Book Review: “Beginning SharePoint 2010 Administration” by Göran Husman and Christian Ståhl

The actual title of this book is the somewhat long "Beginning SharePoint 2010 Administration: Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010".  Christian and I have chatted back and forth many times on Twitter and via our blogs, etc., and he offered me a free copy (Yes, Mr. FTC Man, a free copy.) back when he finished writing his portion of it last year.  When the copy finally arrived, it was one of those "Hey, how did I win this???" moments. I had totally forgotten that Christian offered it to me, so what a nice surprise!

The best testament I can give to this book is that when I go into clients, it’s frequently sitting on the SharePoint administrator’s desk. When I ask them about it, they always respond positively. It seems to provide them with exactly what they need as they are getting up and running and then taking things to the next level. As someone who shies away from the admin side of things, what I need to have around is a few good references, and this book serves that purpose for me very well.

However, the title may be a little misleading, depending on how you think of the word "administration". If you look at the Table of Contents, you’ll see that the book goes far beyond what one might consider administration, covering topics near and dear to my heart like branding, using script, Data View Web Part ,workflows – in fact many of the tools I use developing in the SharePoint’s Middle Tier.

If you’re a novice to relatively knowledgeable SharePoint administrator, developer, or power user, this book belongs on your shelf.

On a separate note, I look forward to meeting Christian and Göran in person at SEF 2011 in Stockholm in November, where I will be speaking on Topics To Be Named at a Later Date.