I tried to seach for a thread on this, but I'm not sure how to word it.

I design & maintain a site for a small village...only the clerk & treasurer in the office. The President of the Council wants some of the updating done in house, by the treasurer. She is computer literate with MS office products & bookkeeping & other specialized software. The Clerk (my hubby) said, just give her the steps & she can follow them - that is what they both do for the water billing program for example. She has never done any HTML or programing of any kind.

The Pres wants her to be able to update the announcements on the home page, as well as add events to the calendar, etc. What software will she need to do this? I have created the site using HTML Editor, a theme & the trial version of web calendar (have to get the full version of that soon). Can she edit it in Visual Site Designer or will that cause issues when I have to do bigger updates in Editor? I spent a lot of time getting the layout to sit right & worry I'll have to fix the html after she updates within VSD.

Any other thoughts on the pros/cons & issues the village & I need to be aware of before we do this. Any tips I need to give her?

the site is www.lakelinden.net, if that helps.

Thanks,
Jess

I see the best approach being you providing space in your page with an iframe linked to the content the other users are updating. This keeps everything separate so users aren't publishing over each others work by accident.

You cannot use VSD to do updating for this website as it was not created with VSD so they will need to either use text files to do a blogging situation or use Eric's suggestion or combine the 2 with putting what they need into a text file and iframing that text file into the site.
Another way would be to do a MS Word setup with a Saved for Web file. This would give them the opportunity to edit a file itself with a lot more stylish approach (bold, colors, text sizes etc.) and then just re-upload it. You can iframe that into the site and then all they would be updating is that file.

1. They would always need to download the current file first if there are multiple people working on this. THIS IS IMPORTANT SO THEY DON'T OVERWRITE EACH OTHER.

2. They can either completely delete the current contents of the page and start fresh or they can append at the top or bottom (Top would be best suggestion so it's up front to view right away with the newest content).

3. Then they would save the file and you would need to let them know how/where to upload the file.

Basically that's exactly what Eric is saying so I'm sure I'm just being redundant a bit, but wanted to clarify a bit more on how it should be done.

I would also suggest that you or someone do regular (weekly at the very least) backups of the files in case someone messes it up or overwrites it etc. so it can be restored easily to at least no more than a week (depending on how often they would updated it)

As for the calender, that will be a more difficult thing as they would all need a paid copy of the program and would have to follow steps 1 and 3 very carefully so they always have the most recent version at start of editing. I don't think there's an "easier" way to allow access to change the calender other than via the program itself.

Hope that helps some

Jess:

I would use a basic CMS. I run a family history/events site that was made with the HTML Editor and content put in with Simple CMS. There are five people inputting content and they are scattered around the world.

The CMS we are using is Simple CMS
http://www.phpjabbers.com/simple-cms/
And anyone who can work any word processor program can use it with little or no problem. I designed the site and navigation with the Editor and just place simple tags where the various content goes. We have 90 pages up and growing without a problem.

I would like to show you the site, but the family, has decided to keep it private and password protected, but believe me combining the HTML Editor site with the CMS is extremely easy.

TomH

If it's only 1 other person editing content, why not use S-Drive Streams?

I can never work out why people think that making a web page is the same as doing a Word doc.

CMS would do it, can you code in PHP?

Keith

lol, it's nothing the same as making a web page, but the program has the capability of saving it as one so why not utilize that? Also that gives them the ability to do all the styling ect. to the blog or doc without dealing with HTML code too.

cushycms.com is also another CMS style app that you can apply to the pages similar to the Simple CMS mentioned a couple posts up.

This looks as though it may fit the bill:

http://simplecmsphp.com/index.php

Keith

Using CMS within a web page requires that a variable be placed in the position where the content is displayed. this variable is filled as the page loads with content stored that has been uploaded. This was one project I played with to use on an Art Site I am working on.

By using the Free FTP program and bookmarks you do not need a admin system and any number of people can update any portion of unlimited pages.

I tried all the systems out there and decided to create a better mousetrap. It is not responsive, well it can be, but needs to be used in a responsive page with the correct css support.

My present project is forcing me to learn css that will be fully responsive and every bit of content will be updateable from header, meta and all points South. The grid layout systems are easier to understand than learning css. I am gathering heaps of data just need to keep my sanity. My trials have used up 100's of lines of code at least the php is finished. My last problem I am battling is a responsive menu system that is updateable for links colours etc.

I find that the need dictates the solution. The easy way is not always the most enjoyable or satisfying.
But easy for me to say being retired and having this as a hobby. To old to surf any longer.