Re: Web site maintenance by non-technical users

[John Cornellier <cornellier1 -at- stavanger -dot- oilfield -dot- slb -dot- com>]

Sounds like an interesting project. As Gene pointed out, it's not just about a technological solution, but about keeping the customer happy.

How dynamic is the structure? Or does only the content of pages change? What's the time / money budget? How much IT support can you get? Does your user have to be stand alone 100 per cent uptime with no support? (sorry about the metaphors). Does anyone care if it looks nice?

Can you consider not using Word? There are "collaboration" type softwares around now; blogs were mentioned.

Where I am we use Twiki (www.twiki.org). You'd need some help from the IT people to put the CGI (PERL) in place. You didn't say how big the site is, so maybe Twiki is too heavy duty.

If it's just static pages where you're editing the content, consider good ol' Netscape Composer 4.7 or it's more recent version. It's cheap & cheerful, didn't require code editing, and has basic editing fuctions for tables etc.

John Cornellier

On Monday 08 September 2003 19:52, Cynthia Armistead wrote:
> 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.