Working with Modern Sites in SharePoint Online
In the previous chapter, we looked at some basic recipes explaining how you interact with a site in SharePoint. This chapter dives deeper into the workings of sites in SharePoint. We will look at various aspects of site customization, such as changing the site theme, modifying the navigational elements, working with pages in a site, and the web parts on those pages. We will also look at some additional scenarios, such as modifying site permissions and creating a subsite.
When your site's users first browse to a SharePoint site, they are presented with the home page of that site. If you are the owner of a site, you should carefully plan the information and layout of your site's home page. The information that is presented on the home page can vary significantly, depending on the purpose and type of your site. For a department site, for example, the home page could show key news about the department, important documents or forms, department events, key contacts, KPIs, and/or links to key information and areas within the site.
Besides the page content itself, every page in a SharePoint site consists of the following sections, which are also shown in the following screenshot:
The Office Suite Bar (1): The Office Suite Bar gives you a consistent navigation experience across all the workloads of Microsoft 365. It also gives you access to context-aware settings and your profile details, among other things. The Office Suite Bar was discussed in greater detail in Chapter 1, Overview of Microsoft 365.
Hub navigation (2): This area is visible only on sites that are part of a hub. It is used for cross-site navigation between various sites that are part of the hub. We discussed hub sites as part of the Creating a modern site recipe in Chapter 2, Introduction to SharePoint Online.
Site header and top navigation (3): The site header section appears on every page on the site. It contains the site logo and the site title. Clicking the site title from any page within that site will take you to the home page for that site. For certain types of sites, it also contains top navigation for that site. We will discuss the top navigation as part of the Modifying the top navigation recipe, later in this chapter. This section also contains links so that you can do the following:
Follow or unfollow a site: We saw this as part of the Getting to the SharePoint home page recipe in Chapter 2, Introduction to SharePoint Online.
Share the site with others in the organization: We will learn how to modify permissions on a site as part of theDetermining and revoking permissions in a site recipe, later in this chapter.
Create Site: This option is only available on hub sites. Clicking this link creates a new site collection and associates it with the selected hub.
Group membership count: For group-connected Team sites, this section also shows the members in that group. You will learn more about this in Chapter 10, Microsoft 365 Groups.
New menu and page editing toolbar (4): This section contains the following options:
New menu: Clicking this menu lets you add new lists, libraries, pages, posts, and other types of apps and artifacts to your site.
Page details: Clicking this link lets you view and edit various properties of the page.
Published date: This shows you the last date when the page was first published or when updates to it were published again.
Edit: Clicking this option lets you make changes to the page and republish it. We will learn how to add and edit pages as part of the Adding a page recipe, later in this chapter.
Left navigation menu (5): This section lets you define the navigation menu in order to help users easily navigate between the various lists, libraries, pages, and other areas in your site. The left navigation menu is only available for certain types of sites. We will discuss the left navigation menu as part of theModifying the left navigation recipe, later in this chapter.
Page content (6): This section contains the actual page content and will vary for every page within the site. You can modify content in modern pages by using web parts in sections of the page. We will discuss web parts as part of the Adding a web part recipe, later in this chapter.
Page footer (7): The footer appears at the bottom of all the pages within your site. You can enable or disable the footer for your site via the Site settings menu. We will mention the footer as part of the Changing the look recipe, later in this chapter:
Please note that the options mentioned here and the actions that you can perform through these options are highly dependent on the type of the site and your level of access to that site.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
Changing the look
Adding a page
Adding a web part
Adding an app
Modifying the top navigation
Modifying the left navigation
Viewing and changing site settings
Determining and revoking permissions in a site
Creating a subsite
Let's get started!