Basic site with editable text area

[glowkat]

Hi all,

I'm still in a bit of a novice with web design and am comfortable with html, css and I use Dreamweaver, however I freely admit that I am much more of a 'designer' and javascript etc goes right over my head.

I'm building a very basic 6 page website for a friend who would like to be able to edit the text on one of the pages. I thought this would be pretty simple to set up but I'm having trouble... I tried to install TinyMCE but I got lost at the javascript.

Can anyone recommend something simple for me to install that will provide the site owner with access to change the text on one page only?

Many thanks in advance!

[ergophobe]

TinyMCE is a remarkably huge app for Javascript. There are some others like Spaw, FCKedit, and more. Yahoo YUI project also has one that might be a good way to go and they have pretty good install/integration instructions in general for the YUI components.

If you search on Rich Text Editor you'll find a bunch more, but maybe check out the Yahoo one first, then Spaw is second simplest. And then there's the option just hosting the thing on worpdress.com on your own domain and be done with it.

[glowkat]

Thanks Ergophobe... I'll check those recommendations out now.

Much appreciated!

[Mr Bo Jangles]

Have a look at Flyspeck

[M_B_Walker]

Build it in WordPress, just turn off the blogging features. And your friend can go into WordPress Admin and change any page as simply as just clicking on "Edit Page" and making the changes there.

[g1smd]

Build a static site that uses an include file just for the part that needs to be editable. Make sure that file is loaded into a separate folder.

Set up a new FTP user for that one folder, and simply have the user edit the text file offline and then upload it by FTP to that special folder.

By using the separate folder, there's no danger of anyone accidentally overwriting the rest of the site.

You might need to teach the user what heading and paragraph tags are, and a few other things, but this shouldn't be beyond them.

[ergophobe]

Hey g1 - I see you're a member of the 10K club. That's a lot of posts (a lot of them very good too, I might add). Congratulations. I wonder how many words that is.

Anyway, I've done a slightly upgraded version from what you describe that has worked well for a small organization for several years now.

If you're willing to go as far as dealing with user authentication, you can create a login and simple admin interface. If someone has edit rights, s/he can click a link and get an edit screen, which is nothing but a text area. The 'editor' just pastes whatever s/he wants in there and it saves it as a file that gets included.

It is dead simple and way fast. It can be reasonably secure with a few input checks. And it integrates well with the more custom functionality of the site (reservation system and things like that).

I haven't bothered to integrate TinyMCE, YUI editor or anything and nobody has ever asked for it, but I don't think it would be that hard (especially YUI).