The Problem

Website management and consistency has long been a troublesome issue for organizations that preside over many related websites. 

Some have attempted to decentralize the management of their websites by providing their individual webmasters with relative creative freedom using only a simple set of guidelines to follow.  This often results in websites that barely resemble each other or the original intent of the organization's guidelines at all.

Others have implemented a centralized approach by completely restricting their individual webmasters from managing any part of their websites.  This often results in websites that contain little relevant content since the individual webmasters are not involved.

The Solution

KnowledgeDispatch allows organizations to maintain control over the look and feel of their related websites while still giving the individual webmasters some level of control over the content they provide. 

How? 

It's simple.  We use a pyramid!  In fact, it is a five (5) level pyramid of website building blocks that is best understood from the top down.  Your KnowledgeDispatch server sits at the top of the pyramid.  It has one or more sites underneath it.  Each of those sites has one or more sections underneath them.  Each section contains one or more pages.  Each of the pages contains one or more programs.

The Benefits

- You can manage numerous sites at various URLs on the same KnowledgeDispatch server.  For example, this means http://www.sbcs.com and http://www.knowledgedispatch.com can be controlled by the same KnowledgeDispatch server installation.
 
- User accounts and security groups are created and managed at the server level.  You don't have to maintain a separate database of user accounts for each of your websites.  You can just manage user accounts and security groups on your KnowledgeDispatch server and apply permissions across your sites, sections, pages, and programs where appropriate.

- Security can be applied at each level of the pyramid.  This allows you to configure your sites to be as locked down or as open as you wish.

- Templates exist at the server level, thereby giving you the ability to quickly change the look and feel of many sites at once.  Suppose you want to add a new content block on the home page of each of your websites.  No problem!  Just change the template at the server level and the modification will be automatically propagated down to all of your sites.

- That's not all you get from templates, though!  Templates can also control the actual taxonomy of your sites.  Suppose you decide each of your websites needs a page called "About Us".  Using KnowledgeDispatch, you would add the page to the appropriate template at the server level and, like magic, the page would be instantly added to each of your websites.

- Images can be controlled at each level of the pyramid, thereby giving you more consistency and ease-of-use across your sites.  You might have a logo that you would like to share with all of your websites.  You can make this logo available to all of your websites by simply putting it in the collection of server images at the top level of the pyramid.

- Menus are defined at the server level and assigned to sites, sections, and/or pages.  This means that a change made to a menu automatically appears on all of the sites, sections, and pages where that menu appears.  A simple change made in one place can impact literally hundreds of pages.

- Data categories are managed at each level of the pyramid, thereby giving you the ability to organize data items more efficiently and prevent duplication.  This leads to a cleaner, more concise presentation of information across your websites.

- KnowledgeDispatch can be useful for you regardless of the size of your organization.  If you are part of a large organization that has hundreds of locations and controls hundreds of websites, you might choose to let each location have their own website.  If you are part of a small organization that has only a few departments, you might choose to let each department have their own website.  In either case, KnowledgeDispatch is something you should consider!