What the site does now.

The primary focus of this web site is a suite of online tools targeting the information needs of people managing prairies.

Data Management Tools

• Plants database — a collection of over 10,000 species, with botanical information, automated links to Google searches for more information and images, and automated mapping of reported locations in data submitted to Remnant Prairies
• Prairie Assessment tools — that enable individual prairies to measure the ecological stature of their lands through simple species inventory tracking
• Locations tools — Geographical Information System (GIS) functions created using the Google Maps API — to mark regions, lines, and markers on satellite maps of lands, and integrated with the FQA tool (actually, a subset of “real” GIS tools that we’re happy to describe as “GIS-Lite”)

Collaboration Tools

The engineering behind this web site also includes a number of tools for collaborative communication:

• Organization database — to track other worthy efforts
• Groups — robust member-accessible focus for discussion, data sharing, etc
• Forums — threaded discussion of issues
• FAQs — Frequently Asked Questions to summarize topics succinctly
• Events — calendar-based activities
• Topics — editable content via web forms
• Documents — upload/download files
• Images — image gallery tools

All activities at this site are controlled by a role-based permissions system. Regular members can view content and contribute to Forum discussions and post comments, while administrative actions can be performed by users with more advanced “superpowers”.

The site also relies on judicious use of email messages to notify users of new content/postings/etc.

Created: October 18, 2008 16:58
Last updated: May 26, 2019 17:03

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