Whether you need a dynamic website, advice on constructing your site’s architecture, or a series of templates so that you can maintain your own site, our web team can provide the solutions that best fit your needs.

What is Dynamic?

Dynamic sites are driven by data. A dynamic site utilizes a database so that content can be reused and displayed in different ways depending on the web page. Dynamic pages are easy to update because they pull their information from a single source. Unsure what this looks like in practice? See our examples below.

Data-Driven (Dynamic) Sites

Preventing Heart Attack and Stroke: A History of Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology

This site is a companion to a forthcoming book on the topic. The database holds a comprehensive repository of articles and studies on the topic, as well as historic archives and footage referenced in the book.

The user doesn’t know what’s happening in the database (the “back-end”), what they do know is that they have access to a large amount of information that is well-organized and easy to browse. View the History of Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology website.

Faculty Database

An example of “reusable content,” the faculty database allows different departments from within the School of Public Health to pull data from a central repository into websites with their own designs and ways of displaying the information. It is also used behind-the-scenes to quickly scan the database by research areas when the media needs a faculty expert and is the source of faculty information for publications such as Advances. The database can store and reuse anything from plain text to pdfs to images.

The Division of Epidemiology and Community Health and the School of Public Health both use the same information source (the faculty database), but display the information in different ways. The difference in the displays shows you how flexible a web page that is data-driven can be.

• View Professor Kristin Anderson’s page on the Epidemiology website
• View Professor Kristin Anderson’s page on the School of Public Health website

Flash XML Engine: Easy Module Creation

Our online modules are developed in Flash. With the XML engine we designed, the amount of time spent on these labor-intensive projects is dramatically decreased, allowing us to deliver your project faster, and provide a greater return on your investment.

Advantages

• Efficiently add to modules as you develop them
• Make global changes quickly
• Manage large amounts of content easily
• Simplify the content creation and editing processes
• Cost effective: decreased development time
• Standardized templates for users to feed content and images

Web Design and Architecture

Building a website can be an overwhelming process. We not only know the latest, coolest technologies, but we can help you create a site that uses the most appropriate tools for your audience. A site with logical architecture that is targeted towards the needs of your users is key to maximizing the site’s impact.

Online Data Collection

Sometimes data repositories exist not to create reusable content for websites, but to create online surveys that collect anonymous aggregate data for reporting. Our programmers developed a robust system that collected learning needs assessments for 13 different kinds of workers for the North Dakota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota Center for Public Health Preparedness.

The “Gateway” System for CEUs

CEUs are an integral part of professional development. Our “Gateway” system tracks users’ progress on our modules and allows them to get CEUs online with certificates. View the PHET modules for an example.