GKP Web Portal

Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) is the world’s first multi-stakeholder network promoting innovation and advancement in Knowledge for Development (K4D) and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D).

GKP operates globally as well as in 8 regions: Africa, Central and Eastern Europe; East Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Middle East and North Africa; Oceania and South Asia. GKP members demonstrate ideas through projects on the ground; and they influence policy at a global level.

After an exhaustive search for a content management system (CMS) that would meet their needs, GKP’s web publishing tool of choice was Alcassoft’s SOPHIA cms.

The Enterprise Edition of SOPHIA cms allows for an unlimited number of websites to be independently managed under one license. This fits perfectly with their requirements, which include:

  • Independent management of multiple websites
    • GKP’s main site
    • Regional sites, for each of the seven GKP regions mentioned above
    • Event-specific sites
  • Easy update of content across all websites

The SOPHIA Enterprise Edition allows for multiple types of content contributors, including writers, editors, website managers and administrators. Access rights of these content contributors can be set by the administrator to allow for complete control of updating of content for specified websites.

Additional Customisation of SOPHIA cms and Integration with GKPnet

Each regional website under the GKP umbrella shares its content with the GKP main site – the site gets seamlessly populated with content from all regional websites by the collection and collating of specific content.

The GKP portal (main and regional sites) also benefit from shared content from GKPnet, an external system which serves as the organisation’s virtual communication and collaborative tool.

Further integration of the web portal, powered by SOPHIA cms which is built in ColdFusion, with Java-based GKPnet includes: integration of the user database, and single sign-on. Access to the GKP websites is granted by CAS authentication, while access rights are controlled by Alcassoft’s Authoriser system. With the access rights and policies in place, user access rights are restricted based on their specified roles, i.e. web admin, content editor, content contributor, etc.