Intranet Solutions

I have recently implemented an Intranet in my company.

I installed Microsoft Internet Information Server along with its companion applications from the Windows NT4 option pack. I think it also comes with the resource kit.

Once you have installed this, you can simply put your web pages in a folder on your disk which is specified by IIS. Then, any user can use his/her web browser to open these pages just by typing the computer name into their web browser.

There is hardly any configuringto do, and it is all made easy by wizards and simple to use option dialogs.

To create the web pages on my intranet, I used Microsoft Frontpage 2000, which requires no HTML or JAVA knowledge at all. I have complex graphics, animation and a download/upload facility which is all so simple to implement.

With literally no web-development experience at all and the above applications, it took me two weeks to create an Intranet site that is better than any other I have seen... My company was so impressed that I got

I have a NT4.0 server running IIS. I use FrontPage 2000 in which I downloaded the FP2000 Intranet kit from Microsoft's site.

Office 2000 also has an intranet kit available. The kits are run in a "Wizard" format which prompts you to answer questions regaurding the content you would like to have included in your intranet.

Good Luck!
WD

You need to decide whether you are going to use a flat file structure or keep your intranet files in a database. Lots of the new intranet development software uses an SQL database to keep tabs on all the data.

My company is currently using SilverStream, which we purchased from a third party vendor who had written a GUI interface to make it easy for anyone to publish a page. It theory, this was a great idea, but in reality, it's got more bugs than a centipede has legs. That's not to say that SilverStream is a bad product, but it does have some bugs and the GUI interface written by the third party has even more. You might have more luck if you developed your own app on SilverStream, rather that letting someone else do it.

We are now gathering information on other packages that are available - Vignette StoryServer and NetObjects are two that have caught our eye. Both of these packages use the database format.

One other issue......

Is the company history the only thing that you want non-employees to see? If you have the home page on screen, what's to keep visitors from going anywhere in your intranet?

This may not be an issue if you don't have any sensitive data on your intranet, but security can be a real problem in these situations.........