Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 1 of 3): Understanding Web Content Management and the Default Features

WCM Enhancements in Windows SharePoint Services
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 introduces a number of major improvements to the way you store and manage information and documents in lists and document libraries. Let us first review these improvements because they form the basis on which a lot of the WCM features are relying. Here is the list of enhancements discussed:

General enhancements

Site columns

Extensible field types

Content types

General Enhancements
Versioning of content stored in lists and document libraries has changed significantly in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Lists support versioning now, and document libraries let you differentiate between minor (draft) and major (published) versions (Figure 1). The concept of minor and major versions is important in any Web content management system. Minor versions of pages are not exposed to everybody—only to the content authors and visitors of the site with the required permission level. The step from a minor version to a major version is, in most cases, the result of a workflow, but an authorized user can also decide to manually publish the minor version as a major version. Major versions of pages are available to every visitor of the site.

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