WROX has posted an excerpt (albeit a long excerpt!) for the book I recently contributed to with another 15 SharePoint MVPs: Real World SharePoint 2007 . I blogged about this book earlier this week… you can read that post here . Let me quote from my post earlier this week on what my chapter is all about:
For me, this is the area of Web Content Management. Similar to the BOF talk I did at TechEd , blogged about and is the subject of a session I’m presenting at SharePoint Connections in November (not to mention an underlying theme in my WCM developer class ). In my chapter I explain another approach to developing your WCM site using templates & definitions via Features rather than using the browser to create site columns & content types or using SharePoint Designer to create your master pages & page layouts. In the chapter I explain the challenges associated with using SPD & the browser in your development environment and present an alternate way to build your site… the way I believe is the correct way. Best part: it is fully supported because it is how Microsoft implemented all the site templates OOTB (including Publishing Portal). I also present all the advantages and disadvantages to taking this approach.
AndrewConnell.com- Latest book I’ve been a part of is almost available: Real World SharePoint 2007_
The excerpt is only a portion of the chapter… the full chapter goes into much more detail as well as the advantages & disadvantages of this approach. Take a look!