I will start with an out-of-the-box Team Site and end up with a home page that looks like the screen shot above. If I click the PMO part of the image, I will be taken to one location and if I click on the Process part of the image I will be taken to another location. This is done using html’s image Map functionality.

First off, I want to get the home page ready. Since the top level site of this site collection is based on the team site template, the home page is a wiki page and thus I can simply click the edit page icon to put it quickly into edit mode.

With the page in Edit Mode I will go ahead and use the ribbon to change the layout of the page and get it ready for my image map.

Using the Text Layout Ribbon Icon I choose One Column.

With my cursor in the content area, I select all the content (CTRL + A) and then I delete it.

I click Save and Close in the Ribbon which takes the page out of edit mode.

I am at the top level site of a new Site Collection. The top level site template is a Team Site. To open SharePoint Designer 2010 connected to the correct site, I go: Site Actions > Edit in SharePoint Designer

In SharePoint Designer II click the link to Edit the Home Page.

When I did this, my cursor was placed into the PlaceHolderMain and it was set to custom mode. Just in case, I like to click the little glif symbol on the right and make sure it says Default to Masters Content which indicates to me that the PlaceHolderMain is ready for custom content. If this was not the case, I would see ‘Create Custom Content’ and I would click that.

I click inside the PlaceHolderMain and I will insert my image here.

I select the Insert Tab and then in the Ribbon I click on the Picture Icon.

I browse to my image (in this case it’s named image001.png and is located on my desktop) and then I select the file and click Insert.

SharePoint Designer 2010 makes sure to remind me to insert Alternate Text. I put in Home Page Navigation Image since that’s what I’m adding. I leave out the Long Description and click OK.

I verify that my image was inserted where I wanted and that I inserted the correct image and then I click the HotSpot icon in the Ribbon (it’s in the Picture Tools > Format Tab). Because the shape of the section of the image is not a square or rectangle, I choose Polygon which in essence allows me to outline about any shape I want. I am creating an image map here. I have done this before in raw HTML and I must say that using this tool is about a billion times easier!.

I outline a section of the image by clicking the cursor at different points on the image. It will connect each section with a line and create an outline.

Once I come to a point in my shape where two points meet, I have completed a shape and SharePoint Designer gives me a pop up box where I can set the link’s href value. In other words I’m telling SharePoint where to send a user when they click that part of the image. In this case, I’ll link the shape that includes PMO to http://www.interfacett.com but if this was production I would put in the URL to the PMO Site.

When I’m done I click OK.

If you click the Advanced button you can set the target. In many cases people will set Target = _blank causing the link to open in an new browser instance or tab (depending on the browser). I’ll just hit cancel because if I was setting this up to be my ‘SharePoint Custom Navigation’ I would want it to stay in the same window.

I click OK.

I click OK and accept the default settings in the Save Embedded Files Dialog. This is where SharePoint adds a copy of the image to the SiteAssets library and then updates the HTMLt img tag to point to the SiteAssets Library as opposed to my desktop.

SharePoint Designer will do it’s best to protect me from unsafe content and strip anything crazy I added to the page as it saves the changes I made. This dialog simply asks if I’d like to see the page with those changes. I click Yes.

I set up another link around the section that contains Process and set the target url on that to go to http://www.transmissionit.com. To test all this I go back to the browser and hit refresh and see that it took my changes and then I click on the PMO section of the image.

Awesome! I’m taken to Interface Technical Training’s Web Site.

As I said earlier, I set up a link to http://www.transmissionit.com in the Process section of the image so I’ll test that as well by clicking it in the browser.

Yep, it worked, I’m taken to http://www.transmissionit.com. Awesome!

The reason I check two different locations is to verify that the image wasn’t just becoming one big link.

Image maps are very powerful and the tool-set that ships with SharePoint Designer out of the box is incredible.