Background

A site specifically designed as a virtual community for leaders in the health community. The website required group facilitation of online applications to allow health professionals to collaborate. Health Leaders Network also required a level of security integrated into the website to and discussion forum.

Challenges and Opportunities

The first challenge was to implement a discussion forum. Furthermore this system needed to provide a security model that would provide for all secure sections.

This project was a good opportunity for me to experiment with XML and XSL. I wanted to fully understand how to use XML to deliver online content online.

Options

There are several discussion group web enabled applications. The other alternative was to build a discussion board using server side script.

Solution

After careful consideration I decided upon a web enabled application called web board. It ended up being a fairly simple decision because web board had an open architecture.

The problem with an XML and XSL solution is that no other browser except Internet Explorer 5.5+ understands either XML or XSL. So the transformation had to be performed before it got to the browser.

Benefits

Web board had a fully functional administration system and several features that would be expensive to build.

An XML methodology meant that end users could update content in XML files without worry about formatting.

I believe that a reliable browser detection system would be able to cut the download time by 33% after the first page.