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I am in a middle of designing my company's portal. I am inspired by the following portal link. https://www.telecombusinesshub.co.nz/Pages/Home.aspx

What I want is that the index page (main page) will be something like the above inspiration link and rest of the pages will be on same pattern but there wont be the banner like the title page.

In my portal i want the following on title page. 1. News 2. Events 3. Training Calendar 4. Weather Web Part 5. Employees Birthday

I wanted to know what efforts will be required to create the title like the inspirational url...I am good at photoshop stuff and can create graphics..but how long it will make me to place graphics and which steps/tutorial i should follow to customize the title page. should I create two master pages (one for title only and 2nd for rest of the pages) or what...plz guide.

user3697
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Do you have SharePoint Server? If so, I would read into creating and customising Page Layouts.

This will let you style the MasterPage, use the same one across your site, but create separate Page Layouts for the Home Page and the rest of the site's content.

This page on MSDN is a great source of information for starting branding SharePoint sites: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg430141.aspx

This page on the Office help site shows you the basics of SharePoint Designer 2010 for creating various artefacts such as Page Layouts: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/get-started-with-sharepoint-designer-2010-HA010370548.aspx

Randy Drisgill (http://blog.drisgill.com/) has a bunch of totally fantastic posts on his blog for customisting SharePoint sites.

James Love
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  • yes i do have sharepoint server...but cant understand where u said "This will let you style the MasterPage, use the same one across your site, but create separate Page Layouts for the Home Page and the rest of the site's content." can u plz eleborate? – user3697 Jul 20 '11 at 17:49
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    I suggest you read this to get a basic understanding of Page Layouts: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/create-a-publishing-page-layout-HA010174128.aspx – James Love Jul 20 '11 at 17:59
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To sort of generalize things, create your desired site in Photoshop since your accustomed to doing that. Break that down into fonts, colors, images, and html. Get the starter master pages from Codeplex. Add the master page to the _catalogs, masterpage folder in the root site of the site collection in SharePoint Designer.

Open the master page, add your HTML and move all the content place holders into position until you get the desired look. Save and approve everything (if required) and set the custom master page as the default. You should now have the desired results.

Eric Alexander
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  • Pirate thanks for the answer which is quite reasonable. I am Senior .NET(C#) software engineer and developed so many applications so I think whatever you told me is achievable. If I will customize the minimal.master from codeplex and add into _catlogs and also modifies would it be for title page only or if i will create subsite(team sites) will it inherit the my customized master page? cause my customized master page will have news, events, calendar and other custom areas thats why.. so i am a little confused. So kindly guide from sub sites prespective also. – user3697 Jul 20 '11 at 21:01