Slash builds free portals
Bob Watkins
Published: 03 Oct 2002 14:06 BST
Large companies can invest in expensive intranet portal software to provide one-stop information shopping for their employees. But until recently, the price of such implementations have made them prohibitive for small- to medium-size companies.
Now there's an open source solution called Slash that can make it more affordable to put company newsletters online. Slash makes an excellent news and portal engine, and you can download it for free at Slashcode.com.
Consultants with experience in Apache Web server, Perl, and MySQL database may find a profitable niche implementing internal Slash sites for their clients, because, while the software is free, the implementation is tricky. Let's take a look at how Slash works, where to get it and how to install and use it.
Slash: A Slashdot-like automated storytelling home page
Slash technically works like a Web log: a dated archive of commentary about interesting places on the Web. The best way to see what it can do is to visit Slashdot, the self-described "news for nerds" Web site that was created using Slash. What you'll find is a feature-rich environment for managing and sharing information in the form of stories and comments about them.
A story is usually a paragraph or two describing a page on another Web site. Its text contains one or more links, one to the page of interest, plus additional ones for the organisation or individual that the story is about, or related subjects. In an intranet setting, a story might point to new content elsewhere on the intranet, such as a revised form or news of a recent successful sale.
Slash stories can also be entire feature articles, such as book reviews or interviews with celebrities. In an intranet setting, such features might be new product announcements or a how-to article from the help desk.
On the right-hand side of the page are small, outlined areas called Slashboxes. Each Slashbox can contain static information that must stay on the page semipermanently, or it can be used as a portal to ever-changing content elsewhere on the Web. A background process retrieves external content on a regular schedule to update the Slashboxes.
This portal feature can be used to display up-to-date statistics about sales, production, market share, etc., on the site's home page. All you need to set up a Slashbox is a data source that can generate an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file. Most systems that can export text to a specified directory can be programmed to create such files.
User interaction promotes knowledge-sharing
If a key goal of a client's intranet is to foster information-sharing among employees, Slash can be an ideal method. In addition to its content management features, Slash promotes user interaction in several ways.
First, Slash allows readers to comment on stories, creating an instant discussion forum focused on a particular topic. Readers can submit their own ideas for stories, which go into a queue for editing and approval before being published.
Second, a polling feature makes it easy to create and view the results of user polls. There is even a journaling system that would enable employees to create their own mini-Web logs detailing news in their part of the company.
Slash's configurability is another plus for intranet use. Stories can be categorised both by topic and by section for easy searching. Discussions can be enabled or disabled on individual stories; anonymous posting can be enabled or disabled, as can the entire user-moderation system. Authorship can be delegated in a larger company so that several individuals share the workload of generating content.
Getting and installing Slash
Installing and configuring Slash is an involved process. For efficiency, Slash requires that the Apache Web server has the Perl language built in via a module called mod_perl. So Apache must be rebuilt on the Web server before Slash can be installed. Likewise, specific versions of Perl and the MySQL database are both required for proper functioning.
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