|  |
New Open Source CMS for European agency
On February the 18th 2005 the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has gone online with their third generation website based on the CMS portal system elevateIT.
In collaboration with the Munich-based software company SYSLAB.COM the Agency has now launched its new CMS portal system containing 33 national Focal Point websites. SYSLAB.COM has been given the assignment of migrating and installing these Websites on the basis of their Open Source software elevateIT.
Prior to date the websites of the Agency were hosted on different servers residing in different countries. This meant that the technical environment of the network of websites was variable: some websites were static, while others were maintained with a Content Management System (CMS). With the use of elevateIT the Agency now has one central CMS-portal for the deployment and maintenance of the network websites, including national and institutional websites, campaigning websites and the Europe portal website (http://europe.osha.eu.int/). All Focal Points will thus use the same CMS portal software and data bases.
elevateIT is an extension of the Open Source technologies ZOPE and Plone and serves the requirements of large decentralized organizations and enterprises. The content management functionalities of elevateIT facilitate complete web browser based creation and administration of information. Via portal functionality the users can interact with the system and other users and personalize contents and presentation. The system facilitates exchange of information between web servers providing relevant and latest information, which can be accessed across various web-sites.
One of the key features of elevateIT is multilingualism. The front end and the content of any web page can be presented in different languages. The Agency disposes of a hierarchical thesaurus, containing over 2400 terms in 20 languages, which is used as a basis to categorise current and future information. Working together with elevateIT the translators of the thesaurus are assisted thru workflows and helper applications to keep various language versions consistent.
The information on occupational health and safety on the national, institutional websites and the European portal is identified by extensive metadata. The metadata system and the personalization function of elevateIT thereby facilitate aggregation, search and group specific information distribution – not just to the voluminous websites of the Agency but also to other web pages. A Workflow and Versioning solution allows flexible control of all information before publication. An LDAP Server is used for the centralized management of users providing “single point of log on”. The System furthermore allows easy adding and integrating new sites into the network of websites.
Future collaborations between the Agency and SYSLAB.COM are already underway. After the integration and migration of the main websites and the Focal Point sites, the Agency has decided to develop further functionalities and to migrate its own homepage to the new CMS portal system. SYSLAB.COM will thereby make the necessary implementations and give technical support to the Agency. If required, further content restructuring will take place within this cooperation.
For more information please see the Agency website: http://europe.osha.eu.int/
or the company and product websites of SYSLAB.COM: http://www.syslab.com / http://www.elevateit.org 25.02.2005, SYSLAB.COM GmbH
Subscribe to the newsletter | | |
| | | |
