Has anyone here setup or run an intranet for the company they work for?

I'll shortly be setting up an intranet for the company I work for am looking for suggestions for some useful software to consider. I don't really want to use Frontpage...

Any useful information you guys can provide me with would be much appreciate

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Hi Philip

Yeah, I've just completed ours, which took me a few months to create! The technology you use will all depend on what you're trying to achieve. What features will be built into the intranet?

If it's just straight HTML pages, then go ahead and use a WYSIWYG editor. This will probably be your easiest solution.

However, ours needed to be dynamic and quite complex, therefore I used perl. It had to inclue a login procedure (because there's a lot of sensitive information on the intranet), calandar, to-do list, the corporate diary, bookmarks, address books, word documents etc. I also had to keep information about each user using some sort of database (I used MySQL). I wanted to output information like how many more days annual leave you have and so forth.

So, what are you trying to achieve? Try and sit down and write out a plan first before starting to code anything.

There is also software you can buy to do all of this for you. There's not a lot, but there are a handful of decent perl ones which will do it all for you which might be worth looking into if you want to save yourself some headaches.

Cheers

- wil

Yes...I've created both intranet and extranet applications using Active Server Pages/Perl/SQL Server/Access (depending on the app). We basically used a proxy server behind a hardware/software firewall to control access to the intranet site. Access to extranet apps were also authenticated through the proxy server, but the access was web-based using 128-bit encryption certificates.

Internally, we used Windows authentication..and blocked external IP addresses and also configured the firewall to deny access to our Intranet web server.
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

Thanks for the posts guys, very useful .


Yeah for sure!


I'm planning on sitting down with someone and will get their ideas on how they want the intranet to function and what sorts of things they want included, etc...

At the moment I'm just looking for useful bits of software to consider and just get some general hints and tips like you've both given me .

Does anyone else have anything to add?

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Our "intranet" was nothing more than html files on a public directory on one of our file servers, but it was useful for company information, maps, commonly referenced items and 'how to' manuals, employee manuals, etc. It really wasn't an intranet in the technical since of the word, but the boss didn't know any different .

I basically set everyone's default browser home page to something like F:\common\files\index.html so that whenever someone wanted to know who was on vacation, or how to run the postage meter (when the shipping clerk was out sick) I'd tell them to go to their browser. The advantage was that info & manuals were updated 'on the fly' and it eliminated printing & distributing items everytime there was a change or new employee.

It also added a graphical navigation to help employees find the information they were looking for and therefore made them more inclined to use it as opposed to calling the receptionist and bugging him/her.

Philip,

When you mean software, do you mean editing software or site management software?

I thought you meant site management or content management software. If you are looking at a CMS instead of editing software, you might look at these:

These are perl/mySQL solutions and require a dedicated server or at very minimum root access. I think a couple require compiling or something rather complex. These will not run on a shared hosting account. Some have a complete install disk that will install apache, all the required library files etc.

ezPublish
MetaDot
SlashCode
webGUI

For shared accounts, there seem to be only a couple of really good choices. Both are php and mySQL solutions:

phpwebsite
postnuke

phpwebsite will soon have mySQL database prefixes to elimate conflicts on shared accounts with other scripts. It has a nice calendar built in.

postnuke is stable fork of phpnuke. It is open source and there is a community of very active developers. In the short term, it should allow one instance of the code to run multiple sites. They are also working on a very advanced user system that will allow a user multiple permissions for the various site features. They also release an upgrade script previous versions of postnuke that makes upgrading a snap.
--
Rob

SW Montana's Online Community
Modular Model Railroading

Thanks to everyone who has responded to my query. Responses have been really helpful


I'm looking for both really

Thanks for all that information Rob. I'm sure it will come in handy

P.S, when are these stupid smilies going to be replaced .

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When you stop using them


Adrian

Look at these solutions for some ideas:

http://www.hotscripts.com/...rams/Portal_Systems/

There's only 4 available, 3 of them are decent.

<hint> GT - look at the massive gap in the market </hint>

Cheers

- wil

I believe that the GT Community package will take care of this...hehe!
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

What? I thought the GT package was just a tool to bring the products together.

What I'm talking about is a full fledged portal. Calendar, To-do lists etc. A bit like VBulletin I think.

VBulletin is loaded with those kind of features but it's still essentialy a message board.

- wil

I could think of many things to call vb but a portal wouldn't be one :)

The GT community package, at least my understanding, is more than a "tie" or "bridge" between products, but would allow you to set up different applications, like calendars, notes, etc. very easily.
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Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

vB Portal: http://www.phpportals.com/

I was referring to vbulletin...obviously vbportal is a portal

Very smart, Paul. It is based on vB.

Yes I realise that.

But there is a big difference between vbulletin and vbportal.

Anyway I don't care either way because I use something better .

Really? And what's that may I ask?

- wil

I don't think GT has defined what GT-Community will be publicly. I have been eagerly searching the forums for more information on what it will and will not be.

I think formally, the only thing GT has said Community will be is a "bridge" product. Jack Ong mentioned work on a calendar was ongoing and the email newsletter of several months ago mentioned two new products that have no details.

From reading the GT-Mail forums, I understand there were some difficulties when GT-Mail 2.0 was released. Various staff made comments on the forums as to what GT-Mail would and would not do. I can certainly understand why GT would want to avoid this situation.

Since the GT-Mail difficulties, there has been almost no information about new products. It would seem a more middle of the road approach of Alex giving a brief description of the unreleased products and developement status would be helpful. I can also understand why GT would not want to be pestered with queries regarding unreleased products.

From a user standpoint, it would be nice to know if GT was going to release a product like a calendar, news publishing system or portal. I may be waiting for a product GT is not going to release and I might purchase a product GT will release in a month or so.
--
Rob

SW Montana's Online Community
Modular Model Railroading

WOW, lots of responses.

Thanks guys.

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Yep, before I go for VBulletin and their portal system. I like the calendar, and the member list features.

I also like the fact that when viewing messages you can click on "views" to sort by number of views - why doesn't GForum do this I do not know ?

The reason I'm hanging in here at the moment is the GMail. I want that to be a core feature of a portal I'm building, and I haven't seen such a good and solid product as GMail from anywhere else. And if it can be built into the community so easily I'd be silly to go look elsewhere.

- wil

There is a new article on http://www.useit.com about Intranets, I think it is worth checking out.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20011125.html


Ivan
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Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins

Thanks for that Ivan.

Don't think I really want to spend US$56 (NZ$105) on the document though. What a rip off!

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