The chances are that you will have a SharePoint Administrator who will implement the initial set up of the SharePoint farm. This individual will be responsible for establishing the Central Administration site and might build out some individual Site Collections and related top-level sites.
A common point of confusion is deciding whether to create a Site Collection or a Subsite. This is because a Site Collection and a Subsite look and act the same (at first glance). SharePoint is flexible, so you could create a top-level site for Site Collection and deploy it to the organization to use as a regular SharePoint site. Table 3-2 provides guidance for choosing when to use a Site Collection versus a Subsite.
Table 3-2. When to Use Site Collections and Subsites
Note
Central Administration is used to perform administration tasks for SharePoint products and technologies from a central location.
Once the top-level site has been created, the SharePoint Administrator will assign the site to either a Site Collection administrator or a site administrator (depending on the governance policy that is in force for the organization).
At this point, a new site can be set up for use. To learn more about creating a new site, read Chapter 4 and Chapter 8.
Figure 3-1 shows a typical SharePoint Foundation 2010 Team Site, which includes features for collaboration, such as Shared Documents, Calendars, Tasks, and Team Discussions.
The out-of-the-box template for a Team Site provides the following elements:
The ribbon This serves as the primary command interface that you use to interact with objects within SharePoint Foundation.
Site Actions A user with the appropriate permissions will have the Site Actions link displayed, which contains a drop-down list with which the user can access the Create, Edit Page, or Site Settings pages.
Search box Users can use this box (located at the right side of the screen) to search for content. The default setting is to search within the current site and any Subsites.
Navigate Up Used for navigating up to the parent site of the current site.
Edit page Users with Edit Page permissions can use this icon to toggle the current page into the Edit Mode, in which the page can be customized.
Browse tab Provides resources for Liking the page or tagging and typing notes about the page.
Page tab Use this to edit the page (either within the browser or in SharePoint Designer). You can also check out the page, edit properties; rename the page; view the version history for the page; view and set permissions for the page; delete the page; email a link to the page; set up and manage alerts on the page; assign the page as the Homepage; view incoming links to the page; alter the settings, library permissions, and view all pages for the page’s library.
Quick Launch The Navigation pane on the left provides links that you can customize; by default, it contains the following links:
Documents Links to a list of all the document libraries within the site, including the out-of-the-box libraries for Shared Documents and Site Pages.
Lists Links to a list of all of the SharePoint lists within the site, including the out-of-the-box lists for Calendars and Tasks.
Discussions Links to a list of all of the SharePoint discussion libraries within the site, including the out-of-the-box discussions for Team Discussion.
All Site Content Links to a page that shows you all of the content to which you have access within the site.
By default, Team Sites are created with a page layout that includes areas for Web Parts, site images, and text boxes to display information to users of the site such as a title and description of the site and its purpose.