SharePoint intranet is now easier to do branding and designing without coding. Just add web parts and customize your theme, header, footer, and hub in just a click of a button. Voilà! You now have a stunning and powerful intranet. You can create intelligent content using modern pages and it takes just a minute or so. You can easily post new pages in the News section on the site, save them as page templates and easily email them to users.
A few years ago, I find it difficult to design the SharePoint intranet. (That was my first job in handling SharePoint and know nothing about it at all. I just started learning SharePoint at that time and of course, still still learning now). It takes a lot of weeks or months to study. Sometimes, it is about the design, and sometimes, about the coding. Designing and customizing the main page is a hurdle for me. The most common design that I’ve seen on the main page of the intranet is those elements with a carousel slider (I’ve been working on SharePoint 2010 back then). You need to insert the jQuery plugin of the carousel in the content editor web part, but before that, you need to create a list of your content and images. Here is one of the examples in creating a simple jQuery for Content Slider from Mark Rackley, MVP. And if ever you are going to revamp the whole site design, you need to edit the master pages.
I’ve been working on an intranet design recently and in just a day, I’ve done 5 mock ups design. And how did I do it? By building my SharePoint intranet using the SharePoint look book. You can get different inspirational designs, and create a stunning site using the look book.
How to utilize the look book? Just select your organization, team, department, community or solutions that you want to provision. That is if you want to build a site from scratch. Make sure you meet the requirements of provisioning your sites. You can see what are the web parts that has been used, which you can easily edit it. After provision, you will be amazed what SharePoint intranet site has been built. It is responsive in web browser and mobile. It is also lighter and easy to manage.
Done with the days where I need to create the Carousel slider jQuery plugin in the News. Now, all you need to do is add a News web part, change the layout to Carousel, and you’re already done. It only takes a few minutes.
There are a lot of web parts that has been added that you can utilize and play around. If you are not satisfied with your design, you can always check the SharePoint Design Guide in the look book as your reference.
Now, It is more fun designing the site than before. I hope you will have fun. 😊
Reference:
- SharePoint look book
- SharePoint Design Guide
- A Simple jQuery Content Slider for SharePoint by Mark Rackley, MVP