As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been doing some intranet work for a trucking company. This project is swiftly transforming from a basic maintenance/refresh to a complete switch to a Content Management System. I had a sit-down with the HR team (who are the driving force behind this) last week, and another one with their network guy this past week.
A lot of the requests were fairly basic. Things like being able to go in and update their own content, announcements, training manuals, etc. The ability to create job postings, a section for members to ‘buy/sell’ home items internally (forum). The ability to create quizzes/tests for their workers. An image gallery, and the ability to create blogs for people like the CEO.
All these requests have one thing in common: dynamic. They want this intranet to become a dynamic, up-to-date source of information for employees, many of whom rarely touch a computer in their jobs. Very few people will be responsible for updating it, and they aren’t all tech-savvy.
With these things in mind, it became clear that what they need is a CMS, not the straight code HTML pages currently being used. It also has to be user-friendly, easy for non-technical people to use, and attractive, something that the average dock worker will be able to use, and would look forward to viewing as a source of company information. It also does not need to be complex. Very few people will be contributing content. Most of the users will be there strictly as viewers, not contributors. With this in mind, a full-fledged solution like Microsoft Office SharePoint is way overkill.
I began looking at cheap, reliable CMS’s. My top four were ExpressionEngine (my first choice), MovableType, Drupal, and Joomla. These are all AMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) based solutions, and relatively cheap to implement. I’m also very fluent in these type of systems, so it was my personal orientation as well. However, when I met with the network admin, I realized that it wasn’t about what I’m comfortable with. Their needs and current infrastructure won’t adapt so easily to AMP based solutions. We also need to think about the people required to maintain these. While I may be comfortable with them, their people aren’t necessarily comfortable with it.
I went back to the drawing board. I recalled that Microsoft offers a pared down version of SharePoint, called Windows SharePoint Services. I took a look at what it offers/doesn’t offer. It meets all their needs. The main difference between WSS and MOSS is the social network aspect. It isn’t as attractive to large groups of users. However, considering that there will be perhaps 5-10 people actually contributing to the site, WSS seems like a perfect solution.
I’ll post another update regarding this project in a few weeks. Hopefully it will be a positive experience!
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