Akumina Pro Tips: Hide SharePoint in Plain Sight

Most applications that sit on top of SharePoint share one common characteristic…they all show, or flash, the SharePoint ribbon on the page at some point. In some cases, the ribbon is welcomed, in other cases, not so much. So what can you do about it?

Unfortunately, the SharePoint ribbon isn’t something that you can just turn off, and frankly, I could argue that you really don’t want to do that since there are so many functions and tasks that you need to initiate from the ribbon. So removing the ribbon is out.

What you can do, however, is simply “hide” the SharePoint ribbon… that’s right, don’t remove it, but hide it in plain sight. The best part is there is no coding to do this, it’s all about using the settings in SharePoint to achieve your desired experience.

So what can you change?

• Set the Ribbon Color
  As a SharePoint Tenant Admin, you have the option to configure the ribbon color for the tenant to be any color that you want, even Fuchsia, I am not judging
• Go Minimal
  You can change the look of the header to use a more minimal layout removing unwanted text elements from displaying on the page during the flash
• Be Transparent
  You can set your site logo and thumbnail to be a transparent image versus a blue block with a letter and number in it, this will clear up a few things
• Don’t Worry About Getting Lost
  By default, the SharePoint navigation bar will be displayed on your pages, but you’re probably not using it anyway, so feel free to disable that too
• Give Your Site No Name
  Lastly, remove the title of your site from the site settings, it’s not required and it will be the last thing that can be taken away to make your page loads that much more simple

As usual, here’s a quick overview of performing all the tasks from above on a simple Akumina Foundation site, allowing you to hide your SharePoint ribbon in plain sight.