There are dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of resources for intranet advice on the Web, and while some of them do deliver helpful advice and articles on the life cycle of planning, building, deploying, and maintaining an intranet, many lack depth and hands-on experience.One of the resources that gets it right, however, is the intranet- and content management-centric Column Two blog on the Step Two Designs site. Step Two Designs is a knowledge management consultancy located in Australia, with a particular focus on intranets. And in addition to the frequently updated Column Two blog mentioned above, it just launched a section on its site titled Start Here: Intranets.

Start Here: Intranets organizes content from Column Two and other sources into eight topics: the role of intranets, understanding staff needs, creating an intranet strategy and road map, intranet redesigns, intranet usability and IA, managing and governing intranets, managing intranet content, and delivering innovative intranets.

There's a lot of good information here, and it will take you some time to get through it all. Even of you don't follow their advice and guidelines to the letter, it's certain to be a good springboard for intranet team discussions.

While on the topic of Step Two, I should also mention that it just published the 2008 edition of its Intranet Innovation Awards. I like the international scope of the awards, and it's always helpful to see examples of best practices to emulate.

From the site:

The Intranet Innovations 2008 report celebrates the winners of the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards, bringing together ideas from across the globe. Winning entries include Fuller Landau (Canada), Syngenta (Switzerland), Swiss Post (Switzerland), Transfield Services (Australia), British Airways (UK), Scottrade (USA), Urbis (Australia), Janssen-Cilag (Australia) and YHA (UK).

You can download a free executive summary from the site and decide whether or not to invest in the full report.