Allowing customers to edit their web pages safely... how?

[jezzer300]

Hi there,

Do you actually let your customers modify any of the html / php pages on your websites? (mines all php due to tracking)

Do you restrict access / hide code / protect certain areas from modification?

I was planning on allowing access to non critical pages in a sub-directory then using the php copy command to move allowed pages to the main directory (which thay will have no access to).

But when I start to think about dreamweaver templates and all the like, what a mess they could make of things, especially if editing without dreamweaver, ie. frontpage!

So, how do you normally go about allowing customers to make minor changes themselves, i.e. basic text content.... or don't you...

I had another idea of allowing editing in a familiar program like frontpage and automatically merging the body only into the main template... sounds like i'd be asking for trouble there. (I'm not ever going to consider frames, by the way!). The other idea was to allow modification of html text areas via the website, but that's another package to write....

Anyhow - what's the norm here, what do you do?!

Thanks.

[pmkpmk]

This kind of request from a customer typically calls for a Content Management System to be installed. There are a few open source projects like Typo3 or Mambo (to name the most prominent ones) out there, which have proven their stability in thousands of installations.

In a CMS, you can usually fine-tune the different rights of users. You can give your customers the right to edit content only, or edit the design as well, and even let them edit the HTML templates - depending on the skill of the end users.

[jezzer300]

Thanks.

[henry0]

You do not want your clients to learn HTML
And then doing a full scrambled site!

I would forget about items such as Mambo etc...

And only offer a CMS that will be limited to a snippets editor letting you and only you decide on editable sections and within sections which part will be set to edit text and img or only img or only text

If you wish I will point you to an earlier post where I made a quick tutorial on including such an editor

Regards

[jezzer300]

Yes, please do.

I had a look at the snippets program to allow certain parts of the document to be editable, which allows basic html etc, it's a good idea. I installed mambo, a great product, but it's not what I want.

I will probably write my own editor so I can stop them messing up the pages etc.

I'll allow them to edit very basic text, in a simple text box for specific web pages. And I'll have to add some kind of heading markup, linking and images also.

I'm still open to other options and any bits of helpful code. Beacuse of the non-existant budget at the moment I'm only looking at open source!

Cheers.

[henry0]

Here you go [webmasterworld.com]

The mini tutorial is located by page bottom

Plus if you go to the main site you will find some faqs and an active forum about using it.

Henry

[jezzer300]

Thanks Henry. Spaw is exactally what I wanted, nice and quick.