Design Ideas for Migrating Web Pages to SharePoint Sites

So, you have a website already, and you want to move it to SharePoint (or someone has asked you to do so). SharePoint is a very powerful platform, and offers many user-friendly features that are not available in standard HTML, ASP, or JSP-based websites, or that require custom coding and IT maintenance. 

As a business user, you can take advantage of the SharePoint platform to keep your new site's pages fresh and well-organized without writing a line of code or HTML, or asking IT to update your pages. You can focus on creating, publishing, and sharing your content. 

The core building blocks of a SharePoint page are web parts. There are three basic kinds of content that you can place on a page in SharePoint:

• Lists and libraries (where you store content, and display it with views
• Special-purpose web parts
• Text, either plain or formatted HTML

Using lists and web part views, you can make your pages dynamically refresh when new content is added. A simple way to do this is with a What's New View of a list or library that sorts content by Modified, descending, so that the newest content appears first. When you create this view and place it in a web part on a page, the page will automatically display new content as it is added to the list or library (once it's approved, if your list has content approval). You (or your webmaster) will no longer need to edit each page manually to add the new link. SharePoint does it for you.

You can also use special fields and lists that create dynamic links automatically. For example:

• Person fields link to that person's contact page in the Employee Directory, and can display a photo, title, or online status
• Lookup fields can display a dropdown list of values from another list; a document library can link to a Team Directory, an Issues list, or FAQ
• Calendar lists can display All Events, Current Events, or Calendar views
• Task lists can send an email when an owner is assigned to the task
  

If Your Page Has	Consider Putting Your Content In:	And Displaying It With:
Sections, tables and/or columns	Lists or libraries (see below)	Web part page with a web part for each section
Sitewide table of contents, summary, or sitemap	Lists, libraries, or pages (see below)	Table of Contents web part
LInks to multiple documents	Shared Documents Library with Categories	Web part views of the library (one per Category)
Links to other sites or resources	Links list	Web part view of the list
One primary contact name, email, phone for the info on the page	The Page Contact field for that Page	Contact Details web part
Multiple contact names, email, phone numbers	People and Groups list Any list with a Person field, for example a Team Directory	Site Users web part Web part view of the custom list
Structured tables or lists	Custom list	Web part view of the list
Dates or events at a specific date and time Repeating events A calendar view	Calendar list	Web part view of the list
News or announcements (including news of upcoming events on the calendar)	Announcements list	Web part view of the list
One section of plain text, as part of a more complex page with other elements	Content Editor web part	Content Editor web part
One introductory paragraph	Content field at the top of a web part page	Web part page
Clip art or other images	Images library	Image web part
Group(s) of links with images for each	Summary Links web part	Link style that displays images
Simple color blocks or banners, with or without text labels	One-column table in a Content Editor web part	Web part page
Photos	Picture Library	web part view of Picture Library