Web Part Basics

A Web Part is a component you can add to a page. There are many types of Web Parts - an installation of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise contains dozens of them each of which performs a different function. Most of these Web Parts perform very specific functions and you will never have any reason to use them. However, there are many that you will use often.

You can add a Web Part to a page from the Insert tab of the Editing Tools ribbon. Doing so exands the ribbon to show the Web Parts available on your site. This image shows what you see if you insert a Web Part to a page in a Team Site on SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition. As you can see there are many categories.

As the image shows, you have the option of adding a Web Part for each of the lists and libraries in your site. However, those choices (Announcements, Shared Documents, etc) all add the same type of Web Part to the page. The Web Part is the ListView Web Part and it is a good example of just how configurable and flexible some Web Parts are. The ListView can display views from any type of list. You can connect it to other Web Parts as a source of data. For example, a Chart Web Part can display a chart of a ListViews contents.

You can also connect a ListView to another Web Part as a consumer of information. For example, the Query String (URL) Filter Web Part can connect to a ListView and pass a value from the URL to the ListView to filter the displayed data.

Most Web Parts are far simpler than ListView. For example, the Image Viewer Web Part simply displays a single image from a URL you provide.