The responsibility for the maintenance of an organizational website generally falls on a webmaster. The webmaster is usually responsible for the look and feel of the site as well as making sure it displays fresh and relevant content at all times. As the site and organization grows, this responsibility might become a bit overwhelming. Webmasters often have other responsibilities besides just the organizational website to take care of. The website has a tendency to be neglected over time and put on the "back burner". The look and feel remains the same. Broken links begin to appear. Content remains unchanged.
Non-technical employees from other departments are often likely to express an interest in having certain sections of the website updated from time to time. However, the site often goes without update because the webmaster does not have the time to honor all of the requests and because the other employees do not have the technical wherewithal or permission to make the updates themselves. This situation results in a stagnant site with little or no use to the audience it was intended for.
The Solution
KD solves the problem of content management by accomplishing two goals:
(1) making it easy for webmasters to configure user accounts with the appropriate permissions to modify a selected set of pages and (2) making it easy for users to modify those pages.
Webmasters can give users the ability to modify anything from an entire site to a single page. Certain users might be allowed to modify pages with their changes going live as soon as they publish. Other users might be allowed to modify pages with their changes going live only after they have been reviewed. KnowledgeDispatch provides this capability.
Non-technical users can easily modify pages using configurable content modules called programs. KnowledgeDispatch has many easy-to-use programs. The content program provides a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that allows users to type in text, add images, and add links just as they would when editing a Word document. The item aggregation programs allow users to display various types of items that have been submitted to the site in various formats. Examples of these are the calendar program, the articles program, and the photo album program. There are many other types of programs available such as an RSS reader and a forms program. Page editors can place these programs on pages, configure them, and move them around.
The Benefits
- Configurable content modules called programs can be used to populate pages with content. Programs can be shared across numerous pages allowing a change made in one place to have an effect on several parts of the site. Custom programs can be developed as well.
- The content program can be used to allow non-technical users to easily create content for the pages. The WYSIWYG editor allows users to create HTML without having to write the code by providing a working environment similar to a Word document.
- Items on the site can be aggregated in programs allowing you to display information from various parts of your KnowledgeDispatch server in one concise view. For example, each of your sites might have a calendar that displays events relevant to that particular site. KnowledgeDispatch allows you to roll up those events into one cumulative calendar on your headquarters site.
- Content and items submitted to the website can be reviewed before they are published. Server and site administrators can configure the publication workflow as needed. They can choose to allow user submitted content to be automatically posted to the site or they can choose to require approval before the content is posted.
- KnowledgeDispatch offers RSS support by allowing item-based programs to be easily transformed into RSS feeds and by providing an RSS viewer program allowing users to display external RSS feeds.
- The image repository allows images to be shared across multiple websites across the server. Images can be associated with the server, a site, a section, or a page. This allows images to be easily replaced in one location having an effect on many sites.
- Many additional features are available for content such as the glossary. Managers can enter terms on the KD server and have users see the definition when they move their mouse over the terms. An example would be the term KD.