Over the last couple of years the number of sites offering advice on intranets has decreased, and many of those that are still notionally in existence have not been updated. Probably the reason for this is that much of the early use of the sites was to identify articles that would enable staff in organisations to make a business case for the introduction of an intranet. The problems have now changed with the widespread deployment of intranets, and the issue now is how to make an intranet more effective. General purpose "Why we started an intranet" articles are now of much less interest, and intranets have moved off the horizon of many of the general business and management journals.
The sites listed below are few in number but generally reasonable in quality. Many of the sites listed in the Content Management section are also often relevant to intranet development
Cluebox
http://www.cluebox.com
This site has been developed by Elton Billings, who not only manages an intranet but an award-winning one at that. As a result the advice he gives in a number of short articles is based on extensive practice experience and considerable insights into user behaviour. Among the topics he covers are Increasing Intranet Usage, Considering an ASP and About Best Practices. There is also a list of links to useful web sites and blogs. Many of Elton's excellent presentations can be downloaded from the site.
Intranet Journal
http://intranetjournal.com/
This site has been well developed over the last year or so, and the news section is very good. There is a discussion list, and this is clearly popular with often a dozen or so contributions a day. A very useful feature of the site is the list of intranet-related books, though many of these are technical books on software development. The events calendar has a world-wide coverage,. Highly recommended
Intranet Benchmarking Forum
http://www.ibforum.co.uk/
The Intranet Benchmarking Forum is a confidential members-only intranet and portal benchmarking and best practice "club" for major UK and global organisations. Founded by Paul Miller in 2002, it is the leading intranet and portal benchmarking group globally and is establishing industry standards for intranet and portal performance. It has two main tiers, IBF 100 for FTSE 100 and equivalent organisations and IBF Global for Global 500 organisations
Intranets: Enterprise Solutions and Strategies
http://www.intranetstoday.com/
This magazine is a relaunch of Intranet Professional, and offers case studies, regular columns and a news service. Martin White, the Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd. is a Contributing Editor. Only recent content is available to non-subscribers
Step Two Designs
http://www.steptwo.com.au/
This site is probably the richest source of intranet-related material world-wide. Much of the content is written by James Robertson, the Managing Director of Step Two Designs, an Associate of Intranet Focus Ltd. New papers and reports are added on a regular basis and the site also provides access to the Content Two blog which is also written by James.
Intranet Review Toolkit
http://www.intranetreviewtoolkit.com
The Intranet Review Toolkit provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of corporate intranets. It contains a substantial set of heuristics, allowing a detailed intranet review to be conducted that focuses on a wide range of functionality, design and strategy. Supported by an IA Institute Progress Grant, the heuristics were developed by James Roberton, Step Two Designs, and are based on widely accepted best practices in intranet and website design, providing a sound quantitative basis for the review.
