Here’s a quick round-up of 5 things that can kill a web project, and how to avoid them…

#1 No documented governance

When building any web application primarily driven by user-generated content, it is essential to document the governance process by which content will be updated and added, who will have access to update the content, and who will decide when content needs to be removed or refreshed.  Without this documentation vetted and signed-off by all interested parties, you may find yourself in a negative situation where the true content owners within your organization don’t have sufficient control over the process to update content within your web application.  The end result: content may be inappropriate to the audience, or may not be updated frequently enough.

#2 Lack of required content

Every good extranet or intranet lives and dies by its content.  Without useful content either being created by entitled owners or consumed by a target audience, there is simply no way that your web project will succeed.  It is important to regularly survey your audience to insure the content you have in your extranet or intranet meets the needs of your audience.  It’s also ideal, if possible, to find a select screening group of users or audience members that can give you initial and early feedback about the content that you plan to make available on your extranet or intranet.  That can also help you determine how to properly document the governance process.

Make sure that as a part of your planning process and governance documentation that you’ve identified the correct people within your organization to own content and keep it up-to-date.  It may also be useful to plan how you will identify unused content and weed it from the system.

#3 Poor usability

It cannot be stressed enough: poor usability will absolutely kill an extranet or intranet.  Poor usability can arise from a number of problems: missing or inaccurate search, confusing navigation, poorly placed links to important information, or confusing methods of getting content updated.

As with insuring that you have the correct content, making sure to bring on a group of your target audience early on in the process will help get early feedback that could allow you to make corrections where needed.

Don’t be afraid to invest time early on in prototyping your site with any kind of visual prototyping tool.  And don’t forget that in a pinch, pen and paper prototypes can still lead to a good deal of feedback from your users.

#4 Incomplete or poorly documented use cases

Whether you’re building a commercial web application or an extranet or intranet, not documenting the types of things that you expect your users to do will certainly lead to problems.

Before venturing out on your next project, make sure that a part of the project documentation includes use cases.  As with #2, having this documentation ahead of time will make documenting the governance for your extranet or intranet much easier.

To build a good use case, start with a good user persona, or a composite of the type of user you expect to browse your site.  List out the common tasks you expect this perosona to complete, such as: searching for a Knowledge Base article, adding a new service request, downloading a whitepaper, or collaborating with team members.  Describe in detail how you expect them to complete these tasks.  This also forces you to think more about your information architecture, as described in #5.

#5 Poorly planned information architecture

Information architecture — how you arrange your navigation, your document taxonomy, your application screen flows — is commonly overlooked when building a new extranet or intranet.  This is an area where a little investment in time can pay off big in the end.

Often times, when information architecture is overlooked or ignored during a project, you may end up with a site that gets a few hits directly to important content, but the rest of the site remains untouched.  This is usually caused by a poor organization of the information available in the site.

Having your extranet or intranet have consistent and understandable terminology, intuitive navigation, and a proper taxonomy for your documents will increase your site’s usability, and allow more users to feel comfortable browsing your site.

Planning out your site’s information architecture is very similar to building a corporate taxonomy, which is explored in more detail in the post Building a Corporate Taxonomy.

Fedora Core

Link: http://fedoraproject.org/

What it does: Fedora Core is a free linux distribution. As with most free linux distributions, it usually contains the “bleeding edge” code from the OpenSource projects that comprise the distribution. Generally, this is desirable for people looking to take advantage of new features, but for enterprise servers, or for applications requiring a more stable and tested codebase, distributions such as RedHat Enterprise Linux or SuSE Enterprise Linux are more appropriate. Fedora is my particular favorite, but Debian and Ubuntu are also very solid.

PHP5

Link: http://www.php.net/

What it does: It’s PHP! Duh! … Fedora Core features this in an RPM package, and you can install it during the installation process.

Apache2

Link: http://httpd.apache.org/

What it does: Apache is the front-end webserver required by all of the other OpenSource projects on this list. As with PHP, it is included in the Fedora Core distribution as the HTTP server, and you can install it during the initial installation process.

mySQL

Link: http://www.mysql.com/

What it does: mySQL is the database back-end required to store data for all of the OpenSource projects on this list. As with PHP and Apache, it is a part of the Fedora Core distribution, and can be installed during the installation process.

MediaWiki

Link: http://www.mediawiki.org

What it does: MediaWiki is a fantastic OpenSource wiki platform. It’s fairly straightforward to set up and deploy, and you’ll be up and running in no time. MediaWiki is the platform that supports Wikipedia.

Drupal

Link: http://drupal.org/

What it does: Drupal is a web content management system. Drupal includes templates, making it easy for departments to start building their own web pages quickly and easily.

phpBB

Link: http://www.phpbb.com/

What it does: phpBB is a web-based discussion platform (aka a bulletin board system, or forums). Having a web-based platform for discussion allows you to capture tacit information that might otherwise be inaccessible in email discussions and make it readily available to anyone searching for it on your Intranet.

Horde

Link: http://www.horde.org/

What it does: Horde is a web-based email, calendaring and task management system that is quick to set up and deploy.

WordPress

Link: http://www.wordpress.org

What it does: WordPress is simply the best PHP-based blogging application available.

Coppermine

Link: http://coppermine-gallery.net/

What it does: Coppermine is an easy-to-use and powerful image gallery application.

Know of anything I missed that should be on the list?  Let me know!

The benefits are clear: all are OpenSource, very easy to customize, most do not charge a license or support fee, and there are large groups of users who contribute modules for each platform that can extend the features and functionality. However, a word of caution: since so many sites on the Internet today use these systems, and since all of the source code is open for public inspection, many have been vulnerable to simple security exploits, including cross-site scripting (XSS) hacks and SQL injections. Most of the more developed and widely used PHP CMS products are fairly stable and secure, but adding modules from 3rd parties can lower the overall stability and security, and common setup and deployment mistakes can lead to a vulnerable system that can be easily defaced. Additionally, some PHP CMS systems may not scale well for large volumes of content or traffic.

All security and scalability concerns aside, PHP CMS solutions are a fantastic way to perform early prototyping for a collaborative web portal environment, and are especially useful for Intranets or private Extranets.

Here’s a quick round-up of 5 of the top PHP-based CMS systems that are good to know…

Drupal

Site: http://drupal.org/

Summary: Drupal is probably one of the most well-known and highly regarded PHP-based CMS systems available. Drupal documentation can be found in nearly any technology-focused bookstore, and it has a solid reputation for stability, security and scalability.

Features include:

• Content Management System
• Blogs
• Collaborative authoring environments
• Forums
• Peer-to-peer networking
• Newsletters
• Podcasting
• Picture galleries
• File uploads and downloads

Joomla

Site: http://www.joomla.org/

Summary: Joomla is also a highly regarded PHP CMS, although perhaps not quite as well renowned as Drupal at the moment. Joomla features a very easy to use content management system out-of-the-box for easy creation of an entire web site, including page flows, navigation, image upload, etc. It can also be extended further with modules to allow forums, shopping carts, image galleries, etc.

Mambo Server

Site: http://www.mamboserver.com/

Summary: Mambo Server is a very solid PHP CMS system that mainly focuses on website content. Mambo’s administrative interface is especially easy to use, and a great start for people who aren’t as web-savvy.

Features include:

• Provides a basic level of content approval for registered users
• Page caching mechanism to improve performance on busy sites
• Media (images, documents) upload and management
• Content display scheduling
• Content syndication (RSS)
• Search engine friendly (SEF) URL’s
• Internationalisation (interface translation)
• Content macro language (aka mambots)
• Simple but powerful template system
• Simple polls
• Content voting/rating system

PHP-Nuke

Site: http://www.phpnuke.org

Summary: PHP-Nuke has been around since 2003, and has mainly focused on providing a complete out-of-the-box community portal system for integrated blogs, discussion forums, and file transfers. PHP-Nuke is most frequently used with phpBB to support video game enthusiasts

Features include:

• Integrated FAQ system
• News
• Surveys
• File Management/Download
• phpBB bridge for forums

PHP Fusion

Site: http://www.php-fusion.co.uk/

Summary: Similar to PHP-Nuke, although perhaps not quite as widely used, PHP Fusion is primarily used as a community site system.

Features include:

• News/Blogging
• Integrated Forums
• File Downloads/Management
• Integrated Web Links Management

Know of any other OpenSource PHP-based CMS systems that should be on the list? Let me know!