WCM in SharePoint–Page Content Column

A bad workman always blames his tools and in the case of SharePoint, I have run into people from time to time that are, let’s just say, less than thrilled about some of SharePoint features.

A message I have across the board is this;  Be sure that you are using the correct part of SharePoint for the task at hand.  This is of course assuming that SharePoint was the correct tool in the first place, let’s move on.

Example

When building public facing websites, article pages are used to create content, both static and dynamic.  One of the native columns that ship with an article page is the Page Content column.  This column allows for HTML editing via a WYSIWIG interface with the ability to switch to HTML view for the advanced user.  It is pretty powerful, yet simple to use.

During one of my many system reviews I came across an installation that was using the Content Editor web part in the place of the Page Content column.  Now in theory, these elements are identical, but under the hood, the following is revealed:

• Content Editor does not support versioning;
• Content inside of the content editor web part cannot be displayed in a Content Query web part via XSLT as it is not a selectable column;
• As it does not support versioning, it by extension doesn’t support (Variations, Roll backs, Scheduled Publishing)

SharePoint is a wonderful platform that can enrich many companies’ collaboration and information sharing capability, but used in the wrong manner it can also be very painful.

The education in SharePoint never stops and with a new version on the horizon, I can’t wait to see what’s vNext. 

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