Web site maintenance by non-technical users

[Cynthia Armistead <listmail -at- technomom -dot- com>]

I've searched the archives, but haven't found anything on this particular 
topic. Please forgive me if I missed something relevant.

I'm a technical writing student. I'm taking a web design course. Our team 
project involves redesigning the composition program web site for the 
school. The site owner is not technical and doesn't wish to change that. 
She wants to be able to update the site using MS Word, never encountering 
HTML code. It does need to be useable by users on any platform, so simply 
putting everything up as Word documents isn't going to work.

She doesn't want to know about FTP or anything similar - she wants to be 
able to edit site pages and save them just like any other document. That 
part, at least, I can accomplish by mapping a network drive for her.

I detest the HTML that results when one saves an MS Word file as HTML. It's 
always messy. I've seen it "break" pages that were working before, if an 
HTML file created in another program is opened, edited and saved in Word.

The school doesn't have any kind of "solution" in place to address this 
situation, nor is there any plan to change that. Their suggestion is to 
"use WebCT" (http://www.webct.com/ "). The professor wants this site 
accessible to people outside the university, though, so WebCT is not 
suitable in this situation.

We are not permitted the use of anything beyond basic HTML and pre-approved 
cgi scripts (I haven't been able to find out what scripts are available, 
though I've asked).

Any suggestions?

Thank you!
Cyn

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cyn -at- technomom -dot- com
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