ActionApps is a content management system (CMS) that made it possible for GreenNet to offer low-cost database driven websites which focused on maximising attention to content and minimised the effort needed to get it online. It was GreenNet’s first CMS, developed in 2000 by a group of techies from the APC network, and designed to meet the needs of civil society organisations wanting a dynamic presence on the web. At that time there were few alternatives to long-winded and labour intensive static websites, for all but the richest organisations. But with ActionApps, we found a way to reduce the work and effort that lies between producing content and getting it onto organisations’ websites. It had a transforming affect on the content of those sites. Dormant sites, long since abandoned by visitors, were revived with daily updates, and reliably topical lists of projects and press releases.
Unlike other CMSs before or since, ActionApps has a built-in flexibility which lends itself to extending existing static websites with new dynamic sections for e.g. news or events etc… This meant that there was no requirement for cash-strapped NGOs to go through costly site rebuilds to get the benefits CMS driven content.
As an open source software project, ActionApps has been improved and extended with the development work of each new site project that GreenNet and our sister networks have built. It has now been localised into 13 languages, and supports a raft of elaborate interactive features.
At the User level, there is no specialist software to install. You simply use your web browser to add text, images, urls, whatever content you want, into a web-based form, and click to insert. The content is automatically formatted, organised and indexed according to your house-style rules.
Since 2006 GreenNet Web developers began moving away from ActionApps for new projects, and over to a new open source CMS called Drupal which has (amongst other advantages) a faster development process and a more intuitive interface for end-users involved in site management. We continue to manage and maintain all our legacy ActionApps websites, and to participate in the broader ActionApps development community. And for those web clients who have required site revamps with Drupal, we have successfully implemented large scale data transfers from one system to the other.
Click on the ActionApps tab for a full list of all our ActionApps websites.
