In January of 2005, Sonjara Inc. developed a custom content submission system to streamline web-site updates within the USAID public web server framework. The goal of the project was to simplify the content updating process and to empower USAID mission staff to update the content for their own sites. The system manages content for a number of mission sites, each with unique look and feel and site structure. The major constraint on the system was that the USAID public web server only allows for static content. As such, the CST architecture was designed to take a database of content (in the form of Articles, Activity descriptions, and media such as documents and photos) and generate static HTML content from this database for uploading to the web server. This translation from data to HTML is handled for each site by a configurable set of rules that defines where and how content appears. One important aspect of the system is the ability to syndicate content between the managed sites. This allows the ANE Regional web site to automatically be updated when content is added to any of the individual mission sites. Additionally, the tool is able to integrate content from externally managed mission sites via RSS feeds. The tool was implemented in ASP.NET 2.0 using C#, with SQL Server 2005 as the database. The content generation system makes use of XSL as the templating language for generating content. This activity demonstrates Sonjara, Inc’s ability to design and build innovative solutions that directly address client problems. The areas of direct relevance include database design, content management, content syndication and the use of XML and RSS data feeds. Sonjara Inc’s solution provides a solution directly targeted at the customer’s needs for a significantly lower cost than purchasing licenses and configuring an off-the-shelf Content Management System for each of the managed sites. In addition to the software development, Sonjara Inc has also provided comprehensive documentation, personal training of mission staff (via conference call) and ongoing maintenance and support. Sonjara has provided web content maintenance and updating activities for the Asia Bureau & Middle East Bureau. Work performed under this task order includes:
- Maintenance of the intranet and public website presences
- Managing the realignment of content on the public website to conform to the announced split from Asia & Near East to separate Asia and Middle East Bureaus.
- Maintenance support and enhancement of the Content Submission Tool that Sonjara developed for ANE under a previous contract (see below).
In addition, through this contract, Sonjara developed public mission sites for the Regional Development Mission for Asia (RDMA) and Lebanon. Sonjara also has provided technical support to Vietnam, Mongolia, Morocco, and Bangladesh Missions.