The web site owner nowadays can update almost all sites even if they have little or no technical knowledge. Find out how...
Once upon a time, the majority of small company web site owners relied upon their web developer to post their site edits to the web. This was somewhat unsatisfactory as site updates tended to languish on the developer's to do list while they carried out more lucrative work.
Eventually, simple web-based editing tools appeared which gave web site owners some varying degrees of control and management of their site. Many were severely limited in what they enabled users to do, others were slow, clunky and not very user-friendly. Into this site editing void appeared applications that gave the user point-and-shoot usability, the power to publish online without having to know the minutiae of HTML coding.
Indeed, now, if you can string a sentence together and click a mouse, there really is nothing – except time and inclination - to prevent most people from updating their own site. The software that is available is very user-friendly and no more complicated than using word processing software or email.
When one of the most popular packages for small to micro-sized companies, Contribute, was under development, Macromedia, spent a record amount of time and money in making the application as usable as possible. The investment paid off, for Macromedia Contribute, now Adobe Contribute, went on to become the undisputed leader in its field.
Since then an array of software and web-based applications have appeared on the market, offering non-techies the chance to effortlessly edit and create pages without having to worry about 'breaking' their web site. The ability to rollback to previous versions means that any web page woes can be instantly removed and an earlier, unsullied version of the page reloaded for the world to see.
Integral to all of these web editing packages is security. Web editing is managed on a privileges basis by whoever is appointed web site administrator. This 'super' user issues, via a control panel, invitations to people the administrator wishes to authorise to edit the site.
Membership of the site's editing team - which in many cases will be the administrator alone – normally has strings attached. For example, it can be made that the administrator alone is allowed to change fonts and type size and have access to all the site's pages. With a larger pool of people, the control panel enables the administrator to limit which pages a particular team member can edit and what they can do, for example, whether they are allowed to upload graphics. Authorised users are issued with individual user names and logins and this determines the scope of their editing powers.
A package like Contribute, for instance, allows the administrator to email encrypted connection keys to users. When received as an email attachment, the recipient opens the attachment with a pre-arranged password. This automatically boots up Contribute on the user's machine and automatically creates the secure connection to the site. Thereafter, they only need load Contribute and click on a Contribute menu command to get into the site and start editing.
Doing the team invites this way means only the administrator need know the site's FTP log in details. Furthermore, access to Contribute is password protected by the user's computer log-in and can be doubly protected by a separate password to launch the software.
Contribute and its ilk retail for around £120 to £150 for one licence, and are aimed at small business and home users – a lot cheaper than splashing out on the heavy-weight pro design package, Dreamweaver.
Cheaper still is free blogging software like blogger.com. What some have done is buy a domain and point it at their blog, thereby creating an entire web site that is editable by authorised users from any internet-enabled computer. Alternatively, a blog could either be incorporated into an existing site to allow a significant portion of a site to be fully editable, or used as a front end with permanent embedded links to existing static pages.
More powerful, and free too, are the myriad Open Source content management systems which offer better features and flexibility for one or more users.
Web-based applications, meanwhile, are generally aimed at larger commercial operations rather than one person and their dug outfits. The big benefit of web-based editing is that there's no need to install and keep software up to date. Users access the application via a log in site and then run the necessary software over a secure internet connection. Offsetting this advantage is the fact that each user is consuming bandwidth all the time they are editing, whereas a PC-based application allows editing to be done offline.
Check out the following:
Open Source (free to use)
TechRepublic - open source content management systems search
OpenCMS - a professional level Open Source Content Management System that's free to download.
Drupal.org - open source content management platform that's currently a finalist in CNET's Webware 100 Awards
Others
Adobe Contribute
Dreamweaver
blogger.com - free blogging tool and hosting
