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Hello again,
I have been asked to produce a website that contains some pages that may need small changes at a later date. The end user wants to be able to access these particular pages, then save the changes etc, perhaps with a username and password.
I am a designer more than a coding expert which has left me being unable to answer the question.
I hope i have explained clear enough.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks
Nick.
Couldn't they buy a copy of XWD and update the site as they wanted?
If they use the Registry utility Available to us, it would make a backup copy every time they saved and prevent them from losing anything.
They could also email a copy to you or anyone else if they were worried about losing it.
It sounds easy to me to have them spend $50 and make all the changes they want.
Otherwise, they could only update the specific pages individually. Name them properly and upload each one at a time.
What you're searching for is a Content Management System (CMS) or the little brother, a Weblog system (with different users, password protected, the concept of separation the design and the content of a website).
see our threads about Content Management Systems and Blog systems
Regards,
Remi
Thank you for that Guys.
I had a feeling it might have to be CMS or similar, though i am not sure that giving the customer the key to the door so to speak is the best idea? I guess if they did have a copy of XWD, i would have to stipulate to them that if they mess up what i have designed for them, on their heads be it....
I have offered them the option of paying a small monthly fee, and i would do the updates for them which they seem ok with, but keep mentioning that
"in an emergency!" how can they access the pages.
i have mentioned that they could in fact use Dremweaver or Expression Web or similar to import the relevant .htm page and make subtle changes that way to text perhaps, then save and use an FTP program to upload to web server.
Ultimately of course i would like them to use me for all updates.
I will have a look at some of the suggested cms options.
Many thanks, you guys do a great job on here, especialy for those of us who are more designers than coders.
Kind regards
Nick.
I made a simple little "pseudo-blog" thing with the tips I've found on here.
Essentially, I created a fairly large box as a background, then placed another box a little smaller on top of it, giving it a placeholder scrollable div. with sample content written as straight html, with limited options used.
Then, I created a small bit of site matching css (three tags: h1, h2, and p) and stuck that in a placeholder with the name <head> to get it in the heading code.
When I export this code, that page looks like this:
The <head> css
The HTMLCode:<style type="text/css">
h1 {
font-family: Verdana;
font-size: large;
font-weight: bold;
color: #132c5a;
}
h2 {
font-family: Verdana;
font-size: medium;
font-weight: bold;
color: #616161;
}
p {
font-family: Verdana;
font-size: small;
font-weight: normal;
color: #000000;
padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px;
}
</style>
You can see that the middle section is very easily editable and will live within the confines of the placeholder box with a scroll bar as necessary. Done right, it look ok.Code:<script type="text/javascript">var xr_xr=document.getElementById("xr_xr")</script>
<img class="xr_ap" src="index_htm_files/0.png" alt="" style="left: -1px; top: 28px; width: 955px; height: 671px;"/>
<img class="xr_ap" src="index_htm_files/1.png" alt="" style="left: 250px; top: 208px; width: 657px; height: 486px;"/>
<div class="xr_ap" style="left: 270px; top: 227px; width: 635px; height: 447px;"><div style="overflow: scroll; overflow-x: hidden; height: 100%; width: 100%">
<!-- This is the Area you want to update
h1: Title of Article
h2: date and author
p: paragraph text
-->
<h1>Technology in a Nutshell</h1>
<h2>March 23, 2009 - Scott Lavelle</h2>
<p>To be fair, one has to look at technology as if it were a universe unto itself. There are so many variations of things that can affect any configuration that it is impossible to begin to imagine the length of time it would take to develop a program or Operating System that works with every one of those combinations. They are certainly in the billions.</p>
.
. more data in here
.
are slim, let alone the odds that they were tested in combination with the other obscure items you've chosen for the system</p>
<!--
DO NOT UPDATE PAST THIS POINT
--></div>
</div>
<img class="xr_ap" src="index_htm_files/3.png" alt="" style="left: 272px; top: 179px; width: 342px; height: 35px;"/>
The above code produced this result: www.technicalrs.com/testing123
So, this allows the end-user to edit without having to know much about the code, allows for as much content as they want to put in without breaking the design, and keeps it simple so that there are no databases, wordpresses, joomlas, or whatever needed.
Obviously, this is a very simple example. I've expanded slightly on it where I created a MySQL database that has a number of fields for title, date, paragraph1, paragraph2, etc. Then the html like the above has a bit of php in it to read the fields into the respective html tags. It's pretty straightforward. Then, I cheated a bit and used the coffee cup form creator and had it save the entered data to a mysql table and put that in an XWD placeholder branded to look like the site - could have done this from scratch, but why? It took a little screwing around, but in the end it is similar to the above except that the user needs to know even less about code, since they can just use the site's form to update the page - like a CMS does, but WAY simpler.
This has been proof of concept for me so far, but I know I will be adding it to some upcoming pages for "real".
Hope this helps.
The Nikster,
I seen your post and think you might be interested in this for your question.
FlySpeck
With this program, the end user can edit parts of the web page that you choose.
Hope this helps..
I just don't get it ! My assumption is that 1 you are using
XARA WEB designer But it seems no matter what I do I am not
able to include the ref library to this using placeholders for
html I am very new to WD gone through many tutorials
and can not figure how to put the html in place
thanks
Hello & welcome eek. Perhaps you need to pause for breath ;)
Could you possible word your question in more detail?
Check out this LINK from Xara Online. The simple version is even free.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Nikster