Rule 2 « Setting up & maintaining a site »
Content
- 1. Rule
- 2. Justification
- 3. Description
1. Rule
Before creating and maintaining a site on IntraComm, you must first plan it.
2. Justification
To ensure all sites on IntraComm are as relevant as possible, the site design and the relevance of its contents must be clear, its navigation and graphical look precisely defined and its feasibility in terms of technical, budgetary and human resources assured.
The performance of the Commission staff partly depends on the internal information tools at their disposal, and a properly managed intranet is part of this.
3. Description
3.1. Creating a new site or subsite
This comprises the following steps:
3.1.1 Contents
You should plan carefully what to put on your site. Planning and structuring the site contents enables you to provide a better service, control the size of your site and choose an appropriate design.
Generally speaking, information published on IntraComm must be of interest to more than just the staff of a single DG or department and must also complement that already on the intranet. The only exception to this rule is the provision of links to local intranets - this is to be encouraged in order to increase transparency and communication between departments.
Writing for the web
When constructing your site, remember that:
- Writing for the web is different from writing for printed publications. In particular, two aspects should be taken into account: reading on screen involves specific constraints as regards text length and format and the path followed by readers is not known in advance, so they should be given the possibility of navigating from one item of information to another.
- There are several guides on the Internet providing excellent recommendations for designing, editing and maintaining a high-quality site.
In addition, particular attention should be drawn to a number of points:
- Directly insert a link from a word to another page and avoid using "click here". Avoid links in the middle of a text. Place them above, besides or underneath the text.
- If a text is particularly long, you are advised to present the document in PDF format, use an appropriate icon and specify size. This will enable users to judge beforehand how long it will take to download.
- Make sure that a downloadable document has a summary or introduction in HTML format so that the user will download the document only if useful.
- Present pages and documents in a context. Create all useful links for a better understanding of the document, to find out more, to widen the scope, to lead on to other sites on similar subjects, etc.
- Do not hesitate to explain the contents of the page or site, its objectives and limits.
- The editing quality of a site is not confined to its original language. It is important to check the quality in other language versions, in particular to verify that the integrity of texts received has not been altered in the course of HTML formatting etc.
3.1.2 Resources
Bear in mind the availability of resources for updating, maintaining and developing your site in the future. Too many projects are started and then later abandoned for lack of resources.
3.1.3 Support
Information Providers Guide
This Guide contains a wealth of essential information on site construction, from design to final publication.
IntraComm team
Contact the site administrator responsible for IntraComm in your DG. He/she will contact us so that we can agree with you all the steps necessary before your site can go online.
You should contact the IntraComm team well before any development work is carried out on your site, so we can help you create and maintain it.
Our services include:
- discussing with you the overall idea behind your project and how it fits into the IntraComm structure, especially as regards the target audience and any overlap with existing sites hosting similar information (to avoid any duplication of resources);
- explaining the rules you must follow (also explained in the IPG);
- coordinating the project together with any other interested departments;
- providing helpful advice and pointers on page design, project promotion, etc.
Data Centre
We can also put you in touch with the Data Centre (DIGIT.A.3) so you can check that your project is compatible with the overall IT architecture of the Commission. - see chapter 5.
3.1.4 Interactive features
Try to give your site at least some interactive features, such as a simple e-mail contact link or departmental mailbox so you can receive messages from visitors to your site. Your IRM (Information Resources Manager) can set up a departmental mailbox for you - see chapter 4 on Presentation and chapter 8 on Interactive features.
3.1.5 Going live
Once you have completed all the above steps and finished your site, we will check together that all the necessary stages and rules in the IPG have been followed, including having the site translated into at least one other language (see Chapter 6 on multilingualism) (this is a prerequisite for approval to transfer the test site to the production server - www.cc.cec).
NB for subsites, this can be done quickly, our main concern being to avoid duplication of information and to adapt them to the basic structure of IntraComm, if necessary.
When your site is published, we will index it and announce its publication on the IntraComm homepage.
If it is a new site, publishing it via IntraComm is the only possible method.
There are two ways of making changes to your site once it has been published:
- you can have the IntraComm team do this, by sending us requests to have files moved, deleted, etc.
- or (preferably) you can do it yourself. For this you need FTP access.
Applying for FTP access
When your site goes live, the IntraComm team sends an application for access to the Data Centre on your behalf. For this, you need first of all to contact the web administrator in your DG who is responsible for IntraComm. He/she will then tell us the URL of the site for which FTP access is being requested and the name of the person to whom that access is to be given. Thereafter only designated staff are authorised to request updates of the folders on the site. (See Annex 1)
Practicalities of data transfer
The "staging" (or "test") version of the IntraComm web service can be accessed using a web browser at http://www.cc.cec:8081/. Behind this address hides a "reverse proxy server" that forwards all incoming HTTP requests to the appropriate (test) web servers, and that returns the corresponding responses from those web servers to the requesting browsers. The FTP server that is to be used to update information on the IntraComm staging server is located at intracomm.staging.cc.cec.eu.int. This FTP server is configured with detailed access control definitions for each information provider.
Example:
A member of the Commission's Internal Communication Network has been assigned the task of maintaining the web pages under http://www.cc.cec:8081/home/icn/. Since these pages are to be made accessible to the IntraComm surfers without any access controls, the Data Centre's web team has configured the FTP server at "intracomm.staging.cc.cec.eu.int" to grant the ICN webmaster user ID "icnwebm" write-authorisation to the directory /public/htdocs/home/icn and its contents.
He has the right to directly request updates to the production version of his pages under http://www.cc.cec/home/icn/
He does so by uploading a ".request.update" file in the directory /public/htdocs/home/icn on the staging server.
At the appropriate time the automatic update procedure will copy the listed files and/or sub-directories from /public/htdocs/home/icn on the "staging" server to /public/htdocs/home/icn" on the "production" server.
The results of this action will be written into a file
/public/htdocs/home/icn/.request.output.
The procedure for updating the production site can be found at http://www.cc.cec/Publishing/update.htm
NB Although site administrators are authorised to publish any number of pages under the directory to which they have access, this does not absolve them from the obligation to also consult the IntraComm team for new subsites.
3.1.6 New site announcement
When a new site or subsite is put online:
- the IntraComm team informs the web administrators by posting an announcement on the ICN site (Internal Communication Network) and sometimes also by sending an e-mail to the administrators of the other IntraComm sites and the DG intranets and to the IT correspondents in the other institutions;
- users are notified via a notice in the "What's new?" section.
3.2. Maintaining a site
The following are the rules for proper maintenance of your site:
3.2.1 Regular updates
Make sure you keep your site up to date by regularly checking that the information on it is the most recent available.
Checking links
You should regularly check that the links both within IntraComm and to external servers are still valid. You can use the Linkbot programme to find any broken links. Also bear in mind that an intranet based on a local server may be accessible from certain Commission workstations only. Before creating any links to intranets of this type, check their accessibility.
3.2.2 Changed/deleted URLs - informing administrators and redirecting users
Changes to URLs should be kept to a minimum. If they prove unavoidable, however, you should proceed as described below.
Every time you change or delete URLs, key files or e-mail addresses, you must inform the IntraComm team, which will post a notice on the ICN site and sometimes also send an e-mail to the administrators of the other IntraComm sites and the DG intranets and to the IT correspondents in the other institutions.
You must also create redirection pages to avoid unnecessarily annoying users with "Page not found" messages.
Relocating sites
When an entire site is moved to a new address, the site address is changed on the server. Then, when users enter the URL of the old homepage or any of its subpages, they are automatically redirected to the new location. If you want to have this procedure carried out, tell us and we will put you in contact with the appropriate staff in the Data Centre.
Redirecting individual pages
Since the web server can only handle a limited number of automatic redirections, individual pages must be redirected as follows: on the old page insert a link to the new address together with a standard message informing users of the change of location.
3.2.3 Keeping users informed
Even if you are not changing links or publishing a new site or subsite, you must inform users of new additions to your site. There are various ways of doing this, for example by creating a "What's new?" page on your site or posting a notice on the bulletin boards.
3.2.4 Archiving
When you archive a site or subsite, you must inform us in advance so we can give all interested parties the opportunity to make a local copy for themselves. As soon as you notify us we will publish a message on the ICN site and send an e-mail to the administrators of the other IntraComm sites and the DG intranets and to the IT correspondents in the other institutions. We also advise you to always make a local copy of any sites that you archive.
3.3. Publicising new features on your site on special sections on IntraComm
IntraComm also provides a service for passing on any messages you send it to the whole Commission staff. This is done using the sections on the IntraComm homepage titled "What's new?" and "Notice board".
Simply send us a title, a brief description of the contents in either English or French and the associated links. Note that the title must be between 20 and 80 characters long, and the text between 200 and 500. It is best to inform us a day in advance of any new features you wish to publicise on IntraComm.
Note that the "What's new?" section is limited to information of a more "institutional" nature - announcements of new sites, administrative information, Commission decisions, etc. The "Notice board" section, on the other hand, contains extra-curricular information such as announcements by the institutions' sporting and cultural associations, exhibitions, talks, etc.
To ensure your message reaches the right audience, send it to the appropriate mailbox:
- What's new? - intracomm-news@ec.europa.eu
- Notice board - cd-loisirs@ec.europa.eu
