client updating

I am wondering the easiest way for to allow a client to update info on their
dreamweaver site that I have created. Basically I would just like them to be
able to use a preformatted word, excel, or other similar file in which to input
info. The information would basicall be in the form of news, calendar events,
etc... I would like them to be able to do it without using dreamweaver but
rather by having an external document which they could just update, save,
upload via ftp. I would also like to have this integrated seamlessly as
opposed to merely linking to a word document.
Any suggestions and help is much appreciated...

thanks in advance

I have done this in the past using a couple of different techniques. The
method used depended on the type of information being published. Most of
my sites use PHP and MySQL.

Method 1:

In this instance the users wanted a way to publish news and events.
These were relatively short and basic text documents with a few images.

I created a database to store the articles. Database fields were things
like, "ArticleNumber", "PublishedDate", "Author", "Subject", "Article",
"Figure1".."Figure4". The article number is a system maintained auto
increment.

In a password protected admin section of the site I created some forms to
allow users to Add, Modify and Delete articles. They could type the
article in their favorite word processor to take advantage of spelling
and grammar checking, then paste the text in the input field. They could
include up t 4 images to be displayed in the document. This was
accomplished by the user putting a "{Image1:left}" tag in the article
text.

When the images were uploaded their names were changed to match the
article (e.g. Articel000023A.jpg = Image1, etc.) Images were also scaled
to be approximately 1/3 of the column width.

When the article was rendered, several search and replace operations were
done. First hard returns in the text were changed to <br> tags. Next
the image tags were replaced with HTML image tags.

On the public portion of the site there was usually some sort of index on
the side with the titles of the newest 4 or 5 articles. with links to
the news section. There was also a new section where all articles were
listed.

I know this is a little sketchy, but I should demonstrate the principal.
There are a lot a variations possible. This works well for news
articles, specials of the week, notices, memos and other simple
documents.

Method 2:

This is actually a variation on the first method. Have the users save
their documents as PDF files. use the same technique as above to create
an admin section, but here instead of uploading text and pictures, just
upload the PDF file. The database is simply used to create an index of
documents.

You can even add sections or categories to the database.

I used this technique for a company to create an internal document
library. They used it to publish various memos, policy and procedure
documents, forms, phone lists, reports and others. They used the
sections and categories to group and organize the documents as well as
control who could see what.

You can actually use this to upload and categorize any kind of documents
or pictures, even word, excel and powerpoint. By using other document
types you may have compatibility issues. Some browsers might not handle
a word document properly or the users security setting may block these
documents since they can contain scripts. This is generally not good for
the public section of a site, but is acceptable for an intranet. Many
companies do this and just require employees to use a particular browser
on the intranet and add the site to the trusted sites list.

Just some ideas.

Have you looked at MMs Contribute?
http://macromedia.com/software/contribute/?promoid=BINP


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Nadia
Team MM Volunteer for Dreamweaver
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"koaodesign" <webforumsuser (AT) macromedia (DOT) com> wrote

I am wondering the easiest way for to allow a client to update info on
their
dreamweaver site that I have created. Basically I would just like them to
be
able to use a preformatted word, excel, or other similar file in which to
input
info. The information would basicall be in the form of news, calendar
events,
etc... I would like them to be able to do it without using dreamweaver but
rather by having an external document which they could just update, save,
upload via ftp. I would also like to have this integrated seamlessly as
opposed to merely linking to a word document.
Any suggestions and help is much appreciated...

thanks in advance