About managing Web Part availability

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services allows users to add Web Parts to Web Part Pages in a SharePoint site. A Web Part is a modular unit of information that has a single purpose. For example, the list of default Web Parts available with Windows SharePoint Services includes the following:

• Content Editor Web Part    Displays unstructured Web content, such as text or images.
• Image Web Part    Displays a picture.
• Form Web Part    Allows the user to add an HTML form.
• Contacts Web Part    Allows the user to display the Contacts list on a Web Part Page.

Users can include Web Parts from any of the following sources by default:

• The Web Part Online Gallery    A list of ready-to-use Web Parts available from the Microsoft Web site.
• The site collection Web Part gallery    The list of Web Parts (either default or custom Web Parts) added to a particular site collection.
• The server Web Part gallery    The list of Web Parts (either add-in Web Parts from a Web Part assembly or custom Web Parts in a Web Part assembly) added to a particular server. For more information about Web Part assemblies, see Deploying Custom Web Parts.

  Note  

• Web Part Page gallery    The list of all Web Parts currently used on a specific Web Part Page.

When a user adds a Web Part to a Web Part Page, the user can browse any of these sources to find a Web Part.

Managing security and performance options for Web Parts and Web Part Pages

You can control whether users can connect Web Parts within a site, and whether they can have access to the online Web Part gallery. The online Web Part gallery contains many Web Parts that users can use on their sites. Adding Web parts or making connections to Web parts may affect your server security, and performance. For example, if you allow Web Part connections, and a user connects a complex Web Part to a large data set, the Web Part Page that contains those Web Parts could load very slowly when a user goes to it. Also, if a user connects to a Web Part that contains a scripting error or malicious code, that Web Part could open a security hole in the user's site or, potentially, on your server.

You can change these configuration options at the virtual server level. By default, both security options are enabled at the server level. You need to change these options only if you do not want to allow either Web Part connections or access to the online Web Part gallery. If you have multiple servers in a server farm environment, and you want to change these settings for all virtual servers, you must configure these options for each virtual server on each server in that server farm. You must be an administrator of the local server computer, or a member of the SharePoint Administrators group, to configure security and performance options for Web Parts and Web Part Pages.

Managing the Web Part gallery for a site

Administrators of a top-level Web site can determine which Web Parts are available to the users of sites in their site collection. The administrators can use the Web Part Gallery page to add or remove Web Parts from the list of Web Parts available for use, or to upload new Web Parts. Note that users may also have access to Web Parts in the online Web Part gallery or in the Server gallery. The Web Part gallery for a site controls only a subset of all Web Parts available to users.

Related Topic

Manage Web Part availability