Summary
- Rother has been working with GOSS Interactive since 2003. GOSS hosts http://www.rother.gov.uk/, and the website is built on GOSS iCM.
- Rother has worked with GOSS to develop technology for the quick and easy creation of sub-sites.
- The creation of a sub-site was previously a cost, time and code-intensive process of around two hours. It now takes approximately 10 minutes.
- The sub-site creation module enables Rother to build sites for an unlimited number of partner organisations at no additional cost. This helps organisations such as parish councils potentially save thousands of pounds.
- Rother has created sub-sites for its local strategic partnership, a training consortium and is in the process of building sites for a number of parish councils.
Serving East Sussex
Rother District Council is one of five district and borough councils within the County of East Sussex. It consists of 29 parish councils, two town councils and one parish meeting.
The District covers some 200 square miles. With the exception of Bexhill and the historic towns of Battle and Rye, the area is mainly rural and covers from Ticehurst through Bodiam and Northiam to reach the English Channel at Rye and Camber.
Rother District Council's website - http://www.rother.gov.uk/ - was designed to serve the community of Rother, and to also provide information to those who reside outside the District.
Building a website
Since 2003, the web team at Rother has been working with GOSS Interactive for the hosting and content management of its website. The site was originally built using GOSS iCM (intelligent Content Management) from GOSS Interactive and the web team continues to use this technology to manage its site in-house on an ongoing basis.
Toby Field is Webmaster at Rother. Previously working alone in the department, he now has a team of two full-time and one part-time members of staff. He comments, "In 2003, we put out a tender for the website and considered around half a dozen providers. GOSS was recommended to us by another local authority, and when we took a closer look at their capabilities, we could see that they were head and shoulders above the rest."
Over the past six years, Rother has been working with GOSS to feed back on and develop additional functionality for GOSS iCM. Rother has recently been involved in tailoring the sub-site creation module.
Powerful sub-site creation
As the name implies, this module, available to GOSS iCM users with an enterprise licence, is used to "create" (or rather "populate") a sub-site. It does this by building a pre-defined structure (or layout) of articles underneath the home page of an empty sub-site created in GOSS iCM.
Toby Field comments, "The creation of sub-sites was previously a cost, time and code-intensive process, taking around two hours. Since using the GOSS iCM sub-site creation module, this has become a far more straight forward job, which can be completed in around 10 minutes."
The module requires the GOSS iCM contributor to provide some basic information and select a few options, which will include the following:
- The empty sub-site (recently created in GOSS iCM) to populate
- Server ("live" or "development")
- Layout
- Colour scheme
- Site title, footer address text, notify email address
- Site-specific media (for site logo / graphic banner)
Once the relevant details have been entered, a simple click of the "Create" button begins the process. This involves creating all the new empty pages and any relations between them as well as inserting the necessary sub-site specific variables
While the module is running, its progress at each point is reported on screen.
Toby Field adds, "Now the most complex element of building a site is the human element - working with the customer to create the right branding and colour schemes", says Field. "The build itself takes no time at all with what is effectively a wizard - it always used to be the longest part of the process. The technology gives us the freedom to concentrate on getting the website correct without having to worry about the systems."
Supporting local parishes
So far, Rother has built sites for two partner organisations; a local strategic partnership http://www.rotherlsp.info/ and a training consortium of which the local authority is a member http://www.sussextrainingconsortium.org.uk/.
Rother is in the process of building a number of additional sites for its parish councils.
Field continues, "Most parish councils in the district haven't previously had their own website, and those that do have, had one created either by a member as a favour or have outsourced the job at significant expense. We have an ongoing responsibility to support our parishes and this is one way in which we can help them."
These sites are created using the sub-site creation module and pose no additional cost, other than the purchase of the domain name, which offers a significant benefit for parish councils. In the past, parish councils have either created inferior sites using open source software that can take weeks to implement, or invested in expensive alternatives, costing, in some cases, thousands of pounds. The sub-site creation tool has a small one-off cost and then allows for an unlimited number of sub-sites to be created. This can save tens of thousands of pounds in a short space of time whilst delivering a fully featured website and Web Content Management system.
Field continues, "Having their own website enables the parish councils to communicate and engage with their local communities. It will also benefit parish councils which are working towards the Quality Council Status - as having a website is a pre-requisite for achieving this."
Robert McCarthy, Managing Director at GOSS, adds, "At GOSS, we work hard with our customers to develop useful and practical tools, which will benefit the business. We identified a need for a quicker and easier sub-site creation process and our developers have created a module which solves this problem. Tried and tested successfully at Rother, it is a tool which we are confident will offer benefits to other customers in both the public and private sectors."
Examples of websites created by Rother DC with the sub-site creation tool
Rother Local Strategic Partnerships website - http://www.rotherlsp.info/
Sussex Training Consortium website - http://www.sussextrainingconsortium.org.uk/
Next Wave website - http://www.next-wave.org.uk/
