Marketing implements the Atlas project, builds great web sites
by Louise Robertson

The Marketing department began the Atlas project about one year ago when developing a strategy for UUNET web sites. The goal was to create web sites that reflect UUNET’s role as a leader in the industry.

In short, great web sites needed to be built and an efficient, quick system developed to implement the sites. "We had no tools to build great web sites," said Henry Ritson, who heads up Global Marketing. "The web sites were fragmented which is okay for five web sites, but not for ten."

During the course of the project, major pieces of software were bought and implemented. Smith Internet Software provided a content management system that comprised the main piece of software for this project, causing some to refer to it as the Smith project. However, the project has also consisted of a lot of hard work, technical knowledge and cooperation. It brought together web masters in 30 countries and employees from all over the company who volunteered to work as a team.

"Now everyone can use the system," said Ritson. This can play a vital role when, for example, one web master moves to a new position. Another web master can more easily take over the old duties.

For the past few weeks, several web sites have begun using the system developed by the Atlas project. (See below for a list of these sites.) The results have streamlined the process of building and publishing web pages.

Ritson said, "It’s easier to make global changes." For example, as the branding policy changes, the web sites need to change too. "We could re-brand everything in 10 minutes [using the system developed by the Atlas project]."

The system developed by the project has also provided a way to make all sites equal in quality, bringing less complex sites up to par with UUNET’s best sites.

"We can open up pages to people who own content but don’t have technical skills. At the same time we can restrict them from other areas," said Ritson. For example, Ellen Mrukowski has recently started producing UUnews, an online newsletter targeting industry analysts, on the UUNET Press and Analyst Center. Now, she can own and update content without having to learn additional web development skills.

The Atlas project is a large, on-going endeavor. It covered many areas of web site development and provided many benefits.

Major Features

• New hosting architecture was developed.
• Redundancy was built into the system making it more robust.
• Mirror sites have been set up around the world.
• The project has provided software for content management, automatic navigation, and image generation.
• New databases were built, including one for news and a human resource database that lets employees use the same system for internal and external human resources purposes.
• Sites are now automated. "We can now create complex web sites with a small amount of code," said Ritson.
• Sites can be created and re-created quickly. "We were able to do the Singapore site in one day and the global site in one week," said Ritson.
• Document management is available. Changes are tracked. Revisions are logged. Also, web masters can revert to any previous version of a web page.
• The system offers easier distribution of material. "Something can be built in one place and reused everywhere," said Ritson.
• The system provides sites with multilingual capabilities. Pages are stored as one document in several languages rather than several different documents. Graphics can be re-drawn in a new language.

The Atlas project has successfully launched a number of web sites. The new WorldCom Global Web site is currently using this system and is discussing using it for more of its web sites. The complete list of web sites currently using the system include the following:

The following sites will be implemented in the near future.

When asked to characterize the system developed by the Atlas project, Ritson suggested, "Think of it as a new media production house that understands the process of creating web pages."