Forum Moderators: open
I want a solution that will let me manage articles, reviews and other content using FTP to push published content to their destinations.
I've done a lot of looking around but really couldn't find a solution that was suitable so I'm considering building something custom but wanted to consult the members here to see if something like this already exists.
Thanks
If you're using FTP, that means that you're likely not using a database, which likely means that you won't have much of an admin interface, which means that you aren't really using a CMS.... did that make ANY sense?
In other words, since generally a CMS resides on the same server as the content it manages, you're looking more for something that runs on the desktop that has site management capabilities. Does that sound right?
I'm looking for something that's web based that would allow me to manage news, reviews, etc... from one centralized location for multiple remotely hosted sites.
The reason for the need for it to be web based is due to the fact that there are several collaborators who need access to adding news, editing information, etc...
I don't think that anything like this exists as I've been searching for a while but if anyone knows of any such thing it would be greatly appreciated.
You would need to convince the sysadmins of all servers involved to accept DB connections from the IP of the originating server. Unless these diverse servers are all dedicated servers with nothing on them but your sites, that's just a show stopper.
Almost no shared host is going to allow a connection to their DB from an IP that they do not also control, and you should not be hosting with the ones that do allow such things anyway.
Now if you go and put all the sites on the same server (why not?), then you've got a different situation. Drupal is designed to handle multiple sites from teh get-go with that setup and Joomla has an add-on that will do it.
If you're stuck with multiple hosts, how about this
- get Roboform to manage your passwords and simplify the login process.
- set up each site to notify you when someone makes a submission.
At least that way you know when you need to jump in as editor and you have a relatively painless admin login.
Anyways I'm pretty sure a solution doesn't exist as there are several features that I want that would be unique to how I run my business.
I will likely have something developed that will suite my needs.
Thanks for everyones input!
How will you:
-know the difference between articles submitted for review and those that are published? FTP first to a "staging" area outside of web root and have the admin interface transfer to the public space?
- update your navigation? Edit the template directly (i.e. not automated)?
- handle authentication? Anonymous FTP to the staging area for contributors I suppose?
It's been so long since I've built anything without a database, it's hard for me to even think about how to approach a CMS without one.
>> -know the difference between articles submitted for review and those that are published? FTP first to a "staging" area outside of web root and have the admin interface transfer to the public space?
The whole focus here would be to build a centralized management system. Therefore any and all articles whether they be submitted for review or already published will be tracked from within this centralized system. Articles submitted for review will just be articles that haven't been published to the production. Essentially the staging will be the centralized management repository.
>> - update your navigation? Edit the template directly (i.e. not automated)?
If a template is updated in the centralized system the update would simply require a push of all files to their remote host that are dependent on this template.
>> - handle authentication? Anonymous FTP to the staging area for contributors I suppose?
Contributors will login to the system as regular users where they will be able to add content, etc... Any content added based on the user permissions may need to go though the approval process (ie. review > editing > promote to live). There will be no need for a contributor to FTP anywhere.
>> It's been so long since I've built anything without a database, it's hard for me to even think about how to approach a CMS without one.
I used to have a centralized management system for this sort of thing we were then using RPC to promote updates to live sites. The problem with this approach for us was that we'd get a site up and live with a virtual hosting account and then find that a configuration setting that would require RPC to function properly in the way we needed wasn't in place. Getting the system admin to make the necessary changes was a pain... Hence the idea behind a project that is independent of the need for reliance on the actual configuration of the hosting environment sites are hosted on in our case.
