Well, I don't hang out on really any forums besides GAF, so I figured I would brag about this here just because of how cool it is.
So I am an IT guy. I do our corporate WAN for all of North and South America, and also do the majority of web and application development (yeah, I'm overworked).
So anyway, we have been talking about completely redoing our coporate Intranet for a while. Currently there are around 1000ish pages in a pretty basic yet deep web framework. the front page only has around a dozen links on it and from there many pages can take up to around 7-9 layers to get to, some maybe even more. It is a huge pain, and because of how it was originally designed (before I got there) implementing any sort of a search feature would be ridiculous at best. Site maps are pointless because information is changed by other people (also established before I got here) regularly who would have no idea how to update a site map (literally just save as HTML out of word and posting it using Front Page extensions).
So anywho, I have been charged with to clean it up, freshen up the interface, and maybe make it more useable and even updateable by the actual departments (the other people I spoke of earlier aren't department people but just a handful that were given access to provide updates for anyone who seemingly passed them along a request). So in light of all of this, and in light of my boss bringing in developers quoting around $20-30K for a content management system and redesign (my time with what they were talking about would cost more than that), I decided to look around at other options.
That's when I came across the concept of using a Wiki as an Intranet base and content management. Man, what a fantastic idea that turned out to be. Slowly moving existing pages over, but already the site it shaping up, linking is turning out to be handy, and built in searching and ordering will be a dream to these people...
anyway, just wanted to share. if any of you IT guys here happen to be told you have to shape up your corporate intranet, look at a Wiki (I'm using MediaWiki in particular). Hopefully the yahoo's here will be publishing/converting starting with the middle of July and then I never have to look at the intranet again (well, except when I have to use it). Just a great setup.
So I am an IT guy. I do our corporate WAN for all of North and South America, and also do the majority of web and application development (yeah, I'm overworked).
So anyway, we have been talking about completely redoing our coporate Intranet for a while. Currently there are around 1000ish pages in a pretty basic yet deep web framework. the front page only has around a dozen links on it and from there many pages can take up to around 7-9 layers to get to, some maybe even more. It is a huge pain, and because of how it was originally designed (before I got there) implementing any sort of a search feature would be ridiculous at best. Site maps are pointless because information is changed by other people (also established before I got here) regularly who would have no idea how to update a site map (literally just save as HTML out of word and posting it using Front Page extensions).
So anywho, I have been charged with to clean it up, freshen up the interface, and maybe make it more useable and even updateable by the actual departments (the other people I spoke of earlier aren't department people but just a handful that were given access to provide updates for anyone who seemingly passed them along a request). So in light of all of this, and in light of my boss bringing in developers quoting around $20-30K for a content management system and redesign (my time with what they were talking about would cost more than that), I decided to look around at other options.
That's when I came across the concept of using a Wiki as an Intranet base and content management. Man, what a fantastic idea that turned out to be. Slowly moving existing pages over, but already the site it shaping up, linking is turning out to be handy, and built in searching and ordering will be a dream to these people...
anyway, just wanted to share. if any of you IT guys here happen to be told you have to shape up your corporate intranet, look at a Wiki (I'm using MediaWiki in particular). Hopefully the yahoo's here will be publishing/converting starting with the middle of July and then I never have to look at the intranet again (well, except when I have to use it). Just a great setup.