Sharepoint as internet site

[pottski]

Hi everyone,

We are looking at expanding out sharepoint site and use it as the schools internet site, is there any schools out there that currently use sharepoint for their internet site and if so did you have any problems with it or find any pitfalls?

cheers

Rob

[Tyiell]

We were also looking at doing this. Rumour has it that it is inordinately expensive because you have to pay extra to allow the general public (as opposed to licenced users who are off-site) to access the site. Not sure how true that is though, I haven't had time to research it properly...

[steveej1]

I've also recently been looking into this. It has now been conformed by Ray Fleming at Microsoft that the Internet Connector license is apparently not required for schools public facing websites.

Rob - FYI the publishing framework within Sharepoint means that you can pretty much do whatever you want in terms of creating a public website.

Steve Eyton-Jones
Novotronix Ltd.

[GrumbleDook]

Have a look at Chris and Daves SharePoint and Tech Blog

[jcollings]

We use it as our public website. It works really well for us.

[pottski]

Thanks for all the info folks, i have one more question (possibly now aimed at those of you who use sharepoint with anonymous access) i have a custom stylesheet and have uploaded it to the style library folder, however when viewing the page anonymously the stylesheet does not apply, have any of you encountered this before and if so what have you done to solve it?

thanks

Rob

[p858snake]

We were also looking at doing this. Rumour has it that it is inordinately expensive because you have to pay extra to allow the general public (as opposed to licenced users who are off-site) to access the site. Not sure how true that is though, I haven't had time to research it properly...

If you're authenticating against your AD, you need CALs but i believe there a special thing for UK educational schools as people have mentioned in here to get around that.

[Tyiell]

Yeah we have the CALs for our users (students, staff & governors) to authenticate with the server to look at our VLE as an Intranet. For the outside world we were looking at hosting the webpage right at the front with anonymous access rights - that way anyone can look at the website, but to look further into the vle you authenticate as usual. Our network Manager was told that this wasn't possible without buying that Internet Connector Licence, but I have found nothing to cxonfirm that...

[Tyiell]

Oops, but having just started reading the post GrumbleDook added, it seems confirmed that we do not.

[rayfleming]

It has now been conformed by Ray Fleming at Microsoft that the Internet Connector license is apparently not required for schools public facing websites.

Important clarification from me! My answer was in the context of a normal public-facing website, with anonymous users (ie one where you don't login to your Active Directory etc). If you are building a website where users login, eg you are building a VLE in it, then you'll need CALs etc for the users that login.

[steveej1]

Hi Rob,

Have you published your page?

Steve

[pottski]

Steve,

Thanks for that, I have now solved the issue but it has something to do with your suggestion! I had published and checked in the pages for the website but i had not approved them, so i was seeing the style sheets rendering (as i had created and applied them) but the anon user wasn't. after approving the pages properly everything seems to be working (apart from the content Query webpart but i understand this is always a problem, and i have found a way round the issue it was presenting)

Thanks for all your Help / Advice everyone

Rob