Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 Search and Search Ranking Algorithm Enhancement

The one of the biggest benefits that Sharepoint Server 2007 brings is the enhancements on search engine. Those enhancements include customizable interface of search result, customizable search scope definition, Boolean and Cross Site search, business data Catalog (BDC) search.

And one of the problems a current Sharepoint user must addresses is the ranking algorithm. The user wants not only the search returns as many document as possible but also to sort out the relevant document and display them at the top of the search result list. The ranking algorithm of the search engine shipped with SPS2003 is based on probabilistic relevance scoring, a technique developed in 70s, which called OKAPI algorithm. The ranking measurement is based on collection frequency, term frequency, document length and term position.

In the new version of Sharepoint, the Sharepoint Server 2007, it claims the ranking algorithm will be at least as good as any best-of-bread enterprise search engine in the market today. From the evaluation guild of beta 2, I found the ranking will be measured by:

• Click distance
• Hyperlink anchor text
• URL surf depth
• URL text matching
• Automated metadata extraction
• Automatic language detection
• File type relevancy biasing
• Enhanced text analysis

But I still need to see the reports coming out with comparison with SPS2003 and other search product like ultraseek, google mini …

I have found some help tips on promoting the blog more popular. I felt these points are pretty interesting:

1. Post multiple times per day. If you look at Engadget, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Treehugger, Slashdot, or any of the top gadget/tech blogs you’ll see they post relentlessly. There’s always something new popping up in their rss feeds and on their sites. It’s a ‘dynamic’ thing.
2. Post about what’s hot like the other gadget blogs but also find stuff that they’re not posting about. Those things set your blog apart from the crowd and others will link up to those posts.
3. Send tips to the editors of the bigger sites, or any gadget/tech site for that matter. Even if they don’t post or link to you, they will be aware of you and subscribe to your feed and watch it for new and interesting stuff.
4. Link out to and trackback/pingback a lot of the smaller blogs as well. Not only will this get you some long term inbound links, it’ll build awareness of your blog with their readers.
5. Post and comment on other forums or blogs, etc. and follow up. Also, watch who’s linking in to your site and email them or comment on their site thanking them for the link. Relationship buliding, building awareness and visibility is huge when marketing any blog.
Darren over at http://www.problogger.net does some great posting on professional blogging and I’d highly recommend reading his blog daily for traffic tips and strategies.


This is from site http://www.bloglogic.net/2006/05/31/how-to-build-a-popular-blog/

New terms in Sharepoint 2007

Feature - the list definition in site definition. (it's still define with CAML - a xml format used in Sharepoint from 1.0 to 3.0)

customize/uncustomize - unghosting/ghosting in Sharepoint 2.0

web application - virtual server in WSS 2.0

Column
Content Type
Master file
Page Layout
....

Blogging with Word 2007

I tried to use Word 2007 publish blog feature. It looks nice!

1. Write your post in Word 2007 as a normal document.

2. Click left-top corner ‘office’ button and select publish and then select blog.

3. In ‘new blog account’ dialog box, select ‘blogger’ for example.

4. Input your account information.

5. You will see an new Word 2007 window like this.

6. Enter the post title.

7. Click publish button.

8. Post then has been pushed to the blog.

Currently there is only beta 2 version available, and I couldn’t work out how to publish/upload the pictures in the document.

Comparison of MOSS 2007 WCM and MCMS 2002

This is the first post in the serial that I will write for the content management piece in Office Sharepoint Server 2007. I will try to compare the difference between the WCM of Sharepoint 2007 and the current MCMS 2002.

As you may already knew that Microsoft discarded its Content Management product line and make its new Sharepoint product as the content management platform. Almost all MCMS elements and terms that current MCMS developers familiar with are changed. To make me learn the new things easier, I did a comparison in following list:

	MCMS 2002	Sharepoint 2007
Development Tools	Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005	Visual Studio 2005, Sharepoint Designer
Framework	.NET 1.1, .NET 2.0	.Net 2.0
Master file	Supported in SP2 and developed by VS 2005. The master file stays in the virtual directory of web server.	Master file can be created by Sharepoint Designer and VS 2005. But the master file is a ghost page need to be uploaded via Sharepoint admin page.
Template	CMS Template. It’s stored in template gallery. It contains list of placeholders, list of custom properties and links to a template page (aspx file)	Content Type. Content Type contains a list of columns.
Template page	An aspx page stays on file system.	Page Layout. Created based on the Content Type. Aspx file but stays on Sharepoint server, it’s editable by Sharepoint Designer and VS 2005.
Content place holder	Placeholder. CMS has some build-in placeholders such as html placeholder, xml placeholder, image placeholder and attachment placeholder	Column / Filed. Sharepoint 2007 has more types like single line text, numeric, date, time, currency, html, picture, attachment file… I couldn’t find the xml type which is very useful in current MCMS 2002. But there are a lot other useful column types like lookup, business data …
Place holder control	The build-in placeholder web control used in template aspx page for content editing in authoring mode and content rendering in publishing mode is in Microsoft.ContentManagement. Publishing.Extension.Placholders You are also be able to create your own custom web controls.	Sharepoint 2007 also has many web controls for content editing and rendering. They are in Microsoft. Sharepoint.Publishing. Those controls are automatically added to the page layout aspx when drag the fields in Sharepoint Designer. I believed you are able to create the custom controls and add to your own page as well.
Page	Posting. Posting will be able to be created and managed in web interface. The posting is stored in CMS database.	Page. Page can be created in Sharepoint admin web UI based on the selected page layout. You are able to use Sharpoint designer to unghost (customize) the page.
Folder	Channel. It’s just a simple container contains a set of postings.	Site. It should be an WSS site including a set of lists, doc libraries and other contents.
Resource	Resource gallery. No versioning support	Document library, picture library … support versioning
Publishing workflow	Build-in workflow. No alert, hard to customize	Based on Windows workflow framework, very flexible.
Security	Windows AD account only. Only control to channel level	Can control to page level, support AD account, LDAP, and database.
Versions	Simple	Very good

Sharepoint 2007 also includes other benefits which you couldn’t find in MCMS 2002 out-of-box. For example: the out-of-box navigation bar support, search functions, personalization and user profiles…