I don't expect that Contribute will make my own life any easier from the point of view of creating websites, but I don't expect that it will seriously cause me to lose customers.
Contribute is designed to work a bit like FrontPage. When is the last time you lost out on a contract because the customer chose to go with Frontpage instead? Yeah, right. Never! What might be a good idea is to learn a little bit about how it works and see if you can take advantage of it for customers who want a lightweight solution. You can probably teach more or less any muppet how to create templates in Dreamweaver to use with Contribute, and you can almost certainly sell a customer a couple of days of shadow training to show them how to build a site with it. If you can use that to extend your potential client base, there's no reason why they wouldn't want to 'upgrade' to a more sophisticated system if and when their needs demand it. As with most new product lines, it's not going to help to complain that it will hurt your business, but it will almost certainly help to figure out how to use the new product line to get customers that you wouldn't have had otherwise. my 2c Spike Stephen Milligan Team Macromedia - ColdFusion Co-author 'Reality Macromedia ColdFusion MX: Intranets and Content Management' http://spikefu.blogspot.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Chris Tazewell [mailto:chris@;tazewell.co.uk] > Sent: 11 November 2002 10:55 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [ cf-dev ] OT: Are Macromedia trying to reduce our business? > > > Interesting twist from MM in the form of "Macromedia > Contribute". Basically a content management system for 'flat' > websites. > > The software allows non-technical numbnuts to browse through > a site and edit as they go. Take a look at the demos (which > are huge) because you won't get any idea of what it is from > my poor excuse for an explanation. > > My question is: are macromedia trying to kill off some of our > valuable business? Creating out-of-the-box content management > solutions isn't new, and anybody can build one... but with MM > building one, and probably selling it extremely cheap (no > prices available as yet), its doing us no favours at all. > > If I create an out-of-the-box solution and try to sell it to > random punters, chances are I won't make a fortune. For > businesses like mine, we don't have the time or the money to > put into large marketing campaigns so we're not likely to get > a massive audience. But for Macromedia its not a problem. > They already build the industry standard web authoring > software, so its not like they've got to make a massive > effort to make people aware of new software. > > I don't know about you, but building content management > systems is a large part of my business, and I can't really > welcome something like this. > > There you go... that's my neck stuck out for anyone to take > an axe to (for anyone who watched Sleepy Hollow last night)... > > Taz > -- ** Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/dev%40lists.cfdeveloper.co.uk/ To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For human help, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
