Web technology is playing an ever increasing role in our projects, and as such has become an important area of our expertise. The Information Management and GIS group have developed various kinds of websites and web technologies.

On a basic level we have used web technology to convey information for a company, organisation or event in the public domain.  This type of website usually displays the same information to all visitors.  Similar to handing out a printed brochure to clients, a static website provides consistent, standard information for an extended period of time.  Although the developer may make updates periodically, it is a manual process to edit the content and this requires website design skills and software.  Such websites can be easily transposed on to portable media such as CDs and DVDs for archive or promotional use.

On the other end of the scale we have developed dynamic websites, which do not have web pages stored on the server in the same form as the user will view them.  Instead, the website content changes automatically based on certain criteria such as time/date or user identity.  It generally collates information on the fly each time a page is requested.   Websites such as these have the advantage that they can look different over time or even different on two machines viewing the site concurrently.  This can help maintain user interest in the site as the content is ever changing.

Both static and dynamic websites can be created using standard web design programmes such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver, although the complexity of dynamic sites calls for significant specialist knowledge.  For the creation of dynamic sites traditional web design programmes are increasingly giving way to specialist or open source Content Management Systems such as Joomla and Drupal.  Once established these sites have the advantage that they can allow people with only basic web knowledge to edit and create their own content.  In this way once the structure is established a client can maintain a site with very little input from the site developer.  Content Managed websites also have many other advantages such as template versatility, which means that the look and feel of a site can be changed with ease, and permission levels can be used to present different levels of access to different users. 

Websites are increasingly being used as a front end for a range of other technologies.  We have utilised links with mapping/cartographic software or databases to allow users to view data in a variety of ways.  As well as being used to convey information, it can also be collected, via tools such as surveys and questionnaires, presented in a web format.

Outside of the public domain, we have used web technology within an organisation to serve as a local intranet to securely share an organisation's information with its employees.  We have also developed extranets, for coordinating working between colleagues in different geographic locations.  In this way extranets can create a private network on the internet with special provisions for access, authorisation and authentication.  File sharing websites or collaboration sites can also make remote working more feasible, giving much of the functionality a corporate network at a fraction of the cost. 

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