Beginning SharePoint® 2007 Administration: Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

9.2. Web Content Management

The web content management features for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 were close to nonexistent; it had support for approval, but that's about it. This required content editors for the intranet, extranet, or public Internet site to edit, test, and get the approval of new content on a server other than the production SPS 2003 server. This was clearly not the ideal way to work with web-based content for an organization with high standards. This lack of content management features in SPS 2003 was at the same time a great business opportunity for other vendors, who developed smart add-on products that enhanced the content management features of SPS. Of course, Microsoft was aware of this shortcoming in SPS 2003, and one of their suggested solutions to this was that customers should use their product MS Content Management Server (MS CMS), which had all the standard content management features asked for. There was, to some extent, an integration of the two (for example, content in SPS 2003 could be presented to the MS CSM web site), but they still worked in very different ways, and it was difficult for the IT department to manage both of these products.

With the release of MS Office SharePoint Server 2007, or MOSS, Microsoft has actually integrated the MS CMS product into MOSS, plus added a lot of new features, such as support for workflows. The result is a very advanced but easy-to-use web content management system. Note that this is only true for MOSS 2007. ...