Intranet Ideaswhat is an Intranet? Intranet Front End Intranet File Types & Links Intranet File Locations Intranet Maintainance Simple Intranet ExampleWhat is an Intranet?An Intranet can be seen as a 'local' version of an Internet Site. To access pages and documents, computers need only to search locally o a network or single set of drives rather than connect to the WWW.The same technology may be used for both Internet and Intranet. The details below presume that you wish to implement Intranet capability at the least cost. All that is needed is one computer (since it can search its own files) and later you can consider allowing others to link to it via a network, or indeed distributing your Intranet 'Site' via some media to other users.
Intranet Front EndYou may call your Intranet front page anything you like since all you ned to do is set the page tp be called up as a browser's 'Home Page'. This page you should see as the gateway for users to get to information and utilties they need quickly. It may consist of HTML, DHTML and javascript etc as a normal web page would but needs to serve a specific purpose. You may well have different gateway pages for different users, saving each as a separate bookmark or favourite for ease of access
Intranet File TypesBecause you are only using your own system, files you make available on your Intranet are only restricted by the software running on your user's machines. Application -specific documents such as .doc (MS Word) .xls (MS Excel) etc need to have a relevant application that can handle that file format (or a suitable file viewer) installed on the reading machine. Formats sucg as .gif & .jpg (Graphics), .rtf (Rich Text Format), .htm (Web pages) and .txt (plain text) may be read on all computrs if they have a browser (e.g. IE5/ Netscape/ Opera) and basic text editor (e.g. Notepad/ Wordpad) installed, which most do. There are some formats such as .pdf (Portable Document Format) which are designed as being 'cross-platform' in that they may be read on any make of computer with a reader such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. However, luckily the .html (HyperText Markup Language) format of basic web pages is just as universal and readable for free via your browser.
Intranet File LocationsAs long as a file exists in a referenced and accessible (by the computer requesting the file) location, then it may be viewed if appropriate sofware exists on the requesting computer. Path names to files are always relative to the page they are called from and, unlike a lot of the web, are not case sensitive (unless you use a unix server).Where you keep certain files is entirely up to you, but thought needs to be given as to how easy it will be to update documents and whether the location is available to those who need it. The 'host' location needs to be in a computer that is ON (!) and any network link needs to be working.
Intranet MaintainanceWith careful planning, the front end need not be touched if it leads to other indexes which in turn access individual files. Naturally, any new files posted to the file store will need to be referenced (with their name and three letter filetype extension) in their appropriate index pages.Any frequent updating should be only to replace existing files (documents) in the file store. This is done just by copying over new files to the host location.
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