FAO Forestry Web site
The FAO Forestry Web site provides literally thousands of pages of information, access to all of FAO¿s forest-related databases, detailed country profiles and links to documents on all aspects of forestry. Recent additions include new sites on forest fire, national forest programmes and forest reproductive material, among others. Pages are available in English, French and Spanish, and increasingly also in Arabic and Chinese. The site includes pages for technical specialists as well as the general public. Some 2 000 to 3 000 visitors browse the site each day.
The site is gradually being transformed to adhere to a common design which makes the site much easier to navigate. The site is maintained using an innovative, custom-designed content management system, the Forestry Information System (FORIS), which links subject pages with FAO¿s forest-related databases for the generation of continuously updated information. Specific subject pages are created and maintained directly by FAO forestry officers.
In addition to providing information on all of FAO¿s forestry programmes, the site provides links to other FAO cross-disciplinary programmes, to major international forestry events and to other forest-related processes and organizations, such as the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) and the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF). The FORIS system also hosts the Web site of the CPF, for which the content is maintained by the UNFF secretariat in New York.