Re: Web site maintenance by non-technical users

[Kevin Cheek <cheek1 -at- sbcglobal -dot- net>]

Well, my suggestion is a bit more of a pain in the hoopy to implement
than Bonnie's or Jenny Berger's: 

1. Create a nice, spiffy layout for the site that uses style sheets
to enforce appearance and breaks the information into small chunks.

2. Identify the content areas the owner will need to update.

3. Create a login for the owner that is password protected. 

4. Create an HTML form (or multiple forms if necessary), with text
boxes where the owner can edit or type in new paragraph text below
the appropriate static heading text. 

5. Show the content of the text boxes as the normal paragraph text on
the web page.

Making the heading text static while allowing editing of the
paragraph constrains the updates the user can make, but enforces
consistency. 

You could (with much hair pulling) make the entire contents of the
site dynamic by adding multiple itirations of:

  "heading 1: <empty text field>
   heading 2: <empty text field>
   heading 3: <empty text field>
   paragraph text <text box>"

and then include the text of the not-empty fields on the
outside-viewable page. 

However, by the time you finish implementing and debugging that
approach, you might look more like a wizenned professor than a
student.

Best luck,

-Kevin Cheek
cheek1 -at- sbcglobal -dot- net


--- Cynthia Armistead <listmail -at- technomom -dot- com> wrote:
> 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.
...