An architecture for collaboratively assembled moderated information bearing Web sites

As originally conceived, the World-Wide Web was intended for the purpose of sharing information. Many Web sites realise this aim by publishing pages from a data repository which supports browsing and searching. Building such a site is challenging in the first place, but since the information to be published will be spread among the community who wish to share the data, maintenance is an even greater challenge. In this case, the developers must continuously solicit, receive, moderate and integrate new information into the Web site. The additional task of moderation is considerably more time consuming even than the initial Web site construction and requires appropriate tools to expedite the process. This paper describes the prototype of an architecture for constructing Web sites which take part in a cycle of publishing and receiving data, in which the pages also solicit fresh information by the use of forms and E-mail. The architecture facilitates both site construction and maintenance, by allowing the date to be declaratively specified and then generating the data repository, Web pages and moderating program automatically.