Web Sites: Information Repositories or Applications

Web Sites

In this post, the term "web site" is used in the sense of anything that is accessible by typing a URL in the browser. So, in this usage, the term encompasses anything that is accessible via a web browser.

This article makes the contention that whatever is accessible via the browser is either an information repository or an application or a community and expounds on why this can be a useful way of looking at the web.

Information Repositories

Basic Level

The simplest web sites perform the role of information repositories in a very direct way. A company offers information about its products and itself through a web site.

Likewise, there are many organizations that offer up information about themselves and their services through web sites. Again, these are simple, direct information repositories making their content available through the web site.

The Next Level: Content Management

The next level of complexity comes with sites where the amount of content grows routinely. Sites that publish articles or photos or video fall into this category. Also, most sites that provide a business function tend to grow their content. This is a point at which the site outgrows its basic level of an information repository.

At this level, the web site requires a content management system to allow business users to create and manage content. Most forward looking web sites base themselves around content management system because growth is inevitable for successful sites.

The Highest Complexity: Communities

These are web sites that are information repositories with the special feature that their content is contributed by the user community. These sites are popularly known as Web 2.0.

Popular examples are Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, all Blog sites, and so on.

The main challenge for web sites representing communities is the amount of content that is generated. This can be huge if the site is even moderately successful. And there are other challenges in terms of availability of the service.


Applications

The other use of web sites (in the sense of anything accessible via a web browser) is as applications.

At the most basic level (although far from the simplest) is google. Everyone uses it - not as an information repository but as a service.

There are many types and levels here:

E-commerce Sites
These are sites which allow a company to sell products on the internet. There are many of these. The e-commerce sites provide an additional sales channel for companies.

E-commerce sites are a combination of information repository and application. They have to be based on a content management system to manage the product information that needs to be stored. They additionally have to interface to some inventory system to provide price and availability information. Further they need provide a payment interface. Finally, they need to provide order fulfillment services such that whatever has been payed for is shipped to the customer.

User Content: Auctions
Another type of application, which is more demanding than e-commerce sites is the online auction site where products are posted by users and other users bid for and buy the products. The complexity comes from the variability of the data size.

Community Applications
The best examples of these are google docs and google wave. These are pushing the envelope on Web 2.0.

Here, the challenge is responsiveness of the application, managing huge amounts of data, distributing changes in real time.