Learn about advantages of using the MIRCdocument schema for creating documents to share over the Internet.
Understand different ways to make an existing web site MIRC compatible.

An advantage of having a web site with documents conforming to the MIRCdocument schema is that the content can be easily indexed and shared over the Internet. Different approaches are available to make the content of an existing web site accessible through the MIRC community. These options include: 1) creation of an "index card" for each document, 2) rebuilding the documents as MIRCdocuments, and 3) development of a software layer necessary to communicate with a query service for teaching file systems based on a database. Advantages and disadvantages of these different approaches are discussed in view of our experience in making the content of an existing web site MIRC compatible. In our case we used a combination of approaches. We preferred index cards for PowerPoint presentations and for complex HTML documents, and we favored rebuilding the documents as MIRCdocuments for pages generated from a database.