Custom SharePoint Sites...

A lot of Marines remember trying to edit their unit's web site using Microsoft's FrontPage software. The more adventurous actually used their own copy of Macromedia's (now Adobe) Dreamweaver.

Unfortunately, when talking about a unit's SharePoint site, those tools are no more.

A word of caution to unit web developers (also known as the guys with the best MySpace page)...the only tool you can use to modify SharePoint WSS 3.0 sites is Microsoft SharePoint Designer.

If your unit is still using the WSS 2.0 version, you will still be allowed to modify those sites using FrontPage and Dreamweaver...but as soon as your unit upgrades to WSS 3.0 (have I mentioned that the upgrade is FREE), your pages are lost.

This is how this transistion occurred. Microsoft stopped supporting FrontPage, and created a product called Microsoft Expressions...this is Microsofts answer to Dreamweaver. From there, Microsoft added SharePoint functionality to Expressions and now has SharePoint Designer.

So what does all of this mean? Play nice or don't play at all. SharePoint has a lot of functionality built in...in most cases, you should not try to change the baseline.

Remember, the reason the Marine Corps is using SharePoint is to make information shareing standardized. Learn how to use one SharePoint site in theory, you can use them all.

Configuring and modifying your site, simply because you love playing with CSS, is not functional.

Unless you are adding FUNCTIONALITY to your site...leave it alone. Keep your CSS design skills for your MySpace page.