That’s right.  You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to run your public facing website.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 may be a good fit to run your public facing website.  In order to look at this in a completely scientific manner, realize that there are literally hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  In reality, I see about 10 CMS platforms in use.  There are the commercial platforms (SharePoint, SiteCore, Ektron are the most frequently used ones) and there are a couple of free options (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Plone are pretty common).    I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people, but I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform.  Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites.  It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft (not just a community or a small fly-by-night company), it is FREE, and it is extremely easy to get started.  SharePoint is also quite large.  The ecosystem of users, authors, conferences, blogs, communities, and so much more.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint.  Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.

In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia.  Doesn’t everyone use Wikipedia as a credible source?  It is WIKIPEDIA, after all.

Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components:

If you are a techie, you probably already know what SharePoint is.  If not, SharePoint is website building software.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  It is.  SharePoint is software created and maintained by Microsoft to create and manage websites.  What kind of websites?  All kinds.  Big sites and small sites.  English sites and multilingual sites.  Simple sites and complicated sites.

SharePoint can be used to build internally facing websites for organizations.  Websites for staff only,  Intranets, Department websites, Team websites, Project websites, Time tracking websites, Inventory management websites, Charitable Contributions websites, Business Intelligence solutions, Portals, and much more.

SharePoint can be used to build public facing websites.  Public facing websites are sites that don’t require you to login.  You can build websites for your company, your brand, your organization, foundation, trade show, convention, meeting, store, hotel, or any other site you want.   There are thousands of sites on SharePoint, like Ferrari, ISACA, Ohio U Alumni, Australia’s Southwest, Barilla, Choose Chicago, and of course, The Library of Congress. 

SharePoint can be used to build other types of sites as well: Social Network sites, Professional Networks, Extranets, Communities, Portals, Document Collaboration, Wikis, Blogs, Calendars, Project Management sites, Club Sites, Home Owners Association sites, school sites, soccer team sites, government agency sites,  and so much more. 

If you are looking for really simple intros into SharePoint, hopefully this will help some.  If you are a techie, Microsoft has some great information on their many websites.   

Marketing stuff: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx
Developer stuff: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default.aspx
IT Stuff: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee263917.aspx#tab=1

Original Photo by JohnStover

There are literally hundreds and thousands of ‘search engines’ out there. Some of these search engines are for finding stuff on the Internet, like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Some search engines are more specialized, like the search box you see on a single web site that searches only that single website. Search is an incredibly complex topic that has an astounding number of factors that contribute to finding that single important piece of content that you are trying to find. Frankly, Google spoiled all of us. I expect to find exactly what I’m looking for out of the millions of pages of stuff all over the internet by simply typing a single word into a single little box. If I don’t find what I want on the first page of results, I might try changing my search a little bit or adding two words, but I won’t keep trying for long.

The Internet contains at least 27.5 billion pages, as of Tuesday, 03 August, 2010, according to http://www.worldwidewebsize.com. Not only do I expect to find exactly what I want on the Internet, but if I use the search on your website, I get EXTREMELY frustrated when it doesn’t find exactly what I want when I want. How is this possible? I know what I want is on your website somewhere. Figure out what I want and show it to me! And please do it in under a second if it’s not too much trouble!

In the beginning, search was simple. Search was based on keyword matching. If I typed in a keyword, the ‘search engine’ scanned the content and found instances of that word and showed me hyperlinks with those results. I could search for ‘blog’ and the search would show me any page that had the word ‘blog’ in it. That was perfect! It’s all anyone needed. Then websites started to grow in complexity. Soon, each website had thousands of pages. If I did a simple keyword search, I would get hundreds of results. This wasn’t useful anymore. Search had to get better.

Search introduced major improvements. Boolean search operators were introduced. I could search for “SharePoint AND WordPress”. I could search for “SharePoint NOT WordPress”. I had some control on what I was searching for exactly. I also got search result sorting. I could sort all of the results to see the most recently created pages at the top. After all, if the page was newer then it clearly was more relevant, right?

That statement introduces a very important topic: RELEVANCE. Relevance denotes how well the results meet the need of the user searching; see the all-knowing Wikipedia for more details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_(information_retrieval). Relevance is determined by the search algorithm. That’s right; a computer programmer wrote a mathematical formula that uses the available information to determine the relevance of the content to your search word. In reality, that algorithm was written by a very large team of programmers, analysts, mathematicians, executives and many others. And the search is getting more complicated and far better every day.

Most modern search engines are comprised of two different primary components: the INDEX and the QUERY. The index is just like the index at the back of a book. Rather than scanning all of the content in real time, the search engine builds a big index of all of the content. This is much faster than scouring through the content in real time. Furthermore, the index can be optimized for the type(s) of searches being performed. Your individual website search is responsible for searching your website. Facebook search searches Facebook – the profiles, comments, photos, tags, etc. Google and Bing try to search everything – your website, my website, her website, their website. Your website search should search ALL of your content – web pages, HTML, PDF files, Word docs, PowerPoint files, Excel files, images, comments. The index should include ALL of your content.

So how is the index built? Usually indexes are built by a Web crawler – some type of automated software that scours all of the links and content on your site. The index uses the concept of word breaker to look for different words. In the English language, there are many characters that break words apart. Spaces, hyphens, periods, colons, semicolons, exclamation points all separate words in English. When you get into multi-lingual content, the story gets even more complicated because other languages don’t even use the same characters. So the crawler goes through all of the content and builds this enormous index for use in queries. The index contains the words, counts, metadata, information about where the words were found, information about the pages, information about the documents, titles, cached portions of pages and much more.

When a user enters a query, the search engine uses it’s algorithm to provide the most relevant information possible. What determines relevancy? There are many factors that should determine relevancy…

• Content Type. What type of content is the word found on? PowerPoint files typically have fewer words. If your keyword is one of the 20 words on a slide, that file is likely more relevant than a Word document or web page that has 2000 words.
• Location. If your keyword is found on the homepage or main landing page it is likely more relevant than if the page is found 30 nodes away through some obscure navigation.
• Popularity and linking.  How popular is the page? How many other pages and documents link to the page? How frequently is the page visited?
• Analytics.  How frequently is the page visited with similar queries? If 50 other people searched for the same keyword(s) you searched for, which pages did they eventually go to?
• Words. How many times is the keyword on the page?  How many
• Metadata. Is your keyword in the metadata or just the main content area? Is your keyword in the page title?
• Language Detection. Is my browser set to Spanish? Should documents in Spanish show up with a higher ranking in the search results?
• Variants (Word Stemming). What if I search for the word “Flying”? Should the search engine also search for Fly and Flew and Flown? What if it’s a different language? Should the search engine be aware of other word variations?
• Human Influence. What about best bets, synonyms and keyword mapping. If someone is on the Association site and searches for the word Meeting, do you want to artificially influence the search results to show ‘Sign up for the Annual Conference’ as the first result?  I bet the conference organizers do!

As you can see, the effectiveness of the search engine depends on the ability to determine relevance and then use that relevance to rank the search results. Modern search engines are available both inherently integrated and completely independent from your website content management technology. WordPress, for example, has a built in search that is pretty simple (and thus largely ineffective).  It’s great for finding a keyword, but I would hardly call it a search engine.  Both Microsoft and Google provide real search solutions.  The have solutions for you at every level: your desktop, your enterprise, your website, and the Internet.  We are focusing primarily on your website and to a lesser extent your enterprise. The Google Search Appliance provides a great solution that provides excellent relevancy that can be customized for your particular web site needs. The Google Search Appliance and Google Mini require annual maintenance fees.

Microsoft provides a free solution to search for your website and for the enterprise. That’s right; Microsoft provides enterprise level search capabilities for FREE. Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express provides the search capabilities described in this overview for FREE. While this solution may not be the perfect fit for every website, I think it is at least worth evaluating. You can download the software for free, install it, and configure it in a matter of minutes. If it works for you, implementing it with your website is as simple as replacing the search box.

Technology can be defined as the knowledge and usage of tools, techniques, and crafts. I am not a PC, and I am not a Mac.  I am a human that uses technology.  I may not resemble the average technologist.  I use PC, I use Mac, I use mobile.  What I do share with other technologists (and most males), is that I love tools.  I especially love finding new tools that let me work and play more effectively and more efficiently.  This list of seven free software tools work on both major operating system platforms (and many others).  I have many other tools that are specific to a platform that I would recommend, but the tools I selected for this list had to meet three conditions: work on PC/Mac/iPad, be a tool I use everyday, and be FREE.

1. Kindle.  Not the physical device, the Kindle Apps.  While there is no order to this list, the Kindle App is first and foremost.  You may or may not know, but I have been using a Kindle for quite a while.  I still love everything about it – wireless access to new books, lightweight, simple, easy to understand, easy to use, easy on the eyes.  The eyes have it – the Kindle 2 device is one my all time favorites.  However, since acquiring my iPad, I leave my Kindle at home.  I use the Kindle app everywhere – on my Windows laptop, MacBook, iPhone, Blackberry, and my iPad.  I’m never far away from an extensive and varied library of books that I can read at any time.  I can also switch from nonfiction, technical manuals over to fiction at the press of a button if I need a change of pace.  Also, for those of you who aren’t aware – there are thousands of FREE books that you can read on your Kindle applications.

   

2. Evernote.  My favorite note organizer.  I have been a huge fan of Microsoft OneNote for years.  I’ve gotten other people hooked on OneNote.  OneNote does many wonderful things – screen caps, notes, organization, audio recording, video recording, synchronization of notes with audio/video, note sharing, searching, OCR…  the list goes on and on.  Evernote does not have the full functionality of OneNote.  However, what Evernote is missing in functionality, it makes up for in ease of use and convenience.  Evernote stores all of my notes ‘in the cloud’.  Evernote is available on my PC, my MacBookPro, my iPhone, and my iPad.  If I jot down a note, or take a screen capture, it is available to me from anywhere.  I don’t have to have my PC with me – I can access all of my notes from my phone.  Priceless.

   

3. DropBox.  Very similar to Evernote – but with files.  It’s my personal external hard drive in the sky.  I can upload files, read files, share files, and keep private files.  Word docs, Excel files, text files, photos, videos, zip files, PDFs, and more.  It’s my file backup location.  I can access and upload from any device – PC, Mac, or iPad.  Also, if you sign up for DropBox using my recommendation – then we both will get additional free space: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTc5MTE3Njc5 
4. Google Voice.  One number to rule them all.  Google Voice lets you pick a new phone number, and uses that one number to dial out to your other numbers.  People don’t have to chase me down – dial my Voice number and it rings through to my office desk, my cell phone, and my home phone – on my terms.  Google Voice allows you to screen your calls or send them to voicemail, block calls, provide personalized calling, and make conference calls – all for free.  Google Voice also does voicemail transcription – it will text or email you a text version of the voicemail someone just left you.  Awesome.

    

5. Google Picasa.  Everyone I know has a digital camera and takes hundreds of photos.  Only the amateur photographers I know have full control of their photos.  Most people have directories scattered all over the computer (or multiple computers), share photos via email and Facebook, and couldn’t find a specific photo on demand.  Picasa is a great, free tool to manage your photos.  The Facial Recognition features are very neat as well.  You can also post your photos and libraries for FREE to Picasa Web Albums (though I prefer Flickr).
6. Google Reader.  I use RSS feeds to keep tabs on all of the sites I frequent.  News sites, blogs, photo sites, and many others have RSS feeds that I can quickly and easily subscribe to on my Google Reader.  The web address for Google Reader is always available for me to catch up, review, and read any of the feeds I want.  There are also a ton of tools available for platform specific reader that will synchronize with Google Reader to provide a better end user experience depending upon the device I’m using at the time.
7. Google Toolbar.  The number one reason I use Google Toolbar is to keep my Bookmarks (or Favorites) synchronized and available to me from anywhere on any platform, but I also use the AutoFill and Custom Buttons to have simple access to weather, Facebook, maps, and more.

   

What resources and tools do you find indispensable?  I am shocked at my own reliance on Google tools.  I am a HUGE Microsoft fan – especially of SharePoint 2010.  I use Microsoft tools everyday.  Unfortunately, none of the Microsoft tools fit the original three requirements that I’ve laid out here.   I also didn’t include email, I really consider that a commodity.  You can get email from anywhere, and they all do the same basic functions.  If I did include web based mail, I would have listed Hotmail.  The new Hotmail version is superb – excellent features and great UI.  Also, I can use my Microsoft SkyDrive instead of DropBox, and I can use my Live Toolbar instead of the Google Toolbar.  However, third-party app providers (particularly on the iPad) have adopted DropBox directly into their apps – SkyDrive does not have the industry adoption (though it integrates perfectly into Office).