It seems like there’s a never-ending stream of blogs, books and videos on how to Brand SharePoint. Even so, the amount of misinformation and misunderstandings surrounding this topic is truly amazing.
The trigger for this particular blog is a question I saw posted at LinkedIn the other day where someone was asking if they should go ahead and Brand SharePoint even though they were going to migrate in a year. I was left speechless.
I think where this question comes from is the common belief that SharePoint Branding is simply an expensive, artistic exercise involving the application of graphical “eye candy” and zillions of lines of CSS (all of which they fully expect to be “scraped off” when the environment is migrated to the next version of SharePoint).
If you were to ask anyone skilled in the principles of corporate communications, you’d get quite a different answer.
Ideally, Branding should be a well-designed, consistent set of structural and visual cues communicating on multiple levels simultaneously. Implemented correctly, these cues will achieve a broad range of specific operational and behavioral goals. At the barest minimum, they will enhance one’s ability to navigate the environment.
Additionally, and this could be the really important part, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Done correctly, you will be able to restore it after migration with very little effort.
In order to achieve this, I have provided a list of the top five mistakes that people typically make when Branding SharePoint. Avoid these and you should be able to have the benefits of a branded site without fearing future migrations.
Make Sure You Don’t:
1. Think that Appearance is More Important than Layout
One of the most common mistakes in SharePoint Branding is to think about the appearance of SharePoint before you consider the intended function of the site and Web parts. Your branding exercise should start with a fully populated team site so that you can see the effect of your branding on the content of the site. The purpose of your branding should be to enhance the usability of the site and its Web parts.
2. Use Too Much CSS
It’s a pretty good bet that the next generation of SharePoint will have much different CSS than the current generation. Because of this, your custom CSS pages will not be referenced by the Master Page of the next generation SharePoint environment. What you do in custom CSS will all have to be rewritten to re-create your look and feel. In order to be less dependent on custom CSS, invest some time in exploiting SharePoint’s built-in branding capabilities and liberally apply lots of graphical elements into Image Viewer Web Parts, Summary Links, announcements and so on. Historically, all of the images placed in the site will migrate without any issues.
3. Use Too Many Master Pages
Investments that you make in building custom Master Pages will be lost upon migration. It’s important to understand what SharePoint is and how it works before undertaking branding. Branding SharePoint isn’t like starting Dreamweaver and building a custom website. SharePoint is a machine. It’s a very complex mountain of code that’s designed to facilitate the creation, modification, storage and retrieval of documents. It’s not “broken”, and it doesn’t need to be “fixed”. If you’re building a large number of master pages it’s likely that someone in the decision tree has a misunderstanding about SharePoint.
4. Brand Sites Individually
I’m not really sure how common this is, but the other day I had a strange conversation with a new SharePoint developer that was going to Brand a large site collection. They were being directed by senior management to Brand all department sites individually, each based on its own Master page (yes, they were all going to be that different). When warned about the work this was going to create upon migration, the developer made it clear that senior management was inflexible on this topic. Skillful use of graphics would have allowed each of these sites to be instantly recognizable without sacrificing functionality or continuity.
5. Start From Scratch
Most people start Branding SharePoint by splitting their browser, inspecting elements and building their first custom CSS page line by line. Don’t. It’s not like 10,000 developers haven’t done this before you. There are a large number of off-the-shelf products and “Branding Accelerators” that can significantly lower the cost and speed your branding project. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
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