Microsites FAQ: All your questions answered

A microsite is an independent, focused web page or small group of pages that are designed to serve a specific purpose or audience. 

No. A subsite or a site section is a part of your main website. For example, you might have a section on your website for your policies (accessibility, cookies, privacy, etc) and they might all be listed on a URL such as www.annertech.com/policies. In this case, the policies section of your website is a “section” or “subsite” of your main site. 

However, if you had lots of websites you might set up a microsite for your policies and let each website link to this independent microsite. This could have a URL like policies.annertech.com. In this example, using a microsite would have the advantage of only needing to update your policies in one place in order for all your sites to be updated.

Microsites are designed to serve a specific purpose or audience. If you have smaller subsidiaries or services that are part of a larger organisation, they may benefit from a microsite, rather than being a section on your main website. If you’re running a special event or if you’re launching a new product then a microsite is a great option.

This depends on your needs. This blog will help you make the right decision.

Here are some examples of how microsites could be used by organisations such as marketing teams, multinationals, sporting bodies, universities, political parties and local councils. 

• Marketing teams
  New products, campaigns and events would all work well with their own microsites. They are built for a specific purpose, and once that purpose has been exhausted, the site can be shut down quickly and easily. It’s also easy to measure a campaign’s success, attract users to the microsite and create a unique audience for the microsite.
• Multinationals
  Large companies can find it challenging to run many websites simultaneously. Using microsites allows each division or branch to have its own unique domain name. The branding of the parent company can be retained while still being customised to suit the needs of the individual divisions or branches. Plus each microsite can be managed individually, with separate logins.
• Sporting bodies
  National sports bodies have numerous counties or provinces, and hundreds of clubs under their banner. Instead of each club in the country having their own individually developed website, microsites would offer each club the freedom of their own look and feel while still following the guidelines set out by the parent body.
• Universities
  Microsites allow faculties, departments and university-affiliated clubs to have their own domain name and manage their own pages, yet retain their individuality.
• Political parties
  The options for political parties are numerous when it comes to microsites. It would, for example, allow public representatives to have their own microsite that contains news of their particular projects, interests or areas in which they operate. The political party could have sites focusing on rallies, events, or campaigns.
• City or county councils
  Councils have various community events that might not have council branding. Or it could need a website for a specific service, such as elections, fostering services or recycling, for example. These events or services may be seasonal, so when the site has run its course, it can be shut down quickly and efficiently.

You could have as many as you need, providing you have the staff to maintain them.

The LocalGov Drupal Microsites Platform was designed for this purpose. It gives you oversight of all of your microsites in one place and simplifies the entire process.

No. You can add as many pages as you'd like.

It’s quite easy to set up a microsite if you are using the LocalGov Drupal Microsite offering. We can take you through the process, help you get set up, and train you to use the platform.

LocalGov Drupal, or LGD, is a CMS built by councils for councils. It was originally created as a way for local governments to offer great websites and digital experiences to their constituents by pooling their resources and saving money. 

Many councils needed to be able to set up microsites, and this was when the Microsites Platform was born. It was developed by the LocalGov Drupal team. 

Like LGD it is built on the open-source Drupal CMS, which means that the code is freely available. 

No. The LGD Microsites Platform is a standalone product and councils are just one audience for it. Other entities such as universities could use the platform to create microsites for their departments and political parties to use it to create websites for their election candidates. These are just two examples – anyone can use the LGD Microsites Platform. 

Like Drupal, the LocalGov Drupal and Microsites platforms are all open source, so the code is free to use. All the functionality is there, it's the cost of the design and the content that needs to be factored in. And then when the microsite is ready to be published there will be hosting and maintenance costs to consider. 

If your organisation has your own platform, you can put as many sites on it as you want at no extra charge, but if you run out of space/bandwidth, then you will need to buy more of that. 

If you need support help, you could utilise the services of an agency such as Annertech, who would charge a monthly fee for supporting it. If you only have a few sites, eight hours a month might be enough. If you have lots of sites, then 16 or 24 might be necessary. But each set-up is different. We have a pricing structure here.

Once the initial set-up is done, subsequent microsites can be set up in a matter of hours, provided all the content is ready. 

 You can host as many sites as you want on all of our platforms. You are only restricted by the amount of disk space for files (images, video, documents, etc) on your plan and the number of visits in aggregate to your sites.

Yes, all updates are taken care of as part of the package price.