SharePoint Hub Sites For Your Intranet Overview

Microsoft rolled out Modern UI for SharePoint sites in Office 365 and have made significant changes how SharePoint developers and users interact with the sites. We can simply call these sites as “Modern SharePoint sites”.

Recently, Microsoft has released hub sites for the Modern sites, which helps to roll up the content from multiple modern sites in SharePoint. In this article, we will have a close look at the Hub sites in Modern UI.

Modern UI is developed using HTML and JavaScript. As a result, the page loads faster without making a round trip to the server. It offers responsive UI. Microsoft is slowly pushing the Modern UI to the classic sites.

As an example, the classic team site looks like below

As we move to site contents (Settings > Site contents), we observe an entirely new look and feel – The Modern UI.

SharePoint does offer an option to switch back to classic SharePoint experience. Observe the “Return to classic SharePoint” link in the left bottom corner of the page.

The classic SharePoint sites can be created from SharePoint Online admin center. However, the Modern SharePoint site can be created from new SharePoint app launcher https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx

The Modern sites do not appear under the SharePoint Online admin center. The new SharePoint admin center is in the preview to resolve this.

Based on business requirements we keep on creating the Modern sites. These Modern sites may be related or serve an individual purpose. The Modern sites are created as an individual site collection usually with no subsites. As a result, the Modern sites looks scattered. We have to visit the individual Modern site to see the content. This pain area has been solved by SharePoint Hub site.

The hub sites bring together related sites to roll up the activities and news. It simplifies search and provides shared navigation and look-and-feel. The hub site helps you to connect to your ever-changing sites with intelligent content management.