This series of articles on SharePoint is intended to help you understand the capabilities of the product, as well as provide tips and tricks, development ideas, information from Microsoft, information from the community, and perhaps some samples.

It will include how-to articles that can help you with your deployments; ways to customize a page; deployment scenarios; and content management.

• In Part 1 Paul Schaeflein, begins his series with a look at the history, features, and applications of Microsoft’s SharePoint portal server.
• Part 2 looks at the basic installation of a corporate intranet and some basic customization options.
• Part 3 shows you how to build a searchable telephone directory for your intranet, complete with partial name search.
• Part 4 describes a method for integrating a legacy Web application inside a SharePoint site.
• The Microsoft SharePoint Portal technology series is still active. More installments will be published, and will be added to this page as they become available.

For more information on the difference between Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and SharePoint Portal Server, please see: support.microsoft.com.

If you are following along with the series on Microsoft SharePoint and have any questions or comments, make sure you post them in the Intranet Journal Discussion Forum, where the author and hundreds of fellow readers can answer any question you have or dispense advice.

Enjoy the series and good luck.

More SharePoint content from the JupiterWeb network:

• Using SharePoint Portal Server to Index Your Custom Application (from DevX)
• SharePoint Site Definitions: Why You Need Them and How to Use Them (from DevX)
• Build a Custom SharePoint Web Service for Your InfoPath 2003 Documents (from Developer.com)
• Connecting Web Parts in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Part 1 (from Intranet Journal)
• Developing SharePoint Web Parts with the ICellProvider Interface (from Intranet Journal)
• Developing Web Parts with ICellConsumer Interface (from Intranet Journal)