Publishing Features

[Catherine Rubeo]

Thisseems to be one of the most frequently asked questions about SharePoint. In fact, half of my clients ask me the same exact question all the time. The other half, have already activated them and are looking to switch back :-P . With this blog post, I would like to clarify what the publishing features are all about, whether or not you need Publishing features in SharePoint enabled and how to de-activate them.

Then there are the publishing features. They allow for enhanced management and presentation of content in SharePoint, especially when it comes to custom branding, themes, and extensive navigation options. Moreover, some advanced web parts like Content Query Web Part (CQWP) and Content Search Web Part (CSWP) require publishing features to be enabled.

While you can build an Intranet drop-down navigation without the publishing features, you can get fancy with the navigation setup in the term store or have your menu links open in a separate window. This might be especially useful if you have separate site collections and you want to have one common navigation for all of them.

Once publishing features are enabled, you can use built-in Content and Structure feature to move or copy complete sites and web parts within your site collection! You can access this feature from Site Settings > Site Administration.

While you can build a great wiki knowledge base without publishing features, you can also build a more sophisticated experience (called Enterprise Wiki) with page tagging once you enable publishing features. Here is a screenshot of user experience.

You might need publishing features if you do custom coding, use 3rd party add-ons and themes or roll up content via the custom search query. Or, if you desire an ability to inherit master pages and themes from the parent site to subsites underneath.

As a SharePoint Consultant for more than 10 years, I have helped countless businesses and nonprofits to use SharePoint to facilitate team collaboration, simplify project management, and streamline document management. From creating simple but intuitive intranet portals to developing project management team sites and document management systems, I develop SharePoint solutions that help you get things done quickly and accurately.

We started a Sharepoint Online tenant a few years ago and turned on Publishing Infrastructure without knowing much about it. Can we turn it off now? We don't use any features that I am aware of. Are there any implications of turning it OFF?

Thanks for the note -- 2 or 3 aims. One is to simplify and turn off things that are not needed. Second, I understand the Publishing sites might have conflicts with some of the Modern sharepoint features, and third, we want to use Folder Level permissions and there is some warning when you turn off "Limited Access User Permission Lockdown". I think the conflict relates to Anonymous users, which we don't have, but that is what prompted the discussion to just turn off Publishing. I have been searching but not found a lot of good information about Publishing Infrastructure.

Thanks for the information. My main concern is ensuring that by turning off Publishing Infrastructure at the site collection level, we're not going to lose or damage any of our Modern pages. We aren't relying on Publishing features anymore (Modern elements to classic site collections seem not to rely on it at all), so if the only thing we'll have to revist would be navigation, fine by me.

Being able to communicate broadly using attractive sites and pages is a key feature of organization intranets. For example, you might have an HR department home page that serves up important communication to hundreds or thousands of employees.

In the modern SharePoint experience, communication sites fulfill the same purpose as traditional publishing sites: to communicate broadly to a large audience while maintaining a level of control on the creation side. Communication sites support most of the same scenarios as publishing sites, and more capabilities are coming soon. Best of all, communication sites are easier to build and maintain and include new features such as a modern authoring canvas. They allow you to share news, reports, statuses, and other information in a visually compelling format. To sum up: you can quickly create beautiful pages that look great on mobile devices and that are accessible by default - all without heavy developer investment. You can get inspired with some great examples in the SharePoint look book.

So, how you do move from publishing sites to communication sites? First, know that you don't have to change all your site collections and sites at once. If you have a very large collection of publishing sites, you can gradually begin using modern sites, pages, and web parts. For example, you can start with creating one or more new communication sites as home pages for existing sites. If you have several departments in your organization, you can create modern sites and implement modern features one department at a time. You can choose a strategy that works best for the size and scale for your organization. To help with determining your strategy, you can use the SharePoint Modernization scanner tool to find out which classic publishing features are used in your organization or in a subset of site collections. Find this tool and more information about it in Modernize classic publishing portals.

This structure is no longer hierarchical in the technical sense. Instead, it is a flat structure where each site is connected because they are part of the Human Resources hub. In this scenario, each site can be a communication site. But you can also include team sites for collaboration within the hub, while limiting their availability to the entire organization. With a hub, you can:

To learn more about planning hubs, see Planning your SharePoint hubs. To create a hub, see Create a hub site. To learn more about navigation options and planning, see Planning navigation for modern SharePoint.

Coming soon are multiple options for headers and footers on communication sites, and options for navigation such as a mega menu. For these and other features that are in development, rolling out, or launched, check the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. To learn more about branding options, see Branding your SharePoint site. To learn more about planning navigation, see Planning navigation for modern SharePoint.

SharePoint handles branding differently for classic site templates, like the publishing site. Instead of a site template, communication sites have three out-of-the-box layout designs: Topic, Showcase, and one open layout: Blank.

When you create a communication site in SharePoint, you can start with a blank site or choose one of the other site designs, each of which comes with a default set of web parts. The options available are:

Topic to share information such as news, events, and other content. The home page includes a Hero web part, to highlight and link to important content; a News web part, to distribute announcements, reports, status, and more; an Events web part based on a calendar list; and a Highlighted content web part to dynamically show documents based on your criteria.

Showcase to use photos or images to showcase a product, team, or event. This is a highly visual design that includes a Hero web part with large imagery in a layered layout, and an Image gallery that can be displayed in several different layouts, such as a tiled layout or carousel layout.

If you want more customized branding and theming applied to each new site, you can use site designs with site scripts to provide custom configurations to apply when new sites are created. They can be used each time a new site is created to apply a consistent set of actions. Common site design actions typically affect the site itself, such as setting the theme or logo, creating lists, or configuring navigation. You can find more information on how to use site designs and scripts at SharePoint site design and site script overview.

Master pages and page layouts are components of a publishing site. Page layouts and master pages work together to create the layout for a traditional SharePoint web page. Modern communication sites do not utilize master pages or page layouts, but do provide a greater level of flexibility for site owners and page authors.

In the classic experience, you may have created web part pages based on page layouts. Page layouts can be locked down to control what is authored on a page. However, they are inflexible in that pages based on page layouts are confined to the layout and options provided by the page layout.

Modern pages provide a fast, easy way to build responsive pages using the functionality of modern web parts. Pages are similar to classic web part pages and publishing pages, but are less structured and easier to create. And, each page's layout is flexible in that it can be changed anytime to align to the content for the page and the experience you are trying to create for your readers.

Pages are made up of a title area and sections. Sections can include a full-width column for full-bleed images or hero web parts or up to three regular columns. You can add a variety of web parts to the page, and easily move them around on the page to get the look you want. Check out this short video to see how to create, layout, and publish a page:

Publishing: On a classic publishing site, commands for Publish and Check in/Check out are available on the ribbon. In the modern experience, it is even easier for authors to discover how to edit and make their content visible with buttons to Edit, Save, and Publish right on the page. When a modern page is in edit mode, it is automatically checked out to the person who is editing. When a page is saved or published, it is automatically checked in. If someone has a page open for editing but hasn't made any changes to it for at least 5 minutes, it is automatically saved and taken out of Edit mode so that others can access and edit the page.

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