The UI is hardly well suited for creating anything but the simplest of CT structures, and you’re missing out on all the power. It’s like buying a new car because you need a storage device for your iPod. Sure, you can use it like that, but it’s terribly expensive and you’re not using it right.

I’m not sure who you spoke to who gave you this advice, but anyone who has been in any slightly complex SharePoint development project will attest to the UI as the least favorable option for creating CTs.

.b

Good questions! Content types added through features are available to edit through the web interface just like any other CTs. You can, of course, restrict editing or visibility.

Regarding supportability, features do support upgrades so you can update the content types after deployment. However, as content types are ‘copies’ once they hit any lists, you may experience that your deployed content types are not updated.

Of course, you can overcome all these issues by developing your content types through the API, and while the specifics are not covered in this issue of the journal, I have a section in my book “Building the SharePoint User Experience” on this, where I use a feature to deploy a web-scoped content type thorough the API as an example.

.b

thanks