User-updatable text and/or image?

[ashtangakasha]

Is there a reasonable way to permit certain users to replace a block of text or an image on a specific page?

I can teach them to use FTP and upload files to pre-defined names, but it would be ideal if they could do the whole thing interactively in a browser...

Thanks in advance,

Allen

[Acorn]

Allen, the only safe way is yo never let them have access to your source design file.
Others have their own approach but I prefer DropBox and the use of shared directories.
You can then embed the text or image using the Embed a Website widget.

Provided the users keep the image size and filename the same or the text file a suitable size, this should be "reasonable".

Acorn

[ashtangakasha]

Yes, they will never touch the XAR file, that's for sure!

I hadn't considered the Embed a Website widget, although it seems to leave me with the same basic challenge:

What I'm considering is a text block in a file called "UserText1" and a JPG of fixed dimensions in a file called "UserFig1".

I could provide the user with a script that would FTP their replacement files to overwrite these two files.
The web server would pick up the JPG automatically, but how can I make it load the new text? Ideally the text would be RTF, but HTML is fine. Or, if need be, the user can do without formatting and just submit a 7-bit ASCII .TXT file.

Is there a way to make a XAR web page dynamically load text whenever the page is served?

Thanks,

Allen

[xtom]

One way to do this is use placeholders with a cms so a user can login and edit text and upload images through a web interface.

[andymack]

We hear this request a lot in this forum and there are various options listed by our members and I am here to add my tuppence worth. I reckon the simplest and most straight-forward way to allow users to add their own content is via an embedded blog. One client in particular has a need to change his weekly food specials on one of my sites. He used to email me the weekly menu and I would edit his page, (using a chalk board and chalk font etc) but then I would have to edit his mobile page also, (I made this site before the new option of responsive design). Anyway, to allow my customer to edit and update BOTH the main and mobile websites at the same time, i created a Blogger blog and set up an initial Food Menu and embedded the blog using the iframe method and built a web page around the menu and sent the menu to back of all the other graphics.
The solution is not the prettiest but it has saved me hours of work per month and my client can now update his menu on both sites and I do not even have to know about it. This gives them the option to add text or graphics of course, whatever they want, so long as they can do it in blogger. This also ensures that the creator will have to log in to edit the document, as requested by the OP.
If you are on a PC reading this, you can see the result here> http://www.bazilpub.com/lunchspecial.htm
If you want to see the same exact result in my mobile version go here> http://www.bazilpub.com/ and you will be redirected to the mobile site and scroll down to "Lunch Specials" and will see the same embedded effect.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Andy,

Indeed it is often a much requested feature from members and one I believe Xara needs to focus on. I've found cms systems tend to complicate what's required here, the delivery of a simple single text.txt. However most cms systems come with a multiple links, unwanted content, menus etc. which for inclusion within an iframe ona Xara site are not what most users require and definitely what most clients can handle.

Probably the best solution within Xara is to use Xtoms XT-CMS. It fit's very snuggly into a Xara generated site. However there is a cost involved. Not a great cost for the basic entry level but a cost that can sometimes be difficult to pass on to a client. Then there's the time you're going to have to spend training the client on whatever cms system you eventually use. Most clients want dynamic content but I've found they don't want to spend any time learning how to make it function.

One other problem with importing a dynamic .txt file is how does the browser resize to include all the .txt content without scroll bars or large empty spaces below the text.

[ashtangakasha]

Thanks to everyone for these suggestions. I've considered CMS embedding, but the goal here is to provide the user with something so simple that he or she can manage it without any significant learning curve. I can provide the user with an FTP script to upload the (hypothetical) Text1.txt and Image1.jpg files at the click of one button. To develop these files, the user can use whatever tools are already in hand, with no learning curve. This way, the constraints on user uploads are trivially simple: no more than about 10kB of text, and the image must fit fairly well into 200x200px.

To further simplify things, this page is dedicated to the user-supplied content, so there are no dynamic positioning requirements or overflow issues.

Ironically, one solution, though useless for SEO, is to teach the user to combine text and graphics, and thereby FTP just a single JPG. The page would already pick that up when it's served, as it does with all JPGs. But another disadvantage of this approach is that the user now has to learn how to merge text and an image into a new image, which defeats our original purpose of zero learning curve.

If we just had a simple mechanism for the page to load the text at run time instead of embedding it, with some RTF-like formatting, then the text and image could be modified separately and the problem would be solved.

I'm no expert in HTML, but I can't help thinking there's already some dead simple affordance for this. Or perhaps some relatively simple enhancement that Xara could provide to make this feasible.

Another mild irony: I attempted to resolve this need with the latest Adobe Muse, which now supports an elaborate secondary-hosted element-based CMS facility for this exact purpose (allow select users to modify select components). But, as with so many of my attempts to use Muse, there was a priceless little "gotcha" -- you can't paste text into the editing window. Go figure.

[Egg Bramhill]

Edit: Please delete

[Egg Bramhill]

I've started a new thread re this subject HERE