Sharepoint Site Branding

By Author: Antony Arnold
Total Articles: 6
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What is branding? It is how you apply an organization’s identity to an existing software application through customization of a portal site. It is an important requirement for any portal implementation and it has a significant impact on the end user experience. Why a company does needs site branding? It is because it delivers the message carefully, confirms credibility, motivates the buyer, builds user loyalty and connects the target prospect emotionally. Instead of using the standard Sharepoint sites, companies most often would like to create unique sites. Sharepoint is a web based application. And website branding consists of the colors, fonts, logos and supporting graphics that make up the general look and feel of the website.

Branding for sharepoint includes Master Pages, Themes, Page Layouts, CSS, web parts, XSLT, images etc. Master pages are templates that control content design. Here the user selects a template while creating a new content. It controls placements of site data. Themes define the look and feel of ...
... web pages by using group of files (CSS & images) Themes apply not only to the content and list/library pages of a site but also to the pages in the layout directory. It can also be used in the conjunction with the master pages, site definitions and site templates. A page layout is a template that is used in conjunction with a master page to control the look, feel, and content of a page. Each page layout has an associated content type that determines the kind of content that can be stored on pages based on that page layout. CSS styles can be used to define and change the look and feel of items on the page. Webparts are relatively easy to change. There are a few styles that control the header, and a few that control the body. The web parts are rendered into nested tables. So it consists of table rows and table cell tags and styles primarily. Webparts are like the movable content of the website. The last component is the use of images. Knowing where the images are and the different things that are stored will allow you to work more efficiently on MOSS.

The type of sharepoint sites can be various ie. Individual, Team, Divisions, Enterprise(Intranet), Extranet and Internet. A SharePoint Site Definition consists of a hierarchy tree of CAML elements that describe the makeup of the site. The top element of the site is the TEMPLATE element, which is declared in the WEBTEMP file, and which contains template Configuration elements with references to an ONET.xml which contains the actual components that make up the site. For SharePoint Branding, a deep understanding of all the components is required. Doing a branding for sharepoint is like building branding for any .Net web applications or just like building a website.

Mindfire Solutions has gained adequate expertise in Sharepoint site branding. It is regarded as one of the top SharePoint site branding service providers in India. It has 5+ years of experience in developing sharepoint applications and sharepoint projects in various industry domains. Feel free to visit our sharepoint development and sharepoint consulting pages for more details.

Be it the dedication to serve, be it the exceptional transparent dealings or be it the personalized client centric focus, Mindfire has always shown the passion to create a long lasting business partnership with customers. With its Microsoft Gold Certified Partnership, Mindfire Solutions is all set to become one of the topmost SharePoint Development Service providers.

To discuss about our services, expertise and how we can help you, please contact us at info (at) mindfiresolutions (dot) com or call 1-248-686-1424.