user editable text - advise please

[Lexje]

Hi everyone,

I realize this has been discussed in several threads around this forum.
I'm just searching for a quick answer (which I didn't find)

I'd like to set up a site for a possible customer.
The predominant question is to do it in a way that:
- site has photo gallery (would use simpleviewer / porta for this)
- the user can change modify the photo's
- site needs to have at least 1 text area linked to a photo or page
- end user needs to have capability to modify text

So it would all boil down to creating a (scrollable) text area, AND how to allow the end-user to (easily) modify text snippets.
Do we need a database to achieve this?

Thanks for your precious advise!

Erwin

[steve.ledger]

Moved from > Talk Graphics > Xtreme and Xtreme Pro >
to > Talk Web > Web Designer / Xtreme >

[steve.ledger]

I'm just searching for a quick answer (which I didn't find)

Sorry, a quick answer doesn't really exist for this question.
There are many ways to skin this cat.
One of which is to use Google Docs or Blogger in an iframe like this:

► Google Docs and Blogger in an Xtreme page

Your customer simply updates the google doc or blogger blog for the changes to instantly appear in the Xtreme made site.

Note that this system is not 100% search engine friendly however.

[slavelle]

Another option would be something like either www.cushycms.com or http://surrealcms.com/ might work for your purposes of replaceable text. Basically, they let you add tags to certain parts of the site and those areas become editable. Take a look and give them a try to see if they work for you.

You will still probably need to do an HTML placeholder that scrolls either as a scrollable div or iframe as sledger mentions above to deal with the fact that they might put in more text than you originally designed for, which Xtreme is not really made to accommodate.

Does that help?

[Lexje]

Steve, Scott, thanks for your replies.
Sure helps to get on the way :-)

Will post back if and when I have the result!

Erwin

[subrosa]

I have been using surrealcms on a couple of sites and the problem I run into is that they don't like any other charset than utf-8, which is not the default for XX5. I've been trying to incorporate Pulse Content Manager and I think it would be very good for this type of thing, the problem I'm encountering is how to work in the PHP file includes, they don't seem to work with the placeholder mechanism. I'll keep trying and let you know what happens.

[steve.ledger]

People just make things too hard for themsleves.
Yeh sure you can use CMS type scripts and add placeholders etc.
But in my expereince, using any CMS for clients websites when they ask for a site which they can update when required always results in more support calls than desirable and finally they throw their hands in the air and ask you to update it anyway.
Moral of the story? Offer to update their sites at a fair rate to begin with.

[ChrisBro]

Moral of the story? Offer to update their sites at a fair rate to begin with.

AMEN!

Ha ha ha ha on a serious note Site updates account for around 60% of my day to day business and provide me with a very secure income month after month, I always try an discourage a client from updating sites themselves, as Sledger quite rightly says it generally ends in wasted time of my side putting right what they do wrong

Chris