Seth,
You described the problems facing most of us today who are developing
websites for a clientele that is seeking to take more and more
responsibility for there own web sites. At Ektron we developed an
application called eMPower to do just what you are looking to do. Some of
the clients we have today include American Airlines, Carfax, USA weekend,
irow.com (done by Summit Projects who integrated the eMPower) and of course
ektron.com. I'd like to invite you or anyone else facing the same problem to
try our on-line demo at http://demo.ektron.com. To edit content you can
login using the username and password edit. To see how content publication
works login using the username and password publish. Lastly to view how
workflow is setup by administrators login as admin. The current version
online does require MSIE on Windows, however we do have a version that will
work with NN on Windows (hasn't been released from QA just yet).
eMPower is completely tag based so you can separate your templates from your
content. Templates can include as many or as few eMPower content tags as you
like and each may have its own work flow associated with it.
If you are interested we also offer a free 30 day timed trial that can be
downloaded by completing the download form:
http://www.ektron.com/getinfo.cfm?doc_id=306
Cheers,
Duane Boudreau,
Project Manager, eMPower
Ektron, Inc.
>
> List,
>
> A growing number of my company's clients are pushing for the ability to
> maintain the content (i.e. text, basic HTML, images, etc) on their sites.
> This really isn't that big a deal in and of itself, but these sites are
> growing more and more complex, and there is no longer a simple
> separation of
> "content" (i.e. the text or simple HTML itself) from its
> "presentation" (in
> this case, the CF logic that runs to personalize navigation systems, page
> headers, etc).
>
> Up to this point we have been simply granting clients FTP access to their
> directory on the server and telling them not to change anything
> that begins
> with "<CF". This is a TERRIBLE thing, and I've been fighting to move away
> from this ever since I started.
>
> Anyways, I was wondering how some of the other players out there deal with
> this sort of request from a client. One the one hand I don't want ANYONE
> but someone from my company touching the CF code, but I can understand a
> client's desire to have control over their site. I wouldn't want to pay
> $50-$75 per hour for simple HTML changes either.
>
> In particular, I'm looking to evaluate possible solutions against the
> following metrics:
>
> 1) Security: giving a client FTP access to a shared CF server is
> obviously a
> bad idea because one client could, either on purpose or by accident,
> adversely affect other hosted sites by crashing the CF service, uploading
> templates that use CFFILE, etc. As a general rule we don't let clients
> upload CF files to the server, but this is not enforced by anything other
> than a verbal contract with the client. Whatever solution I find
> has to, in
> some way or another, adequately shield one client from the actions of
> another, which means unrestricted direct file access is a no-no <g>.
>
> 2) Protection of intellectual property: we have a series of pre-written
> "modules" (calendar, classified ads, etc) that we sell to our clients.
> Since these are sold as pre-written applications, the client does not gain
> any ownership of the code. FTP access to the site again poses a problem
> because it makes these templates directly available to the
> client. A savvy
> HTML/CF author working for the client might steal this code and
> re-sell it.
>
> 3) Cost: I'm looking for a relatively inexpensive solution right now (i.e.
> please don't recommend Spectra <g>). Neither us nor our clients are
> particuarly interested in paying huge sums of money for a feature-packed
> solution at this time.
>
> I don't necessarily need ALL aspects of each page available to
> the client to
> change. Certain parts of the site, such as CF-enabled navigation systems,
> can remain under my company's control. With all of these things in mind,
> does anyone out there have any pointers for me? Either links to
> prewritten
> applications or ideas on "rolling my own" system are welcome.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Seth Petry-Johnson
> Argo Enterprise and Associates
>
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