> Could you elaborate on this a bit more please? > I've been keeping a vague eye on XML but have > not as yet found a need for it - or seen where it > might improve on what I'm doing.
XML is just one possible way to structure info. It can play a role either in the maintenance of content, or in publishing from data (i.e. wrap your relational data in tags and transform with XSLT) or files. In your case, however.... I think if you use XML at all it would probably be behind the scenes, you wouldn't necessarily think of the structure of the content in XML yourself, but the tool you're using might. I had earlier envisioned a very detailed set of information that you wanted to associate with a given product: but it looks like you really want free-form text with a minimum amount of structure or rigidity (you're capturing peoples' anecdotes, so your priority of "easy editing" is the right one to have). > To give you a better idea I managed to find > copies of my original static html page attempts > to come up with an idea on how this was going to > work. Ah, examples make all the difference. Alot simpler than I had thought. Looking at this, I think more relational database than XML. A Relational database with Wiki-like editing capability. XML (as far as spending time defining a detailed DTD) tends to make sense with content with a more granular structure than this. This looks more like a bunch of free form text (in a few buckets) associated with database objects. > The main thing that drew me to ektron when I first > found it was the ability to be browsing the site, > see something that needs changing, click the login > link at the top of the page and then straight away > edit the page you are on. No need to find it amoungst > a whole list. I need to make it easy to encourage staff > to make a change - asking them to login, go find the > page amounst the list and then edit it is not gonna > work, they'll think they'll do it > later and it will never happen. If that is your priority then I think a combination of (a) a relational database housing product info (i.e., the SQL Server database you're moving to) and (b) a connected Wiki housing the content entered by users. You could customize OpenWiki: http://www.openwiki.com/ That's ASP and can use a SQL Server back end. It would be easy to, for example, take a product database and generate default Wiki pages for all products as a starting point. Definitely very easy to edit. Max -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
