Now Live!

Yaaay!

It's all up and running (well, without the extra sections) but it was ready to go at 5.30pm last night!

What a relief.

A couple of fraught glitches during the day yesterday which were overcome....Phew!

Now we're just tidying up and sorting out and then it's on with the next phase!

Yaaaay!

One more day to go!

Well it's that time!

One more day to go, things are coming together but it's getting a wee bit frantic.

We knew that all the separate parts were going to be bolted together at the end but didn't bargain for quite so much to be done in the last week (along with people unexpectedly being off etc).

So we're plowing through it.

We still have some application styling to do and some things will be sorted out later.

It's not absolutely essential to get everything perfect right now because we are doing a phased release and know that there are going to be regular updates to the site.

First things to do once we've launched this phase (on Friday, yikes!) is review the tidying up that needs to be done and then plan for allowing people to update the content themselves.

This will start with the news... the news publsihing system we've designed and built will allow the Marketing department to upload Company news for publication at a later date which will dramatically improve the editorial process... we hope!

Then we have some departmental sites to prepare for people to put up things for their own department alone.

Following that we have the next 3 major sections to deliver:

• The Company
• Using Resources
• Arranging Work

The last 2 still need a lot of development! Using Resources contains a lot of content which needs to be developed. Arranging Work has a lot of information which is supplied by different departments and inter-departmental groups. We need to plan this section carefully so that the information is well structured and caters for all needs.

So there's a lot of work still to do but the 1st major bulk of it is (almost) done at least!

We're anticipating that the build and release will generate some enthusiasm and thought about what can go on the Intranet that isn't there so as soon as it's released we expect it to need to change!

Oh what a thought right now!

Oh well, one thing at a time!

Search facility installed and working!!

Yaaay! It worked, it worked!!

We bought a search facility, met to decide what we needed through last year, the guys came and installed it today - few hours later it's installed and working (few minor adjustments to make to appearance and window opening etc) but other than that it's great!

Very exciting!

The Content! The Content!

Is the most important bit!

Reviewing content now and there's still a lot of stuff to do on it.... making sure it reads properly from the screen (and properly full stop).

Throughout the content preparation we've added a lot of explanatory stuff for our benefit that sounds strange when you just visit the page.

For instance as a poor unsuspecting person who needs to read the procedure for booking leave...you click the relevant links (2 of them)and get to the annual leave page:

"Appropriate title: Arranging Leave

In this section you will find the instructions for booking leave. To book annual leave follow the instructions given below."

Well, thank goodness for that! No mistaking what you might find there then! So there's a bit of tidying up to do...

There are some serious changes as well, as all of the information (well almost all) came from the printed staff handbook it has already been reviewed and changed to fit online delivery so sometimes things don't make sense...

Also making sure that the format for setting out the content when it links to lower levels is the same on each page....so the format is:

Title

Procedure broken into paragraphs

or

paragraph introducing further information on separate pages followed by a list of links to further information

Not:

Title

Paragraph - link to further information
Paragraph - link to further information
Paragraph - link to further information etc..

Standardising formatting and appearance and checking links and well, generally making sure it all looks OK, makes sense and reads well.

Deadline January 27

I know it's the 12th and I'm just making a note of this but it's been busy and Christmas.

Deadline set for the launch is 27 January. The launch will include the following sections

• Integrated news on the home page
  
• 'Working at ##'
• Health and Safety
• PR System (which is running but has a different appearance)
• Staff Directory (which is new to the company - currently there is only a PDF of phone numbers which is updated frequently from a report)
• A 'Forms' section
• A book library (this is just a list of all the books the company owns to consult before buying a copy etc)
• A sitemap
• A search facility (which will search the public website as well)

The remaining sections which will be added as content is prepared are:

• The Company
  
• Using Resources
• Arranging Work

Anything which is important and located in those sections will be presented in an unstyled manner temporarily.

There's a lot to do !