By Erik Heino, Microsoft Corporation

Introduction

The personal sites available from the My Site link on the portal site for Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 are a potentially powerful tool with which users in an organization can define themselves within the larger organization and present information about themselves and their work to other users of the portal site.

Personal sites can be customized using all of the site customization features of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. These features are accessed from the Site Settings link on personal sites, just as they are available on any other SharePoint site. By default, each user of the portal site with a personal site is added to the Administrator'site group for that site so that he or she can edit its site settings. Users can configure and customize shared Web Parts, and they can customize the content of their personal sites by adding and customizing lists, sites, and pages. They can customize the style of their personal sites, add themes, and create custom templates for lists, document libraries, discussion boards, surveys, and sites.

The content on personal sites can also be customized by using features of SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Some Web Parts are available for personal sites that are not available in Windows SharePoint Services, and some of the more interesting custom Web Parts are described in this paper. Users can change the values for some of the properties in the public user profiles on their personal sites. Portal site users with the Manage User Profiles right, such as portal side administrators, can change the user profile properties of any user. They also decide which properties are in the public user profile, which properties can be changed by other users, and how those properties are displayed on the public user profile. From the user profile pages of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 portal site, they can also edit the site settings of the personal sites of any users in the portal site. Users with the Manage Portal Site right can target listings in Web Parts on personal sites to different users based on the audiences of which each user is a member.

Personal sites can also be customized by portal site administrators to be as broad or narrow in scope as desired. By default, personal sites are used both as a personal view of information in the portal site and as a location for users of the personal site to store and work on their important work items and documents. But portal site administrators can also decide to allow the use of only the personalized Web page features of personal sites. This "My Page" scenario is discussed in detail.

This paper discusses customization options for personal sites in SharePoint Portal Server 2003. For more information about customizing SharePoint sites in general, see the Customization section of the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Administrator's Guide.

This topic is part of a six part series.

• Introduction
• Using Web Parts to Customize Personal Sites
• Customizing Content on Personal Sites
• Customizing Themes, Styles, and Templates
• Configuring Personal Sites as Personal Pages
• Managing Personal Sites