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Free frontpage templates
The days of open-ended budgets for Web site development are long gone. Today, thanks to Macromedia Contribute 2, developers can offer their clients an easy, independent, and low-cost way to update the content of their sites.
Contribute, which retails for only $99, puts a friendly, word-processor–style face on HTML editing. It lets designers give their clients the ability to add and edit pages, locking down overall designs and structures so clients can't do significant damage to sites. For more information about Contribute's feature set, see the First Looks reviews "Take Back Your Web Site with Macromedia Contribute" and "Macromedia Contributes Even More".
Contribute isn't suited for all applications, however. For example, Contribute is designed to edit static HMTL, not data-driven content. Although Contribute can add text, images, and Flash movies to pages built with server-side code, it can't interact with databases. So if your client needs to edit data-driven content, you'll need another solution. Furthermore, you shouldn't deploy Contribute without considering how best to design (or retool) a site that will be edited by end users. Here are some tips that will help you get the most out of Contribute.
Restricting access is the key to controlling how Contribute users interact with their sites. Contribute's administration features let you place reasonable limits on end users to prevent them from making costly mistakes. As a general rule, for example, a Web site should employ a folder structure that mimics the departmental structure of the company. With Contribute, you can then create unique permission groups to allow each department access to only those files for which it has organizational responsibility.
When you grant editing privileges for a particular folder, Contribute automatically extends those privileges to subfolders. You should therefore consider moving site-wide assets, such as navigational elements or externally stored scripts, to a separate folder at the root of a site. This is an easy way to protect them from accidental changes.
You should also place files and folders where Contribute expects to find them. For example, Contribute typically stores pictures in an Images subfolder located within the folder that contains the editable page. If you don't create this folder structure, Contribute will do it automatically whenever an end user inserts a picture into a Web page from his local hard drive. By anticipating Contribute's requirements, you can avoid cleaning up duplicate files and folders.
Contribute works with sites created with any HTML editor, including Adobe GoLive and Microsoft FrontPage. But developers using Macromedia's Dreamweaver can create page templates with surprising levels of granularity. On the most basic level, you can designate which areas of a page will be locked and which will be editable. As the designer, you must find the right balance between flexibility and structure. A single, free-form, editable region is an invitation to chaos. But too many editable regions can handcuff end users with an old-fashioned forms-based approach to content editing. A better idea is to create a number of logical, editable regions based on function, such as headline, body copy, or product specifications. If you identify each region with a self-explanatory label, you can help users add content correctly, because your labels appear whenever Contribute users switch into edit mode.
Templates work synergistically with Contribute's permission settings. For example, if you choose to disable a user's ability to edit tables, be sure to designate the rows of a table as a repeating region in the template. This lets a user expand or contract the table as necessary, but prevents him from modifying the formatting.
In the same spirit, don't use the administration controls to disable an end user's ability to apply fonts and point sizes. Instead, consider disabling HTML styles and requiring users to apply text formatting using only your Cascading Style Sheets. You can further protect sensitive areas of your design by designating only the text between tags as an editable region in a template. This lets users edit the words, but makes it impossible for them to override your carefully constructed styles.
As you build your templates, remember that Contribute users typically aren't familiar with the idiosyncrasies of HTML code. So be sure to build pages that look the same in both browse and edit mode. That may mean using spacer images to prevent a table from collapsing or using nested tables instead of DIV tags.
By planning a site using the power of Dreamweaver templates, the flexibility offered by Contribute's administration options, and the logical organization of files and folders, you can empower your clients and protect the integrity of your designs.
Productivity Tips
Online Extra
As a Web developer, you will use Macromedia Contribute in ways your clients won't. Here are a few tips to make you more productive.
You can manage a Contribute Web site from within Macromedia Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver MX 6.1 includes the same administration options as Contribute 1.0. Dreamweaver MX 2004 launches the administration panel from within the copy of Contribute you have installed on your system, ensuring that you are using the most up-to-date tools.
If you access a site using both Dreamweaver and Contribute, identify yourself with different user names in each program (you can use the same e-mail address). When you get that inevitable message alerting you that a file is checked out and unavailable, you'll know which program is currently holding the file open for editing.
Every time you launch Contribute, it connects to all of your enabled sites and downloads the latest version of the templates. This can be a slow process if you have lots of client sites enabled. You can speed things up by using the My Connections dialog box to disable sites you don't often edit. You can always enable the connection when you need to access the site.
You can simplify the Cascading Style Sheets you present to your clients by hiding any custom classes you wish to retain for your exclusive use. If you add the prefix mmhide to the style name (as in .mmhideMystyle) it won't appear in Contribute's Style menu.
Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.
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