Customer Reviews

SharePoint Portal Server: A Beginner's Guide

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I agree with the other reviewers, but they never really read the title of the book if they are so upset with the book. It is a beginners book. Nothing more, nothing less. What I find handy about this book that you need not search every where for information. Just grab this book and find out what you need to know of the basics. It shows you with great graphic detail how to do it and what the results are.
I am one of those people who just love to get everything handed to them through one simple portal, that's what this book does.
If you want more in depth information look at one of the other books.
Looking on the internet or technet or what ever else, costs lots of time for simple things and just does not

This is an introductory guide! I needed something to get me started and this book did exactly what it said it would. I thought it was well worth the money. While some of the info can be found through other sources, it's critical to have the sources compiled for you...especially when you "don't know what you don't know".

If you're new to SharePoint and want to find out the basics about the product, this book is a great start. Some of the information can be found on the Microsoft site, but there is enough other stuff to make it worthwhile.

This is a basic, introductory book, but it does a better job explaining the basics and how to install the software than most of the other books, including Que's Using Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server. It was the only book that explained how to use the proxy configuration utility to make Sharepoint available over the net (the Que book didn't cover this detail).

This book is designed for those users wanting a very simple overview of the functionality available in Sharepoint Server. It has almost no information that is not available either with the books that came with Sharepoint or the Online help. The only benefit that this book has in this regard is that it synthesizes this information for the reader.

My recommendation is to spend your dollars on another more advanced book and learn the basics from the free resourceas available with Sharepoint.

If you are looking for information beyond what's available on Microsoft's site, this book is not for you. It's just an overview of the basic functionality - not much meat - although, I will admit, I did find a proxy server solution that was very useful, however, I bet I could have found the solution on Microsoft's site. I was also very disappointed in its coverage of building custom webparts - again, just goes through the Microsoft overview of using prebuilt ones. I suppose, it might be a good intro for a person who's never heard of Sharepoint Portal Server before, or for someone who is just interested in the concept of it, but if you've read through MS's site information on it, then you've pretty much covered the material in this book.

The book does an excellent job of what it was intended to do - give an introduction and provide solid foundation of knowledge about Microsoft SharePoint Server.

In reply to some other reviewers: Yes, it is true that if you have a computer on your hip 24x7, you can probably find a lot of this same info by digging through help files, white papers and various web sites. That does not help someone who wants this information in book format and likes the porability of a book, or for someone who actually likes to read a printed version.

Anyway, I liked the book, and it gave me what I needed at the time. I've bought more advanced books which are also good, but they skip a lot of the introductory stuff which is nice for beginners to have available.

This book is totally useless to someone who doesn't already know server basics.

This really is a beginners guide, it takes you by the hand and says which buttons to click. I finished it in less than 2 days.
If you ever need to programatically understand sharepoint, this book is totally useless.
If you only need to know what Sharepoint can do for you right out of the box, you can use it.

Cry for the trees that had to die to make this book--it is truly a waste of paper.

Not sure what the system requirements are for some product from Microsoft? Well, you could pay ...for this book--or check it out for nothing on Microsoft'a website (or even here, on Amazon!).

Not sure what some function on the software does? Well, you could pay ...for this book--or just use the software's help function!

Not sure how you navigate a freaking portal, for crying out loud? Well, then step right up and spend [money]on this book, because it'll tell ya.

There's precious little substance here, but every tiny little nugget of hard information is surrounding by a big fluffy cloud of verbiage--and screenshots. Lots and lots and lots of screenshots. Some pages are nothing but screenshots--and frankly, they're not even such great screenshots.

Puh-leeeze. Who's buying this stuff?

Anyway, it mostly reads like a Microsoft reviewer's guide, except with way more screenshots. No mention of alternative solutions to the problem either, like Slash for *NIX.

Do yourself a favor and stay away.