Putting your Landing Page on a Diet David C. Broussard Sr. Lead Consultant September 22 nd, 2009.

Putting your Landing Page on a Diet

David C. BroussardSr. Lead ConsultantSeptember 22nd, 2009

SharePoint is a Chinese Buffet

Is This Your Landing Page?

• Company News• Industry News• Departmental News• Top Story of the Day• Polls/Surveys• Employee Birthdays• Employee

Anniversaries• Photo of the Day• My Links• Employee Schedules• Employee Recognition• New Products/Services• I Need To…• Targeted Reports• Audience Dashboards• etc…

Docs/tasks/calendars, blogs, wikis, e-mail integration, project management “lite”, Outlook integration, offline docs/lists

My Sites, social networking, privacy control, content

targeting and aggregation,

Enterprise scalability,contextual relevance,

rich people and business data search

Rich and Web forms based front-ends, LOB actions, pluggable Enterprise single sign-on

Server-based Excel spreadsheets and data visualization, Report Center, BI Web Parts, KPIs/Dashboards

Integrated document management, records management, and Web content management with policies and workflow

Enterprise Portal template, Site Directory, content aggregation, LDAP integration, composite applications

The Promise is the Dilemma…

Content versus Performance

Our desire is to be fast…• Our Landing Page is the most visible page in the entire

site• We must optimize our Landing Page to load as quickly as

possible

The Content Authors want it ALL on one page• They see the Landing Page as the first/only page they

have to get their message to the users• Every department wants their content visible to as many

users as possible…

The Solution?

Put your Landing Page on a diet!• Identify the four “food” groups and limit

your consumption of the bad ones• Framework• Publishing• Work• Bling

Framework

The foundation upon which we will build our page(s)

• Primarily the Master Page• Use static HTML• Navigation

(Contextual & Global)• Optimize for speed of load

• Graphics• Web Parts• Server Controls

• Don’t just hide unused areas

• Start with a Minimal or Base Master Page

Publishing

The key to our slim and lean landing page.• Use Publishing fields for content on the page• Encourage users to create publishing pages and

use content query or search web parts to roll up content sourced from multiple locations

Work

Content that let’s the user actually accomplish their daily jobs.• Reports• Dashboards• Issues lists• LOB Portals using Page Viewer, BDC, Custom Web Parts, etc.• Links to tools

Difficult to implement due to reliance upon external systems.

Use tools like Sonar (BinaryWave) to determine impact of web parts on your page.

Bling

This is the stuff that Corporate Communications just has to have on the landing page.

• SilverLight/Flash• Streaming Audio/Video• Complex JavaScript• Audience Targeted Web Parts• Information from slow LOB systems

Bling = Slow

Resources

• Binary Wave’s Sonar - http://www.binarywave.com/products/sonar/standard/default.aspx

• Base Master Page (Heather Solomon) http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/BaseMasterPages.aspx

• Minimal Master Page (MSDN) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa660698.aspx