this is sharepoint?!
Categories: sharepoint
O.k. I’ll admit it. In the past I have been known to bad mouth SharePoint sites for their sheer lack of style and web 2.0ishness. But seriously people..this product is coming around. Many devs/analysts out there still picture a SharePoint site as being your stock intranet MSFT blue portal:
While its functional and great for intranet, the stock portal is not a good fit for a public facing website. And the cool thing about Sharepoint is that you not only have the integration and content management points of the API, but with a little talent and patience, a skilled designer can really deliver a top notch product:
So if your SharePoint site is ugly…its your own fault. 
Thanks to Lawrence Liu (www.twitter.com/LLiu) for posting these awesome examples of what SharePoint can do when approached with an open mind!
I’d love to see more examples of outstanding SharePoint implementations, so email me or drop a comment!
-dan
Dan, I agree that it’s nice that SP can be skinned to look like a “real” website, but the appearance has never been my complaint. SP is a server product sold to business people on the basis of ROI. It is not a product built or marketed to developers. It has dumbed down tools barely equal to MS Access. I can’t imagine anyone being passionate about developing for SP.
++Alan
Alan,
I’ll agree that the platform doesn’t offer the best experience for developers. I’m constantly hearing from developers that are struggling with SharePoint. And struggle, for some people, is the anithesis of passion. However, I thrive on complexity. That was one of the things that attracted me to BizTalk. It’s not easy. Not every developer is going to embrace it. But the product is there and it’s not going to go away.
As an independent consultant, more often than not, I have to chase current trends in development and implentation. So if SharePoint is hot, I need to ramp up and get motivated to do the best job I can on the product regardless of its legacy or reputation. I can choose to play with the 1000 pound gorilla in the room or I can choose to fight him.
I’ll echo what Alan said. I’ve worked with SP for the past few months on real, non-trivial sites, and the developer experience is a friggin’ nightmare. We have a lot of very smart devs working with SP at my company, and they _all_ hate it (although the sales guys love it).
And I’ve actually had the displeasure of trying to help our very talented designers make an SP site look “non-ugly” and it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Sure, it’s _possible_ to make SP look like the sites you mentioned above, but I’d sooner poke my eyes out than attempt such a thing.
RIP Microsoft Content Management Server 2002….you were so very good to us..
Original post by mattusximus
buy antibiotics Watch out!