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Vendors with something to sell like to complicate relatively simple matters — usually through a dazzling display of marketing slight of hand — so that they can hoist their wares upon a pedestal as the savior of all things. Who can forget how the creation of the automatic apple peeler prevented the undoing of millions of years of evolution by saving humankind from accidentally severing their opposable thumbs?

I see a lot similarity in the the e-mail I receive from disheartened would-be intranet developers who have been turned upside down by what they perceive as an unsolvable problem. But the fact of the matter is relatively simple concepts can be clouded by countless external factors. And perhaps the biggest of these concerns is what happens to an intranet after core development has been completed and must be left in the hands of multiple content owners in a non-technical environment. Well, two things can happen: it will flourish or it will fall.

Whether you manage to achieve the former or fall prey to the latter centers around your ability to create a controlled intranet management environment — and it doesn't necessarily require the investment in bloated software packages. There are a number of things you can do in-house to create an environment that allows for the flexibility of daily intranet management while preventing content owners from turning the system into a free-for-all:

1. Hide or secure portions of an intranet's physical content structure
2. Use CSS and templates to enforce document style guidelines
3. Implement a content input form
4. Implement auto-archiving
5. Provide training

Hide or Secure Portions of an Intranet's Physical Content Structure

Content owners don't need to be software engineers. Their role is to provide and maintain an intranet's content so it's not necessary to expose the entire physical structure of the system. After all, there are still those who are uncomfortable navigating the Windows Explorer on their own desktops, so can you imagine the possible problems that can arise when these same people need to maintain thousands of files and folders on a live production intranet server? Files and folders can be moved or deleted by accidental mouse clicks, and novice users can quickly become overwhelmed by high-volume sites where file names don't reflect the actual contents of the file.

The important lesson to be learned here is that the level of structural access should be relative to the technical proficiency of your content owners. And needless to say, they should only have access to their own content and no one else's. So, if you trust enough in your content owners' abilities to handle portions of the physical structure (the only exception is access to scripts and database files that should never be exposed to anyone but the developers themselves), feel free to grant them the necessary access rights. But bear in mind, if you end up spending the majority of the day recovering data from back-up tapes, maybe it's time to close some of the doors.

Use CSS and Templates to Enforce Document Style Guidelines

One of the most annoying problems intranet users are forced to deal with, aside from poor site navigation, is an inconsistency in document design. And the problem is magnified by the number of content owners involved in inputting information, because everyone has their own idea as to what makes a document readable. For this reason, intranet developers and content owners should all agree upon a formal set of document design guidelines.

The importance of document consistency goes hand-in-hand with Web page and navigational consistency. You want your users to feel as though they're on the same site rather than a collection of unrelated sites. Documents that change in layout and style from one document to another — or in some cases, within the same document — is the hallmark of sloppy and unprofessional intranet management.

Since content owners tend to adopt a "that's good enough for now" attitude when they're harried by numerous other tasks and tight schedules, a good way to enforce these style guidelines is to make use of cascading style sheets (a very useful CSS tutorial is offered at W3 Schools) and predefined layout templates. By doing so, content owners are provided with a framework to work within and you'll ensure that all documents end up having the same layout and style.

Page 2: Implement a Content Input Form