Sites are ideal workspaces for teams to collaborate on common projects. They provide an isolated area where a group of people can place all of their data pertaining to a particular topic, and many organizations have used them for this purpose. It is a far better way to share data than using e-mail and a shared folder on a network. Instead,
The Document Library portlet (under Content Management) empowers users to access and update documents simultaneously, and all versions of the documents are preserved.
A Calendar portlet (under Collaboration) can be used to keep track of the team's appointments and meetings, and can send notifications out to the team.
A Wiki portlet (under Collaboration) can be used to document the project as it progresses.
A Message Boards portlet (under Collaboration) can be used to keep all team discussions in one place.
The ad-hoc creation of sites for this purpose allows portal administrators to create sites based on templates. What this means is that you can create a template site that has a pre-defined set of pages and portlets, and then use that template to very quickly create multiple sites that are pre-populated with those pages and portlets. Defining site templates streamlines the site creation process for administrators, making it very easy to quickly create sites for teams.
Templates can be created for open, restricted, and private sites. Additionally, create a default template that applies to all kinds of sites.
To setup a site template:
From the Control Panel, under Sites, select Site Templates.
Provide a name and description for the template, and then click Save.
Click Actions next to the site template and select Manage.
Click Pages and then select Site Pages.
Click Pages and then click Add to create pages in the template.
Use View Pages to view the pages you are creating, to add portlets, and to change layouts.
For more information about adding pages and portlets to a site, see Section 5.3, Adding Pages.
Any future sites that you create will have the same layouts and portlets as what you have defined based on the default template and any templates defined for that site type.