be useful, but I did not. I think MS has intentionally made documentation and support scarce for the base WSS product because they want to push companies into buying Share Point Portal Server. The bottom line is that at the time this article was written you have only a handful of decent WSS resources. That is pretty sad state for such an awesome technology. An exceptionally friendly writer suggested http://wss.collutions.com as another good source of WSS documentation. If you run a WSS support site, send me an email and I will glad to provide a link. |
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