Sharepoint Portal vs. Sites question?

[Cat1]

Hi,
I'm currently planning the layout of our sharepoint 2003 implementation, but i'm having a bit of trouble getting my head round sharepoint portal vs. sharepoint sites.

We have approx. 40-50 users currently, and have a need for a central intranet 'portal', from where i've planned to have all company info, then individual wss sites coming off it to company divisions such as Admin, Operations, Sales etc.

We also have a need to have a large amount of project documentation, split into individual customer sites, with individual project sub-sites coming off each of these customer sites, that can be assigned project manager-specific permissions.

However we're going to want to give external customers access to their individual sites where the documentation is held - so (in a long-winded way) my question is: should i have one central portal, for intranet and customer access - OR should i create a second portal for customers and projects, and provide a link to this from the intranet portal? Which is the best approach from a security and/or administration angle??

Any advice gratefully received.

 

[lithiumSPS]

Cat1,

I currently am planning a structure that is for 10,000 users at 25 geographic locations and hundreds of different management level divisions. My approach was to look at existing structure and build from this. The intranet will house the main link to the SharePoint Portal Min Page. From there, I plan on listing then main divisions on the "Sites" listing with links on the main portal page. Each division and then given the administrative control to branch out to sublevels behind there site. An example would be:

SharePoint Main Portal -->
- Atlanta -->
- - Information Systems -->
- - - Server Administration -->
- - - Desktop Administration -->
- - - - Hardware -->
- - - - Software -->
- - - LAN/WAN Systems -->

and so on...

I hope this helps. Planning seems to be one of the most important and underestimated task with SharePoint deployments. It also gets interesting when each department feels that it requires it's on SharePoint site.

-Rob

 

[Cat1]

That's helpful thanks and you're right - there doesn't seem to be much emphasis or info available on planning the structure.

I just found a good planning doc

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sppt/reskit/c0861881x.mspx

probably the most useful i've found yet.

Appears to suggest that i should have a main company portal, with individual divisional portals (Admin, Ops, IT, HR etc) rather than WSS sites - the WSS site collections should then be owned by the respective divisional portals - each portal having their own virtual server.

Bloody hell.

So i guess like:

Company-wide Central Portal
- Administration Portal
- Operations Portal
- Sales Portal
- Projects Portal
- Team site client a
- Team sub-site project one
- Team sub-site project two
- Team site client b
- Team site client c

 

[lithiumSPS]

Cat1,

The resource kit is the bible at this time regarding SharePoint. That's a good chapter but a better chapter regarding Site Structure would be Chapter 18 p.497. If you can get a copy of the resource kit book, it would be a great investment in your SharePoint journey (it was for me). Good Luck.

-Rob