I’ve recently had the chance to setup and play around with SPS (Sharepoint Services) this week here at my office. Granted, this did not include installing and getting SPS up and running seeing as we don’t have a server yet, but it was still a little bit of a challenge setting it up initially and then getting comfortable with it. Granted, I’d be the last person to tell you I know everything there is to know about SPS, yet…lol.

I am a strong supporter of the idea that the best way to learn a new piece of software is simply to jump in and play with it. This is how I learned MT, Mambo, Word Press, Pmachine, Expression Engine, Drupal, etc…I didn’t start off by reading the ReadMe or the FAQ, I just jumped in and said “What does this do?” Maybe for some people this isn’t the best way of learning, but I have come to realize that I need to do things hands on if I am to remember it later. There is an entirely different mode of learning when one is simply reading “click on this to do this” as compared to physically seeing the link, clicking it and seeing what it does or where it takes you: again, personal preference.

Long, boring story short, I am extremely impressed with Sharepoint Services 2.0. They manage to make customization and adding new webparts a breeze. Literally it is a matter of selecting “Design this page” and then you can drag and drop webparts to where you’d like them. It is very simple to add a RSS feed to the homepage for example. Add an XML webpart, type in the URL to the RSS feed (which is XML in case you were wondering) click apply, move it to where you’d like it and that’s it…AND (yes this is dorky) they also have made it so very easy to use XSLT transformations to style the XML however you’d like to.

Summary, I am impressed, I will post some screens tonight.