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Protecting Your Investment |
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Strategies to ensure your website`s future |
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Any software purchase represents an investment, not only in money but implementation and learning time and effort. The last thing an administrator wants is to find the needs have outgrown the software and after a few years its 'back to the drawing board'.
Portal Constructor will avoid this problem by embracing a number of basic strategies from the outset.
Local Authority Focus
A key market for the software is local authorities wishing to follow the evolving e-government agenda. This focus will ensure that new developments are continuously being worked on to meet these requirements.
Updates
All users of the software will benefit from update releases as they become available. Due to the fact that content is separate from functionality, updates may be implemented without having to change the content.
Upgrades
Updates, especially ones to enable the implementation of the e-government agenda are planned for release on a regular basis. All users of the software will be notified of these upgrades as they become available.
Microsoft Platform
Portal Constructor uses the Microsoft environment, including IIS and runs on a Windows 200 platform. Databases use either Access or SQL Server.
Technical, Application & User Support
From the outset it was recognised that for a community site to be successful the underlying software will need supporting both at a technical and user level.
Despite the democracy inherent in the devolved content model it is still necessary to have a central administrator to set up the site and generally ensure it runs well.
It is anticipated that a site's administrator either be or will appoint an internal 'hero' who will provide end user support and handle all the straightforward questions that will inevitably crop up. Portal Constructor will deliver both technical and user support to the nominated hero.
Training
The MKWeb training experience has proved to be very rewarding. Weblet owners are encouraged to attend short four hour, hands-on course. These courses are normally given to about a dozen people at a time. Attendees range from well-versed IT people to quite elderly volunteers from local charities who are extremely nervous of anything high-tech.
The only assumption made is that everybody has a basic understanding of Windows, can cut and paste and use the basic functions of a browser. However, what ever the level of competence, at the end of the session everybody produces a Weblet, including articles, images, links, documents and polls.
The majority of the people trained to date have gone on to contribute content and make MKWeb the success it is. It would be our recommendation that this hands on training approach is used for any community site.
Portal Constructor is Fully Proven
Portal Constructor was developed as a direct result of the experiences gathered running one of the biggest community facing sites in the UK. The software has been powering MKWeb for over three years, is fully proven and is the reason behind MKWeb's phenomenal success.
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