For the SharePoint package, I can understand why I'd have to pay WH4L to add a custom webpart installed. But I do not think this should be the case for Microsoft Webparts. At minimum, we should have the Office 2003 webparts installed, and the HTML viewer. Office 2003 webparts are a key aspect of SharePoint than extends its functionality to the desktop.
Here are links to MS webparts:
Office 2003: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=38be67a5-2056-46a1-84b1-337ffb549c5c&DisplayLang=en
HTML viewer: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c62e0232-9bf6-48fc-829e-5c34d5c8b15f&displaylang=en
Thank you!
Yes. I agree that we need a separate Sharepoint forum. Generally it appears to me that the popularity of Sharepoint is limited and I want to know the reasons. Is it because it is very slow? I signed-up two months ago for a Sharepoint service supplied by http://order.1and1.co.uk/xml/order/Sharepoint It was my first exposure to the interface and I tried some of the webparts that came with it. Can you tell me if the webparts you mention in your post are being provided as standard by 1and1.co.uk but are not by webhost4life? Certainly the selections of templates on 1and1.co.uk’s Sharepoint are much larger than within webhost4life, although this is not a direct concern for me.
I did not have the full Office 2003 installed when I tried out 1and1.co.uk's Sharepoint service (just Outlook 2003). Now I have and so I was hoping to make use of the XML within Office 2003 to test the upload of documents easily into my new webhost4life Sharepoint. However the reason I cancelled my 1and1.co.uk service before the end of the month’s trial was because it was very slow. I need people to be able to access their login as quickly as any normal webpage login. 1and1.co.uk was giving me an average delay of 10 seconds. That is of absolutely no use! If I send invitations for clients to access some of their data I maintain inside their new Sharepoint facility, they will think I am complete idiot if they have to wait 10 seconds to login each time.
I was thus horrified after opening my account with Webhost4life and installing the Sharepoint service that this same unacceptable delay repeated itself. Is this a feature of Sharepoint technology? If so I can imagine why it is not exactly popular. However the problem may be caused my own DNS resolution arrangements. I am currently using www.ukreg.com to point my domain to the webhost4life nameservers (as I did with 1and1.co.uk). Could I be doing this wrongly so that this is the cause of this delay to apparently repeat itself? If not then there are two further possibilities: 1) the Sharepoint service is a worthless technology at the moment and awaits the server upgrade that will follow shortly after the arrival of Vista or 2) webhosting services such as webhost4life and 1and1.co.uk are not fully committed to this technology and are allocating insufficient priorities to the server side resources.
For this reason I certainly agree with you that the Sharepoint service needs its own forum inside webhost4life. It is where the future will be, especially when Microsoft Vista arrives in early 2007 and the enhanced XML coding improves the online team-working possibilities. The ability of Vista to more easily re-purpose data between all the forthcoming Office 12 programs will make Sharepoint a more vital proposition.
However I am also looking at the alternative of using the option of an OWA service such as LiveMail from http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/email/ . The challenge I have is that the small businesses I support have no need of Outlook's electronic scheduling and tasks management facilities. They work for themselves and tend to have fewer but higher value contact relationships. Pen and paper is thus still much easier to use to manage such appointments until such people have to travel abroad. Then they must leave paperwork behind. However such trips are not frequent enough for them to justify switching over from Outlook Express to the use of Outlook. I hope therefore that Sharepoint might offer some partial solution to this because it enables the quick sharing of documents and contact address books..
Yet before the arrival of Vista and the enhanced re-purposing promise of data between office applications, I am not sure how useful Sharepoint is going to be. The sharing of bookmarks (favorites) seems quite basic inside Sharepoint and there are a growing number of alternative online bookmark sharing services on offer. A standard secure FTP account could also fulfil the need to store and access documents while on the move. It would however be nice to have it all under one umbrella (secure login, document sharing, online storage of all Outlook Express contact address book data, bookmarks and some limited announcements/forum capacity). Those are what my clients need and most do not have the time or interest to use the full Outlook package.
I did test the 1and1.co.uk's Sharepoint with Outlook 2003 and in that case the ability to upload the full contact address book was good. Yet I would prefer to be able to do this from Outlook Express itself and not to bother with the use of Outlook at all. If you know any way to upload the Outlook Express address book into the Sharepoint service without having to first export/import into Outlook, I would be grateful for the advice.
Finally, if we are going to get more people interested in the possibility of using Sharepoint provided by Webhost4life, I think we need to resolve this speed issue. There is certainly no way that I even consider deploying Sharepoint for my clients if they will encounter a significant login delay. Any ideas?
I'm not having any issue with speed on my SharePoint site. In the next few weeks, my anonymous user base will go to over 100. We'll see then if the site survives!
I also tried 1and1 WSS and found the site dog-slow. Support was also bad.
In any case, I also have WSS 3 (beta) installed so I can educate myself. I must say, it has some slick features.
I'm still voting for a new forum for WSS - I'll put in a ticket.