Bioland is a Drupal based application that has been developed by the Secretariat of Convention on Biological Diversity. Following are its key features \
- National CHM within the CHM network – Each national CHM website established with the Bioland tool has a URL within the CHM network domain (https://XY.chm-cbd.net, where XY is a 2-letter ISO country code). Alternatively, a Party may provide a custom domain.
- Freely centrally hosted –A Party using the Bioland tool does not need to pay any web hosting cost for its national CHM website.
- Secure – All national CHM websites established with the Bioland tool are secured through a web certificate (supporting the use of the HTTPS protocol).
- Maintained by the CBD Secretariat – The CBD Secretariat will provide the technical support to maintain the Bioland tool.
- Interconnected to the central CHM – Official national content available on the central CHM platform (e.g. National targets, NBSAPs, National Reports, etc.) is automatically transferred to a national CHM website established with the Bioland tool. Parties do not have to enter the same information twice.
- Interconnected with the CBD website - relevant content from CBD website such as notifications, statements, and events published on the CBD website are also pushed towards Bioland tool to keep the home page updated.
- National content managed by Party, including publishing workflows – Each national CHM website established with the Bioland tool will have at least one National Content Manager designated by the CHM National Focal Point. The National Content Manager is responsible for deciding what can be published on the national CHM. They can be assisted by one or more National Content Contributors who are limited to drafting content.
- CHM-Focused Content Types and workflows - Bioland tool supports customized data collection and presentation for Events, News, Projects, Documents, Ecosystems, Related Websites and other information types.
- Web statistics – Each national CHM website established with the Bioland tool will have statistical information about how its content is used.
- Multilingual – A Party can decide in which language(s) its national CHM website should be established.
- Customizable – A Party can customize some aspects of its national CHM website, for example – its menus, content, and visual appearance. However, advanced customization requests may require a feasibility study and additional resources.
- Interoperable – The content of a national CHM website built with the Bioland tool can be made interoperable through a public application programming interface (API). This API can then be used by external web application to extract content from the national CHM website.
- Open Source – The Bioland tool is built using available open-source technologies and software.
