Comments on PALA workshop:Low-Cost Techniques for Creating an Interactive Web Site

This is very interesting topic to me. I remember how much time and effort were spent when I implemented Interactive Web Site at school in order get the Web Server (Linux Platform like Apache server)and MySQL server setting up. In this presentation, John Houser from Palinet introduced a hosting service only cost $75 / year. It will host web server and all SQL databases. It is a standard Linux hosting called Siteground. He also introduced the following tools

• Drupal: Content Management System (CMS).I heard about this before and was stuck on the setting up server.It is a free and open source modular content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP. A CMS is a tool used by Web administrators to automatically track online visitors and prepare customized content for consumption, usually as HTML-based Web pages. Drupal, like many modern CMSs, allows the system administrator to customize the content and display of the Web site with little or no programming.
• Weather widget from weatherforyou.com
• Bloglines feed from clips.It is a selection service. It creates a feed from clippings of stories taken from other news or blog feeds. It can replace a traditional clippings file
• Wordpress blogs.Wordpress is a Open source blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. It can be used as a service or run on your own server
• MediaWiki. As we well known, Wikis are social software. Wiki forms a space for both collaboration and self-publishing. Many Wikis support blogging, discussion forums, and other structured content. MediaWiki has been used widely. It is Open source with lots of extensions to add functionality. It is same software and interface as Wikipedia.Wiki tuned to support public contributions to content. Pages are editable via the Web. Content stored in database. Wiki is good for maintaining information that changes frequently. It is also good for preservation of ephemeral data.
• Google Custom Search Engine.
  You can create a search engine tailored to your use
  • Include one website, multiple websites, or specific webpages
  • Host the search box and results on your own website
  • Customize the colors and branding to match your existing webpages
Since we can create custom search for a particular subject area and put it on our Web site. This must be a perfect tool for creating subject pathfinder.