First and foremost, SharePoint is a tool.
With SharePoint and portal services, you must look past the interface appearance and focus on Sharepoint as a tool. A restaurant will spend thousands for a WEB site too present their dinner menu while at the same time conveying the look and feel for the restaurant's venue.
Management wants a corporate WEB site to present a professional appearance, but SharePoint is not intended for the general public. Sharepoint is intended to be an in-house WEB based collaboration system, designed to interface with Microsoft Office 2003/2007/2008 applications. This is not to say SharePoint sites can not look good; in-fact, many SharePoint sites look great, but do so by modifying the interface with special WEB design tools.
Sharepoint has built-in design tools intended to make site configuration easy for Non-Programmers. The built in tools alow easy creation of web sites, pages, Blogs, WIKI pages, photo galleries, calendars, list and document libraries. The appearance of the data can be customized by modifying or creating uniquie views from all types of data. Data can be linked to applications on the users desktop; sent to clients via RSS feeds and emailed alerts. Access to all WEB sites and data is controlled through a simple management interface that is tied to the Windows Active Directory. WEB Site members can view, modify, and contribute content based on SharePoint assigned user and group rights. Document Libraries and List can be e-Mail enabled to receive email with attachments from site members.
The core purpose of Sharepoint Services is to be a document sharing and collaboration system through the creation of meeting workspaces and private/public web sites for project teams with a need for document management, access control, and document versioning.
The general public should never see your Sharepoint sites; so managements concern over degrading corporate public image should be dispelled.
I suggest you first get Sharepoint running and functional as a tool; build the site; populate the sites with content; establish security; invite users to take part in WEB Based discussions, and to start sharing data; in short, get it to function first, and dress it up later. You’ll be amazed how attitudes will change once users begin to understand what the tool is good for, and embrace it's functionality and ease of use. Does SharePoint’s interface look plain and simple? Yes! Simplicity means easy of use and low maintenance. If you try and dress up a Sharepoint before it is functional, your site will end up broken, frustrating the user community, and fail to accomplish the intended goal.
I’ve included some links that can provide further insight to what can be done with Sharepoint.
Here are some public SharePoint sites that look good. (They must have been very expensive to build and maintain.)
http://www.paulmitchellpro.com/
http://www.sharepointsample.com/samplesites.htm
http://www.alphamosaik.com/EN/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.contentandcode.com/
http://www.shareview.co.uk/Pages/Default.aspx
Here are SharePoint sites I use every day.
http://www.mikeangelo.com/BWPhotography/Forms/AllItems.aspx (oops. This is my photo gallery.) I was a photographer once. Try the slide show on the Action menu.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/wssapps/templates/default.mspx
http://www.wssdemo.com/default.aspx
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/sharepoint/
http://technet.com
Here are good demo and training sites. BE SURE TO CLICK THE ‘FULL VIEW’ BUTTON IN THE VIDEO.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA102055631033.aspx
Remember: People need training. Ask yourself this; how long did it take users to grasp the concept of typing URL’s to find information?
Horrible wasn’t it? Now we all do it every day. With Sharepoint, you will learn to Click File, Open and type http://sharepoint.citylightsmedai.com/ and be presented with a library of folders holding files to open; and yes, you may be asked to identify yourself, and for good reason, security in today's work place is paramont.
All in all, no site shows a better example of what Sharepoint w/programming code can accomplish better then Bill’s Office Home Page.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX100647101033.aspx?pid=CL100569831033
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