Remote uploading using SSI

[Fotoman]

One of my customer sites has a Club Fixture List page and the customer wants the ability to upload the changes himself from his PC rather than e-mailing me the details.

Someone said this could be done by using Server Side Includes (SSI). Now I know a little bit about this in using this for placing Nav Bars on every page on the site, but what would the customer need his end to upload it to the Server?

I've been told that he could design the Fixture List in Microsoft Word and save it as an .htm (or is it .shtm). What would I need to do my end to ensure that the file could be upload from his PC?

Any help, as always, will be most gratefully received.

Fotoman.

Crime Pays...
...unless you're a motorist!

 

[TamedTech]

If you're looking at any type of dynamic content that you want your user to modify then you are definatly going to want to look at Server Side solutions.

There are a few on the market, only one of them is really any good though (i'm sure i'll start another war on this).

Keep in mind that you are starting to learn a completely new programming language here, and it will be alot of work, however it is a skill that i dont doubt you will be able to sell onto other customers.

After working full time in web application and dynamic sites for a while now i've noted that just about every customer i come accross has a requirement for a dynamic site as the time scales and costs of paying an expert to do text updates simply does not make good business sence.

Now, back to the server side.

The most common solutions are;

PHP
ASP
ASP.Net
ColdFusion
JSP

Each one has its own benefits and downfalls, for instants, most hosting providers offer support for PHP and the early versions of ASP free of charge.

Where as if you opt for ASP.Net or ColdFusion, you will usualy incur an additional cost for the hosting service, this is more prodominant in ColdFusion.

However, you have to ofset the hosting costs with time for development, and features provided by the language, and in my personal experiance then you would be best opting for ColdFusion.

As a 'jump in' type langugage then you just cant beat it, with a simple and yet awsomly powerfull 'tagged-based' syntax much like HTML you'll feel at home straight away with it.

It also builds in a whole host of 'user friendly' error reporting to make life easier for new developers as they can see exactly whats going wrong.

For some referance on ColdFusion, see this site.

http://www.easycfm.com

There are community forum's and tutorials to get your started.

I started full time CF development around 6 months ago, and i've learned a hell of a lot without having to put in too much time and effort.

Hope that helps,

Rob

 

[JillC]

CF looks to be a rather complex solution when you just have one page to be altered. imo, if you have used DW template with editable regions, then your customer could use Contribute or Flyspeck. You can then restrict the areas he can edit, but your css styles will be available so he can format the text properly. With Contribute, you could have a "fixture list" editable region which is the only region he gets to edit. Flyspeck doesn't give you different levels of permission but works in much the same way. Your customer can cut and paste from Word, but they are actually better to save the file as an rtf first so that the paste operation leaves behind all the horrible Word formatting.

Relatively cheap and quick to set up and learn, and good for a small site. Not a good solution for a large site.

No doubt there'll be plenty who'll disagree with me.

Jill.

 

[Fotoman]

Thanks for that guys. Unfortunately my ISP does not support ASP and I don't think it supports Cold Fusion either. Only PHP and MySQL. And remember, I'm just a novice at the moment and need careful handling!

The ISP suggested I needed to make use of .htaccess (?)

Interestingly, I installed another FTP programme onto my spare computer and added all the necessary usernames, passwords, etc. and was able access to the website files on the customer's web server.
I then uploaded a test page from the main computer (test.html) and then uploaded a test page with the same file name from the spare computer but changed the content. Uploading from the 2nd computer appeared to overwrite the 1st file but when checking in the browser, it hadn't! Such fun!

Jill, I will take a look at Adobe's Contribute and see if that will help. Does this need to be installed on the customer's PC as well?

Fotoman

Crime Pays...
...unless you're a motorist!

 

[TamedTech]

Yes Adobe contribute has to be installed to any PC you wish to update the site on.

It is quite a nice feature set the software offers to allow you control over the basic site content, i know a couple of people that use it.

As for htaccess, its somthing that you can use for basicly securing a section of your site from prying eye's but i'm not sure it has a use in this application.

The best option is probably contribute, although i would definatly look at the thought of progressing your skills onto Server Side things, it'll open up a whole new world of web-development.

Rob

 

[lebisol]

http://www.google.com/search?source...rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-13,GGLD:en&q=php+based+CMS

a lot of CMS out there that are already built....depends on your needs.

ftp is just what it is...file transfer protocol...it does not 'edit' anything.
All the best!


:--------------------------------------:

All around in my home town,
They tryin' to track me down...

 

[Fotoman]

Thanks for all that. Through one means or another, I have now got a page with an 'include' that the customer can call up, edit and transfer back again from his office. So he's happy.

I was trying out SSI but nobody told me about about creating and adding the .htaccess file until I'd torn all my hair out!

There's obvious security issues here in allowing access to the server side files, but as he is a close friend of mine, I don't have a problem. The next step will be in finding out about restricting files he can see or open. Anyway, if messes up the site, I'll just charge him for putting it right.

As for Content Management Systems, which I presume is the phrase for this sort of work, it does seem as if further tuition is required and I am grateful, Lebisol, for pointing me in that direction.

Take care everyone, I'll no doubt be back again soon!

Fotoman
_______________________

Crime Pays...
...unless you're a motorist!

 

[lebisol]

yap ur right, and its worth lookig into it if nothing for your furter development. client can have the 'admin' site of it and editing content is much like composing en email through web interface...forums are built in the simmilar /stripped down idea.
Keep up the work,
All the best!

:--------------------------------------:

All around in my home town,
They tryin' to track me down...