So, you have been taking advantage of all the features of SharePoint for several months now; running workflows, updating lists, and maintaining a vast document library. Some off-the-shelf web-parts, a few custom made web-parts, and a portfolio of slick-looking dashboards make up your SharePoint site collection. So what’s the problem?
For one, out of the box the look and feel of Share Point is very Office-like; while it does look nice it probably does not reflect your company’s culture. It is also a fair assumption that the standard icon does not represent who you are as a business. What can you do? Create a custom theme. Themes in SharePoint 2010 software are 100% CSS based, and all the elements that make up each page have a unique class/ID. This allows you to easily modify the appearance of your SharePoint site (font, font size/color, menu colors, background, etc.), however; you cannot change the layout using a theme. So let’s go a few steps further.
Completely re-brand your SharePoint site, but why would you want to do that? Well this idea goes really well with another idea; SharePoint as a public facing website. Unfortunately, branding a SharePoint site is more complicated than branding any other website, and this is where a SharePoint consultant (like me) can really help. To see some great looking implementations of the software, check out this link: http://www.wssdemo.com/livepivot
Have you considered using the SharePoint software for your public facing site? If not, why not? You and your colleagues are already quite familiar with using and maintaining a SharePoint site. Why not use these new-found skills to maintain your public facing website too?
Company details, contact information, event, calendars, job postings, company news, and all other content could be easily managed by anyone within your company (imagine how much faster content updates could be deployed to your website). You already use this software to simplify internal management; why not improve communication to your potential clients and customers through a public facing SharePoint website?