In fact, if you choose a Site Template that is in the category of Publishing that’s actually happening so I want to talk about that for a moment and to show you the context of what it looks like.

Right now this is a new Site Collection were the Top Level Site is based on a Team Site Template. I’ve named it TeamSitePub and the Publishing Feature is not to play here so if I go to edit the Quick Launch Bar and do the same way I did my other video.

If I want to get there via Site Settings, I go to Site Actions > Site Settings

You’ll see right now under Look and Feel there is my link to the Quick Launch Bar.

And the link to the Top Link Bar and there’s even a tree new control we talk about in the first video Using Navigation Controls in a Collaboration Site .

What I’m going to do is activate at the Site Collection level of Publishing Feature and to do that I will use the subheading of Site Collection Administration options.

If I wasn’t a Site Collection Administer I wouldn’t see any of these links and if I wasn’t at the Top Level Site I would see the heading but I wouldn’t see any of the links, it would just be a message to go to the Top Level Site. You can only manage the Site Collection via these links from the Top Level Site of the Site Collection.

This is nice to see within the hierarchy because if you have a bunch of Team Sites in one Site Collection it might be hard to know where you are in the hierarchy and at least you can see from the Top Level Site.

If you can see all the links then you are a Site Collection Administrator and you are at the Top Level Site of the Site Collection.

One of the options is one year called Site Collection features.

We’re going to have a video where we talk about the features matrix where you can activate or deactivate features at different levels in the SharePoint hierarchy, remember we talked about the SharePoint Farm, Web Application and Site Collection in the Site in the previous video.

Site Collection features is a matrix of features that are turned on or turned off at the Site Collection Level. What this means is the template that I chose for the Top Level Site has in the script that SharePoint uses to create that are the definition file the uses to create that site it has which features should be turned at both the Site Collection Level which would be out here which is where I’m going now and it would set a matrix of features which are activated or not activated at the individual site level.

So whatever we do here at the Site Collection Level will potentially affect every site within the Site Collection but there are some features that you just have to actively that the site level and they just matter for that particular site that you’re in.

I’m on the Site Collection features page and this is where the Publishing Feature starts. It starts here at the Site Collection level. So I would have to come down here if I wanted to you can see a Team Site does not have the SharePoint Server public infrastructure (that’s with Publishing Features called) activated.

To activate it, I simply click activate you can see which features are activated for this Site Collection because there’s a blue button that says “Activate” and then there’s the buttons that says “deactivate”.

So I’m going to click Activate and what’s going to happen is it will run through whatever procedures need to happen to let SharePoint know at this Site Collection is going to be using the Publishing Feature.

Now some things that happen when we turn on the Publishing Feature are SharePoint is going to create additional SharePoint Groups that you can use to put users or Active Directory Groups into so that they can have the roles associated with those groups. You will have a group of Approvers, a group of Designers, a group of Hierarchy Managers. The things that are normally done in the context of content management more so than what we use our traditional SharePoint Groups for which is access controls.

The Publishing Feature has successfully activated and I can see that down here SharePoint Server Publishing infrastructure if I go from here to go the Site Actions > Site Settings

And click on Site Permissions.

I can see immediately that in this Site Collection there are actually extra groups that did not exist such as Hierarchy Managers, Designers, Approvers those of the group’s I’m talking about.

When you have just a normal Team Site that doesn’t have a Publishing Feature activated, it’s going to have “Owners”, ”Members”,  “Visitors” and Excel Services Viewers. So there are a couple of SharePoint Security Groups that get added.

Also if I click on Site Contents in the Publishing Site.

You’ll see that it created a few other Libraries including this Content and Structure Reports Library.

The Content and Structure Reports Library has a whole bunch of information about all the stuff that’s in this particular site here in this Site Collection.

I haven’t activated the Publishing Feature for this site I just activated it for the Site Collection. Once it’s been activated for the Site Collection I can go to each individual site in the Site Collection and I can activate the Publishing Feature at that site level.

Here are one of the things that happens when we activate the Publishing Feature even at the Site Collection level even though it’s not activated at the site level, if I go to Site Actions > Site settings.

I no longer see an option to select for the Quick Launch Bar.

I no longer see an option for the Top Link Bar. Instead, I see a link that says “Navigation”.

So setting up and working with the navigation controls on Publishing Sites that’s what we’re talking about I would click Navigation.

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When I click navigation, rather than driving things through a drag and drop feature where I can change orders and hand editing links (which you can still do in the browser through the Edit Links control) but on the settings page, it changes.

You have a series of radio buttons and check boxes. Depending on where you are, in this case the top ones greyed out “Display the Same Navigation Items as the Parent Site?” because I’m at the top level of the Site of the Site Collection. But you have a few options such as Manage Navigation, Structural Navigation and then within the structural navigation, you have “Shows Subsites and Show Pages?” and then within that you have Maximum Number of Dynamic Levels to go which in this case the default is 20.

If I click “Show Subsites”

I am controlling this for the Global Navigation.

When we turned the Publishing Feature on or the Publishing Features at paly, on the Site Settings Page you don’t see Quick Launch and the Top Link Bar, you now see Navigation.

When you click on Navigation you have a series of radio buttons and a series of check boxes that you used to set the overall navigation controls and how they’re going to be used. Such as what’s you’re going to use to administer them. This one will see is referred to as Global Navigation. You can see from this icon that is what we call the Top Link Bar in a Collaboration Site.

When you turn the Publishing Feature on, SharePoint stops calling it the Top Link Bar and they call it Global Navigation which makes sense because people are used to it pointing at things not on that site other than the main link that goes back to the homepage of that site.

Down here you see “Current Navigation”.

This is what is referred to in a Collaboration Site as the Quick Launch Bar. The placement is still Top Link Bar on the collaboration site and Global Navigation. They are in the same place and Current Navigation and Quick Launch Bar are just different terms pointing to navigation in the same place. It’s really whether the Publishing Features turned on or turn off and you can see that you get many different decisions as to how you want SharePoint to manage that navigation.

Once again all click the icon it will take me back to the homepage.

If I click the TeamSitePub link on the Top Link Bar at this point it’s now called Global Navigation.

I can still click the edit links I can still drag and drop I can still click the (+)

But when I go to the actual settings page.

This really where I’m going to see the main difference in the Navigation Controls.

In another video, I will explore the Managed Navigation so that we can get an understanding of what this is because it’s new to a lot of people and it’s a pretty awesome feature in SharePoint.

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Spike Xavier
SharePoint Instructor – Interface Technical Training
Phoenix, AZ