Cannot publish new .htm file with Contribute

[TellarHK]

A client of mine is having an issue with a webpage he maintains daily using the
Contribute package, and one major problem has come up while trying to add new
features to his presentation. Instead of linking directly to a file as has
been done in the past, his primary web designer has created a new pop-up style
(on demand) window that presents video in one portion and an advertisement in
the rest. Unfortunately, this option did not come with an associated template
- he merely configured the page to link to a .txt file as Contribute would not
let the user (Administrator) upload a new .htm file.

My question if anyone might have a few moments to respond, is whether or not
this is a feasible thing to manage? .txt files work in Internet Explorer
browsers, but fail on more standards compliant options such as Firefox or
Apple's Safari (3.0 beta tested on PC, other versions tested on MacOS X) in
which case they merely result in the presentation of a plaintext file in a
pop-up window.

Can a new template be created in Contribute, and files generated from this? Is
this a technical quick-fix situation, or a more involved problem that requires
Dreamweaver or other template creation options?

Sorry to be rather vague on this one, it's a particularly complex situation
(with a bit of a time crunch) on the user end, and I'm hoping to track down any
information I can.

- J. Johnston

[ThinkInk]

I don't know if I understand your problem at all, but uploading HTML-files is
regulated in the Users and Roles settings (you need admin-rights to do this):

1. In the menu go to Edit, Administer websites
2. Select Users and Roles
3. Select the role you need to adjust and click Edite role settings
4. go to New Pages
5. check the options you need to create a new html page

If you want to publish a new html-file from your computer:

1. In the menu go to File, Publish file from my computer
2. select the file
3. open the file
4. edit the file
5. publish the file

[TellarHK]

Sorry about being rather vague there, I had the client sitting with his head
literally peeking over my shoulder and that made things a little trickier to
actually parse a few times in my own head before posting.

I went through and learned a bit about roles yesterday when I was trying to
tackle this issue, so what you're suggesting does sound like what I tried to
do. However, there were two issues that I ran into that remained a problem.
First, I couldn't tell what role his Contribute was configured to use on his
website. It appeared to be Administrator, and the one user account set up in
the roles listing is his, but even with this set, I still got the error message
saying I didn't have permission to create new .htm, .html, .php, etc. pages on
the site.

His website was initially created by a rather poor designer, whose idea when
confronted with being unable to upload .htm files, was to use the .txt
extension - because "Internet Explorer treats .txt as HTML, so what's the loss?"

The essence of what the client is trying to accomplish, is this: He produces
video content for a local news website, and uploads a handful of videos every
weeknight. In the past, his webpage has simply offered a link where users
clicked on an image and immediately downloaded a .wvx file which loaded up
Windows Media Player (or Quicktime with Flip4Mac installed) and played his
playlist of advertisements and news content. His new method involves clicking
a link, which pops up a new window, which plays the video file embedded with an
advertisement next to it in a table. These pop-up pages are the ones that
don't seem to want to transfer up through Contribute.

I hope this clarifies things a little, and I really appreciate your help.

[ThinkInk]

I don't think I have an answer for you, cause strange things are happening with
CS3. I discovered what you mean, but I can't think of any sensible reason not
to let Contribute upload htm-files (but it is true that you can't) and I can't
find any setting to adjust this.

On top of this: when in CS3 you link to a file on your computer it really
creates a link to the file on your computer, instead of uploading it to a
directory on the server... Never happened in previous versions. Can't find the
solution yet.

Are you using Contribute CS3 also?

I'm definitely getting more and more annoyed with Adobe's predecessor of
Macromedia's easy update tool...
Adobe shame on you and please come up with an update soon...

[ThinkInk]

Reinstalled for the x-th time and now the problems are gone...

Is this product unstable or what????

I can now publish the html (or htm, or other) files from my computer again.

So I suggest you also start with re-installing...

[TellarHK]

The client is actually using Contribute 3.11, so he's a bit behind the times
right now. I'll try and see what I can do with getting him to change his
workflow a little bit in order to make this work, but it's starting to look
like it might be better in the long term for me to build him a whole CMS based
on something like Joomla or Wordpress in order to let him deal with page
creation in a way that's less prone to breaking if he screws something up.

Thanks again, and I'll try and get him to put links in properly and get the
files uploaded that way.