What is Website Toolkit

Website Toolkit is:

Free: Licensed under the GNU General Public License, the Website-Toolkit is without a license fee, and may be customized as you wish.

Supported: Over the next 4 years, UNEP will provide free technical support and build capacity of all GEF IW projects using the Website-Toolkit.

Powerful and Flexible: It is packed with many useful features (e.g newletter, WISIWG, instant messenger) and has over 200 add-on products (e.g. GIS tools, photo album, WIKI).

Easy to Use: Developed by usability experts who have made its operation easy and attractive for content managers to add, update, and maintain content.

Easy to Install: Install the Website-Toolkit with a click-and-run installer, and have a content management system running on your computer in just a few minutes.

International: The interface has more than 50 language translations, and tools for managing multilingual content.

It is Stable: Built using Plone, it is well documented and has a large international community of developers and users including NASA, Brazilian Parliament, Lufthansa, Government of Hawaii, CBS and many others.

Why IW:LEARN Developed Website Toolkit?

What is IW Network?

UNEP manages an Information Discovery Mechanism that connects reliable and authoritarive information systems (such as GEO Data Portal, AIEN, GEMS-STAT, CGIAR etc) using the Internet. This mechanism represents a global partnership of collaborating institutions.

IW:LEARN utilizes the UNEP Discovery Mechanism to find and channel reliable information and data to and from the projects.

GEF International Waters Projects: By applying common standards and protocols for information exchange, project websites linked to IW:LEARN become a virtual Network and collectively utilize the discovery mechanism to widely disseminate project outputs while at the same time accessing valuable quality assured resources made available.

International Waters Network is an extension of the discovery tool that includes GEF IW Projects which are linked to the IW:LEARN. The resulting architecture will provide access to high quality information and data and also serve to disseminate project outputs to broader community of stakeholder.

Why should your project use the Toolkit?

IW:LEARN conducted an "Information and Communication Technology Needs survey 2004 - 2005" between November 2004 and February 2005.

One of the most significant need of the projects is to enable the sharing of information among projects' and sub-projects' websites, and provide tools for interaction between project and subproject coordinators.

Survey outcome also indicated following barries to effective management of project websites:

• Decentralized posting of information by stakeholders.
  
• Improved tools for interaction between project and subproject coordinators.
• Ability for non-technical staff to update and maintain project websites.
  

By joining IW Network you and your project will be able to exchange and share information via common standards and protocols with other water projects, stakeholders, agencies in your country, region and across regions.