Tuesday 20 October 2009

The rapture of Truth and Trials of being a SharePoint consultant.

Again another Tweet

RT @McBoof: Shock, horror! RT @apoorv: Ballmer at #spc09: Internet facing websites were not in the initial design goal of SharePoint
http://twitter.com/julesdw
So its now out in the open. Anyone who actually know WCM could see that MOSS 2007 was an INTRANET DM and collaboration tool. Trying to sit in rooms as people talked about using it to face the Internet was always very very painful.

This raises an issue us techie guys have to deal with every day. You hear things you know are false or even lies. Do you speak up based on your own rational conclusions, or do listen to your mother and take it for granted you just don't know anything.

The problem with MOSS 2007 on the Internet is many users just wanted it to be true so bad they would not listen. I have told some clients that they should consider another tool, perhaps a free tool, for WCM. But after one complained about me to my former boss I became a bit shy.

I really wanted to help that client. But is helping them telling them what they politically want to hear at that moment or telling them the "truth" as you can understand it.

I got the feeling a lot of clients were looking for gurus who would somehow make it happen. That great myth of guru magic in the hacker community is used again and again to deny reality. The truth was SharePoint (an excellent back office tool IMHO) was useless for the Internet.

I will be frank here, in 99% of cases you are better of using Dreamweaver to manage your web site, or having something written in ASP.NET of JSP than using SharePoint for WCM.

Now that Microsoft has open the door it feels very good to finally be able to openly say that.