Customize your site

Web sites based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services are designed to be flexible. You can tailor a site to fit your users' needs by adding or removing pages, changing the appearance of pages, changing the site navigation, and making other customizations. To customize SharePoint sites, you must have the following rights, all of which are included in the Web Designer and Administrator site groups by default:

• Manage Lists
• Add and Customize Pages
• Apply Themes and Borders
• Apply Style Sheets

Other users of your site cannot gain access to the pages required to perform these tasks unless they are members of a site group that contains these rights. For more information about controlling permissions and assigning rights and site groups, see Assign permissions to users and groups.

Customizing sites in the browser

You can make basic customization changes from within the browser. From the browser, you can make changes such as the following:

• Create a list by using a built-in list template or create a custom list
• Change the layout of the home page and other Web Part pages
• Change the picture on the home page
• Add a Web Part to a Web Part page
• Change the name and description of a SharePoint site
• Apply or remove a theme

You can click Home in this window to browse the Windows SharePoint Services Help table of contents for even more ways to customize Web sites from within the browser.

Customizing sites by using Web page editing tools

You can further customize a site by using a Web page editor that is compatible with Windows SharePoint Services, such as Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. With a Web page editor, you can make customization changes such as the following:

• Apply a theme (can also be done from the browser)
• Add borders to pages
• Insert graphics
• Add components to the home page
• Change the navigation of a site
• Delete files
• Create new lists and document libraries (can also be done from the browser)

For information about customizing sites by using a Web page editor, see the Help files for your editor.

For example, if you have created a custom theme for Windows SharePoint Services sites in Office FrontPage 2003 and added the theme name to the list of themes in Office FrontPage 2003, you can edit the list of available themes in Windows SharePoint Services to include your new theme. The XML file spthemes.xml (in /_layouts/) contains the theme name, style sheet location, thumbnail, preview, and description of each theme that is available through the browser. This XML file is used to render the theme selection page. You can modify this XML file (by opening it in any editor) to include a custom theme on the Apply Theme to Web page. You must be a member of the server computer's administrators group to edit this file. For more information about creating a theme and adding it to the list of themes in Office FrontPage 2003, see the Office FrontPage 2003 Help system.

Customizing sites by using administrative controls

If you are a member of the Administrator site group, you can customize how SharePoint sites work by performing tasks such as the following:

• Change settings, such as regional setting
• Add, remove, or modify site groups
• Add or remove users, or change their site group assignments

You control these features by using the Site Administration pages. Only members of the Administrator site group or users who have been assigned to a site group that contains administrative rights, such as the Manage Groups right, can make these types of changes.

Customizing sites programmatically

You can make advanced Web development changes by using the programming model behind Windows SharePoint Services. You can use the programming model to make changes such as the following:

• Define new views
• Create forms
• Look up values in the database and display them on a page
• Add additional content types, such as Macromedia Flash movies, to the site
• Add a global document template to be used across the site
• Add Active Server Pages (ASP.NET pages) to the site.

  Note  The ability to add ASP.NET pages to a site can be controlled by administrators for security reasons. For more information about ASP.NET pages in SharePoint sites, see Configure a virtual server.

For more information about advanced customizations, see the Windows SharePoint Services Software Development Kit.