Sharepoint 2013

The book I read to research this post was Sharepoint 2013 For Dummies by Ken Withee which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is more of a general overview of what Sharepoint can do rather than a tutorial on how to build a Sharepoint site. A Sharepoint site is one that integrates with Microsoft Office and server products like Exchange Server and makes a site where people in a computer can share work, check things like their appointments and do projects together. There is a program called Sharepoint Designer 2013 which has replaced the now little used Frontpage & that does the more heavy duty construction of a Sharepoint site than just using Sharepoint Server. It does help avoid having to work too much with things like HTML and uses a graphical user interface and a typical site is largely constructed from apps within the program like Calendar & Gantt Chart. When you start there is the option of 2 views either Web which is good if there is a lot of pictures and multimedia on the site and Wiki which is suitable if it is mostly text. You can subscribe to Sharepoint Online which starts at $4 per month for a single user although I think in all probability you would probably need a Office 365 and multi user accounts unless you are just experimenting with it. It does say in the book building a sharepoint site is very complex and no book is big enough to explain every feature. I'd like to learn more about this and will probably review more similar books. It works with mobile devices in that you can have your sharepoint either in minaiture form, in a form that displays the HTML or a form where your navigation buttons are enlarged. I think in most cases the last option is best. When Sharepoint 2010 came out Sharepoint Online lagged behind it in coming out with the upgraded version but Microsoft have said in future they will release future versions simultaneously on both platforms. I think Sharepoint Online represents much better value than buying the software and also there are online versions of Exchange Server that you can subscribe to as well. I really enjoyed reading this book and I do think it's quite an interesting subject.