Lee County Public School System's Technology Initiative

The News Desk articles in the index are generated on demand from the content of the school system's library database. To publish articles in the News Desk, faculty members and others simply enter the article in the database as normal text.

What's the Advantage? For one, faculty members don't have to learn HTML(the language of the web) to create news articles. This allows anybody to start entering news immediately with very little training. Another advantage is the consistent look to all the news items.

How Does it Work? When a user requests a news article, the program reads the article from the library database and merges it with a template file which is then returned to the user's browser. The news is categorized, and each category can have a separate template file allowing each category to take on a look of its own. At this time, there is only one template file available (you need to know HTML to design one). There could, however, be a template file for sporting news, one for current events, one for community news, etc.

In addition, if you know a little about HTML, you can add additional features to your news article. Including Special Effects and graphics!