editable regions?

[futureknight]

Here's something I'm not sure of:

Can you define the template so that you can have certain editable regions that the users (non-tech people) can use, but also have the page set up so that I can do whatever I want to whatever part of the page?

If you can, I can't find how.

thanks,

[pageoneresults]

Maybe Macromedia Contribute [macromedia.com]? I believe you are using DWMX, correct?

Macromedia Contribute is the easiest way for individuals and teams to update, create, and publish web content to any HTML website. Contribute allows non-technical users to update web content while maintaining site standards for style, layout, and code.

[sonjay]

In a DW template, any given area is either editable, or it's not. To edit a non-editable area, you have to edit the template file, and let it propagate the change to all its child templates.

However -- you can use SSIs in your non-editable areas and edit those to your heart's content. Just upload the included file. Anyone who has access to the SSIs, and ftp access to your site, can edit the SSI files. But if they're just editing the page itself, as long as they don't mess with the "include" tag, you should be fine.

This works well in conjunction with Contribute -- I can make changes to the main navigation or other "included" parts of the template, and I don't have to worry about telling my Contribute users not to edit anything, then re-sync the entire site, upload the entire site, and then tell the Contribute users they're allowed to edit again.

[limbo]

You could use a library item.

You hand them library file. allow them to update it and save it. Every time they save the file the library item will be subsumed into the page body. This way they cannot confuse their content with any other page element. You can also teach them the very basic properties of markup. So that they will understand paragraphs and headings so you can manipulate the content style with an external css file.

CMS is what you should use for a larger scale project so contributors can do this through their browser without access to Dreamweaver (assuming you were using DW).

[caine]

limbo - spot on. Don't know of any other way that it can be controlled.

question: FutureKnight - is the scale of the project? drawing on what limbo said, is whether to enploy a CMS or do it via DW!

[sonjay]

Library items only function within Dreamweaver, and they write, or re-write, thir contents to every page that uses that library item. If you let users change a library item, they have to have all pages of the site that uses that .lbi freshly synced on their computer, and it will update all of those pages, and then they'll have to upload all of those pages. And meanwhile anyone else who might be editing any of those pages would have be notified to check them in and not do any editing while this user is editing the .lbi file.

And if they muck it up, you've got the entire site to fix.

That would make me very nervous to let users do that.

SSIs would be a better solution, IMO. They're editing one file, period. They're not messing with files that other people might be working on. And if they muck it up, you can fix it by fixing that one file.

[limbo]

And if they muck it up, you've got the entire site to fix.

Yes, but if the library item only adds content to one page...

I know it's not what they are designed to do, there were designed to apply changes over multiple pages, but would allow a contributor access to only their section of the site without 'seeing' the other page elements.

I aggree with SSI mind. A very handy tool indeed.

Ta

Limbo