Based on my personal experience in several projects and my latest experience in providing a SharePoint training for Computrain I provide you with a simple small strategy for Content Management. In this small strategy I will also explain the use of the tools available and when to use them. The strategy is a guideline and by no means fixed because organizations can have certain policies in place that prevent the use of certain tools (like SharePoint designer).

With SharePoint nowadays you have different ways to build and publish content:

• Using publishing sites and in page editing;
• Using web parts (content editor) as your main mechanism to provide rich content;
• Using SharePoint designer and the HTML design tools it provides;

In the training that I provided there was a discussion on how to decide which tools you need in which situation. My approach is as always based on the out-of-the-box experience:

• If you can use a publishing site start with that one;
• If you want reusable content, consider using the content editor web part;
• If you want to do other things use SharePoint designer.

My overall advise is that you don’t want to use SharePoint designer as your daily tool. Monitoring users while they work with SharePoint designer I have noticed that they sometimes forget that SharePoint Designer is connected to SharePoint and that it is advisable to store stuff in lists instead of a folder in a SharePoint site (other people cannot manage that). The goal should be to let others customize content without using SharePoint designer, so not using web parts zones, picture libraries and other SP components is mostly the wrong approach. Don’t mess around too much by placing stuff outside of zones or putting HTML directly into a page outside a web part zone.

Publishing site
The best starting point for a site that can be edited in the browser (HTML) is a publishing site. Consider using this template when building a news site or other sites where you have more readers than authors.

Reusable content and the content editor web part
The content editor web part is a great way to promote reusable content in your organization and across departments. Build nice and small functional blocks (web parts) by using HTML inside a content editor web part.

Using SharePoint designer and HTML design tools
If you decide to customize beyond the content editor web part make sure you take into account that SharePoint has certain out of the box functionality. So if you add pictures add them to a picture library and not in a special created folder. Always have migration in your mind!

But if you still decide to use SharePoint designer, make sure you follow the below guideline to make it manageable and that you encourage reusable functional blocks.

• Always create a play/development environment first where you can build stuff without screwing up site definitions;
• Make sure that you always start with creating a certain web zone layout;
• Switch off code and split view for your own safety, SP pages can be complex;
• If you feel the need to do HTML stuff, always put it in a content editor web part. You can decide to put it outside a web part zone so that others cannot change it (but for that you always need to customize the target site);
• Never, never put HTML directly into the page;
• Think about a way to versioning content editor web parts. Maybe you should check out the versioning settings in the web part gallery (it is there but not through the normal interface);
• Use DataViews if you want to do advanced stuff that can be used by other;
• Prepare all your content editor web parts and DataView web parts for export;
• Export all custom work to .dwp files;
• Change list bound .dwp files so that they support the ListName instead of the ListID (guid). By doing this you make sure they work on the target site.;
• Make sure that you test your exported and changed web parts in a new test site;
• Offer the .dwp files to other users and departments;
• or offer a .stp file with all functionality.

In every organization it would be a good practice to offer a central repository where all .stp- and .dwp files are offered to other users. One person could evaluate/certify/approve the custom developed work and decide to set it to published in the repository. A repository is basically a central document library where people can publish/download custom work.

Always promote reuse!!