SharePoint as a Platform for Internet Facing Websites

Andrew made a post yesterday that really got me thinking about some of the great successes some big names have had with SharePoint on public facing websites.

In many cases, MOSS has a very compelling story around use as a public website. The ability to have both internally and externally facing security zones and the benefits it offers to content publishing can be very powerful. Couple this with other features such as forms services, workflow and search — And you will often realize that the benefits far outweigh any additional expense in initial development. In fact, depending on what features you are leveraging, development may be substantially less expensive than other platforms.

Also, lets not forget Microsoft has very modest licensing costs for public facing MOSS sites relative to platforms offered by other vendors.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to start compiling a list of commercial companies with public facing SharePoint sites. Hopefully those considering the platform, or unaware of it’s capabilities, can use this list to gain some insight into the ways others have been successful on the platform so far.

Some of these sites have undergone extreme customizations to play efficiently on the web, others are far more ‘standard’.

Some of these are sites that I’ve played a role in developing, others were developed by far smarter folks, and three of them came off Andrew’s post. If you have any more, please post a comment and we’ll get them included!

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