SharePoint - Public vs. Private Site

An overview of public vs private sites.

Public Sites – A site referred to as public will by default be available in a read only format to all users whom have access to the said Internet or Intranet site. The home page of the Intranet is an example of a public site.

Private Sites – A site referred to as private will only be available to those users whom have been granted access. Such sites will contain team collaboration information which should be shared only to applicable users. An example of a private site would be an IT Private Site which would contain content and diagrams which only IT team members would be able to see and collaborate on.

Overall, a good rule of thumb would be to have a private site created and available for applicable team members to create master content in (example as a .doc or .docx format) – then if such content is to be viewed on a public site – it should be created as a .pdf then uploaded/moved to a public site. This way, master documents are kept on the private site – then only posted in a .pdf format to a public site when content is to be shared to a wider audience.