An Intranet - Do You Like To Keep Things Inside?
What exactly is an intranet and what does it do for you?
An intranet is a private web site, it is a web site developed for a specific group of people, usually within a company, and restricted to that group.
Since everyone knows what a great tool the internet is and how easy it is to find information, why not create a web site inside your company that provides all of your company information in one place. All of the things you would normally distribute with memos and printed mailings, all of the forms employees have to fill out, all of the information that would be found on the company bulletin board can be put on an intranet.
How is an intranet web site different?
An intranet in one way is not different, it is still a web site you design just like you would your regular web site. The difference is it stays inside your company and no one outside sees it unless you let them in. Because of this, you use your own web server inside your company but a small business would not have a lot of traffic on its intranet so you do not need a very powerful computer. You can actually have it on a desktop computer if you only have a small group of employees.
Larger companies would need a larger server but if you have a network and it is running Microsoft Windows Server software everything you need is already there. Just enable IIS (Internet Information Services) and publish your intranet from your desktop to that server, just like you would to an outside web host.
Intranets have a big advantage
A major advantage of an intranet is knowing what computers log in. If everyone is using Windows with Internet Explorer 6.0 for instance, then you don't have to make sure everything look ok on Netscape Navigator. Test the intranet within your company and if it looks good, you're done.
