An Intranet is a website of sorts that is available for access by those within a company or organization. It appears like a regular website, but instead of being available to any random visitor on the World Wide Web, instead, it is only available to those that have access to the server. In other words, it’s a secluded site that holds all the information that a company would want to put up there so that it is easily accessible to different members of the corporate community.
To build an Intranet, you’ll need three things. The first is a local area network (LAN). Without a network of computers, the Intranet won’t be in existence. The next thing you need is a server. Since the Intranet is a website, it needs a place to stay. And, since people are going to be accessing it, the Intranet needs power. Therefore, a server is necessary. Finally, the computers will need to have a web browser installed. The Intranet is a website. Without a web browser–whether it is Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari or any other–people will not be able to access the Intranet.
The first step in creating your Intranet is to have a successful plan. Since an Intranet is going to connect multiple different departments within a single organization, you want there to be a solid plan in place to ensure that the organization is good. Therefore, determine the needs of the company and then plan accordingly. Plot it out in a similar fashion to how you’d plan out a website. Where will each link lead? What are the sub-pages going to be? The more planning you do, the easier it’ll be to create the Intranet.
Determine whether you want to use Apache or Internet Information Server. These are server technologies that allow for them to run properly. They are examples of web servers. Without one, your website won’t be able to exist. With the choice of server installed, the next step is to create the individual pages of the Intranet.
The most important page is the index.html. The same as any Internet website, the index.html is the homepage of sorts. When the browser loads, the page it’ll load first, unless otherwise specified, is the index page. While the domain name might say TopBits.com, it actually is loading TopBits.com/index.html. Therefore, when creating your Intranet, it is important that the index.html page is functioning.
Create each page of the Intranet. For a simple company one, it might include a page for each department and a forum of sorts where staff members can discuss different developments. On the index page, create a directory that links to each of these inner pages so that staff can access the different pages as needed.
Upload the pages to the web server. Once they are there and the server is functioning properly, provide the Intranet access page to the staff members so they can use it. For ideas on what types of pages to add to an Intranet, read How to Setup and Intranet.
