New Website Development
In reference to my post a couple of weeks ago, the plan of using a Wiki application on our new site has been scrapped. As I mentioned, we had been looking into creating an Ecommerce Glossary section, which would be a place for people to look up confusing terms and get definitions to things they don't understand. Considering how quickly the language and terminology changes with regards to ecommerce and online technologies, I think this will be a great resource. However, the learning curve for Wiki applications is a bit much, and in general the Wiki schema is a bit too freeform frow what we are looking for.
For those that aren't familiar with what a Wiki is, the best example is probably Wikipedia. Essentially a Wiki is a site where people can collaboratively work on documents. The idea was that companies and other collaborative environments could have a system where everyone could work on the documents, edit pages, and make changes without having to learn HTML. While that seems all fine and dandy, there is a certain amount of Wiki markup that has to be learned. I have to admit that while I was investigating various Wiki options, my impression was that it is probably easier for people to learn basic HTML than it is for them to learn teh Wiki markup. Of course, that's coming from me, and I would consider myself fluent in HTML (almost like a second language), so I'm probably not a goo barometer for that. Either way, we are looking for a much more structured and simple system.
So we took a look at the functionalities that we felt we needed to make this work and be intuitive to our visitors. Essentially all we need to do is post a term and it's definitions. In an effort to generate feedback and also provide interactivity, we also want people to be able to comment on each definition and provide their input. Of course, we also want some mechanism for our readers to be able to suggest a term, in the event that they are looking for a certain definition but cannot find it. All in all that is what I would consider very basic, so rather than look to a pre-built application, I just decided to build it myself. I think people will really like the new site. It's a couple of months away, but we are full swing into database design and getting our administrative interface built. For those that wonder, we custom program everything on our website other than the blogs (which we use WordPress) and the forums (we use phpBB). Every other part of the front end and back end of our website is built in-house and customized for our specific needs.
I find it to be easier than trying to bend a pre-built CMS to suit our needs. In fact, it probably takes less time and we end up with a much more powerful system that is designed around our needs. If anyone needs me, I'll be coding...
