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As someone who literally has no time to learn the program they really want to Dreamweaver, this has been a huge success for me.
Any input would be appreciated.
You can also establish templates that your clients can use to create new pages. Of course, nothing can force them to be kind to the site's Information Architecture ;)
Contribute is a slow, clunky editor -- but then again, it's designed for those totally ignorant of HTML and has many safeguards built in, including a programmable number of roll-backs.
The two secretaries I set up with it are delighted, and their boss's website gets updated a lot faster than when I had to be in the loop. And a friend of mine did a university site and trained 20 department members to use Contribute. And he's now free of the niggling details.
I'm liking it for making clients more self-sufficient, but definitely will NOT be using it for my own editing purposes.
[edited by: tedster at 7:47 am (utc) on Oct. 27, 2003]
Can the clients set up and add new pages with a set layout and format and photos included? That's really the important part.
To expand a bit more, you can tell the program to be hands off images or allow images to be changed. You can also set up different team members with different privileges and issue each one a "key" that is appropriate for their abilities or reponsibilities.
It could be better, but it does pretty nicely as it is, for what it is.
Marsha- I know nothing about DW except that's what my webmaster used for my sites and they look great. Contribute is to be used for changes made by html ingnorant people like myself. You can't have both open at the same time due to ftp session controls in place on most hosts unless of course you have your own server. It is very simple to use and even a dummy like me would have to try and screw it up. As the administrator you can determine which areas the dummies can work on. I don't have time to learn DW which is what I really want to do.
Contribute is a winner! After lurking most of the time for the last 6 months, due to the incredible knowledge here on WebmasterWorld, I have 75+ sites in first 2 pages of all major search engines. Thanks to everyone.
As I understand it, it does need to be used in conjunction with DW. The features I saw are attractive enough that when the right project comes along, I'll probably get DW just to get Contribute functionality.
Everyone I've spoken to assures me that the slow speed of v1 was one of the major things addressed in the update.
Have to join the opposition here. There was a thread in the backroom a few months ago about how unworkably slow Contribute is once you get above one, maximum two users.
The DW/Contribute check in/check out, combined with the versioning system Contribute uses, creates a large number of system files for each transaction - each check out creates, if I remember correctly, six files. If you then multiply that by the number of files involved in a 'dependent files' check in or out, then you're at a snails pace, and I'm on a fast line.
I really wanted it to work - the spec was exactly what I wanted - but it didn't, and others agreed pretty much unanimously. Just too, too slow.
Speed isn't an issue, it's so a client can add one or two pages a month and make changes to one page without having to rely on me. I'd just like to know if adding is possible - and if we'd both need to have DW or if they could add with using an online editor like some other CMS do.
They are only single users so speed of operation is not an issue.
