The early pioneers of intranets had to build them from scratch. As more and more intranets were developed it became clear that there were basic common features that were nearly always required. Such basic common features include:

1. Nested sites: it is normal to have a main intranet site that acts as an entry point for visitors who may then enter a sub-site via a link. For example a company may wish to have a separate sub-site for each of its departments.

2. Sub-sites: sub-sites in turn may have their own sub-sites and so on, so that the whole intranet resembles a tree structure.

3. Lists: these can be lists of tasks, lists of contacts, lists of issues, lists of announcements, lists of events, etc. Each site or sub-site can have its own set of lists.

4. Libraries: these can be libraries of documents or libraries of pictures. Libraries are used to logically group documents/pictures. Each site or sub-site can have its own set of libraries.

Microsoft (amongst others) realised that these common features could be provided 'out of the box' so that expensive developers would not be needed to add standard features to simple sites. Furthermore, SharePoint allows the user (provided he/she has permission) to add a new instance of a feature and perform simple customisation of it.

A SharePoint implementation is comprised of the following 3 elements:

1. A database in which to store site information. SharePoint stores all of the information about a site in a Microsoft SQL Server database. This information includes configuration data that describes the lists, libraries and other features in the site and the content data which includes, for example, the text contained in blogs, the documents in libraries, etc. Microsoft SQL Server is a separate product from SharePoint and runs on a server which is itself running a Microsoft Windows Server operating system.

2. An internet service that allows the user to interact with the site. SharePoint uses Internet Information Services (IIS) which is a component of the Windows Server operating system. IIS assembles site web pages in a form that can be displayed in a web browser and receives and processes user requests.

3. SharePoint. SharePoint itself is composed of two distinct components: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). WSS is included as part of the Windows Server 2003 operating system while MOSS is a separate product. WSS is in effect the underlying platform of SharePoint and MOSS is a value added set of components and services that has been built on top of the WSS platform.