Creating Your First Site
To create a site, open the SharePoint start page and select '+ Create site', then choose between a team site (backed by a Microsoft 365 Group, ideal for a working project team) and a communication site (no group, ideal for a polished one-way intranet page). During creation you choose a site name, a URL suffix, a privacy setting (public or private), and optionally a language and site classification, and within a minute or two SharePoint provisions the underlying site collection, applies a default theme, and emails the designated owner a confirmation.
Cricket analogy: Choosing a team site versus a communication site is like deciding whether to form a full playing squad with a shared training kit (team site, Microsoft 365 Group) or simply set up a public scoreboard display for fans (communication site, no group).
Adding Content and Structure
Once the site exists, add a document library from the '+ New' menu (a 'Documents' library is created by default on team sites) and populate it by dragging files directly into the browser or syncing it locally via the OneDrive sync client, which mirrors the library to a folder on your computer. Add a list the same way — choosing 'List', starting from a blank list, or importing structure from an Excel spreadsheet — and use the column settings to add typed fields such as a 'Status' choice column or a 'Due Date' date column so the list can support filtering and views immediately.
Cricket analogy: Adding a document library is like setting up the team's kit room where players drop off gear directly, while syncing it via OneDrive is like each player keeping a mirrored personal kit bag that auto-updates from the shared room.
Setting Permissions
New sites come with three default SharePoint groups — Owners (full control), Members (edit), and Visitors (read-only) — and the fastest way to grant access is adding people to the appropriate group rather than assigning permissions to individual files one at a time, since group membership changes apply instantly across every library and list that inherits site-level permissions. For content that needs tighter control than the rest of the site, you can break inheritance on a specific library, folder, or even a single item and assign unique permissions, though Microsoft's own guidance warns that overusing unique permissions makes a site much harder to audit and maintain over time.
Cricket analogy: The Owners/Members/Visitors groups are like a team's captain-and-selectors (full control), the playing eleven (edit access to strategy), and the general public in the stands (read-only), and breaking inheritance for one file is like giving a single support staffer special locker-room access outside the normal chain.
# Create a modern team site with PnP PowerShell
New-PnPSite -Type TeamSite -Title "Product Launch" -Alias "product-launch" -IsPublic:$false
# Add a custom list column
Add-PnPField -List "Tasks" -DisplayName "Status" -InternalName "Status" -Type Choice `
-Choices "Not Started","In Progress","Complete"
# Grant edit access by adding a user to the Members group
Add-PnPGroupMember -LoginName "[email protected]" -Identity "Product Launch Members"Team sites created from Microsoft Teams automatically provision a matching SharePoint site behind the scenes, so any file you upload to a Teams channel's Files tab actually lands in that site's default document library — there is no separate storage system for Teams file sharing.
Setting a site's privacy to 'Public' during creation means any user in the entire organization can join and view its content without an invitation; for anything containing sensitive project data, choose 'Private' and add members explicitly instead.
- Sites are created from the SharePoint start page via '+ Create site', choosing team or communication site.
- Team sites are backed by a Microsoft 365 Group; communication sites are not.
- Document libraries can be populated by browser upload or by syncing locally with the OneDrive client.
- Lists can be created blank or imported from an Excel spreadsheet, with typed columns added afterward.
- Owners, Members, and Visitors are the three default permission groups on a new site.
- Breaking permission inheritance allows tighter control but makes a site harder to audit over time.
- Teams channel file uploads are stored in the associated SharePoint site's default document library.
Practice what you learned
1. What backs a SharePoint team site but not a communication site?
2. What does the OneDrive sync client do for a document library?
3. Which three groups does a new SharePoint site have by default?
4. What is a downside of frequently breaking permission inheritance on individual items?
5. Where are files uploaded to a Microsoft Teams channel's Files tab actually stored?
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