Multi-user Websites
I think every company should have a multiple user website. I’m building a site right now for approximately 100 users and i’ve put a bunch of thought into just how to do it effectively. I think multiple user sites can be a great way for a team to collaborate and that every company should have one. For this project I’ve set up Google Apps into the admin pages to share documents (powerpoint, files, images, spreadsheets, word docs, contracts etc) a mobile phone interface and a Twitter like communications page where as a group anyone can leave messages and information to everyone or anyone within the group. Up until now, every other project I’ve built, has relied primarily on one user or myself to maintain them. I don’t think this will be the case for very much longer.
Security of the documents in this case is not that high of a priority considering that the information shared from this group of users is not medical or legal info, but rather information and market analysis. About six months ago i began running a couple WordPress multi-user sites to test them out and they have worked great. I even let one run up to about 3000 splogs (spam logs… ie fake robotic users go in and create accounts that often link to world of warcraft crap, porn and the like) just to see the server and mysql responses. Don’t worry, I had the urls blocked from search engines so i’m not to blame when you land on that template link farm page which are just pages filled with advertising and links to other sites. I’ve kinda learned what works and what doesn’t for stopping the spam and creating permanent and secure multi-user websites.