Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Administrator's Companion

Creating a Variation Hierarchy of Web Sites

So what’s the big deal about variations? Building on ASP.NET 2.0 Master/Layout pages and reusable content, the variation system simply creates multiple sites—similar versions of a primary or source site. Each variation (or target site) contains the same content as the primary site, only it is presented in different formats using different layout and master pages. The format change might be simpler pages for mobile devices; different chrome for intranet, extranet, and Internet users; or multiple languages for International corporations. If it is basically the same content but with a different presentation, it’s called a variation. However, technically, to the variation system, even the source site is ...