Considering Purchase of Contribute 3

[kwilliams]

We are considering the purchase of Contribute 3 as a Content Management tool
for our website, and I've come up with a few questions that I'd love to get
some advice on: 1) Can I have the page automatically use the HTML Page Title
as the Header Title for that page? 2) For images, can you require that they're
stylized a certain way through Fireworks (i.e. feathered edges)? 3) Can you
require that the filename for any page be lowercase? 4) Can you require that
the filename for any page be limited in character length? 5) Can you have a
default beginning to any HTML Page Title, like this: <title>Los Angeles, CA -
PAGE TITLE</title> That should do it for now. I'd love to get some great
feedback from users of this software, so any &amp; all help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance. KWilliams

[jjs]

kwilliams" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:d2s9oa$981$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> We are considering the purchase of Contribute 3 as a Content Management
> tool
> for our website, and I've come up with a few questions that I'd love to
> get
> some advice on: 1) Can I have the page automatically use the HTML Page
> Title
> as the Header Title for that page?

It works the other way around. You specify a title when first creating the
page.

2) For images, can you require that they're

> stylized a certain way through Fireworks (i.e. feathered edges)?

You can control from where your writers get the pictures, so you have to be
sure they are created by some authorized person, styled properly.

3) Can you

> require that the filename for any page be lowercase?

No. name case sensitivity is a server issue.

4) Can you require that

> the filename for any page be limited in character length?

Not through Contribute. That's a server issue.

5) Can you have a

> default beginning to any HTML Page Title, like this: <title>Los Angeles,
> CA -
> PAGE TITLE</title>

With templates maybe.

>That should do it for now. I'd love to get some great
> feedback from users of this software, so any &amp; all help is
> appreciated.

Methinks you should be concerned about the limitations of your server.

[JoBean3]

If you're using dot net, Contribute 3 has some sort of bug where it doesnt want
to find the style sheet. I have a new post on this subject today. Not sure if
there's a fix for it, but if not, I won't be able to recommend Contribute to my
clients anymore. Hopefully I can find a fix or a workaround soon. Something to
keep in mind if you're creating ASP.NET web sites.

[kwilliams]

Wow, that's interesting to hear. I'm currently using ASP, but we are planning
on converting our entire site to ASP.NET in the near future. So this bug issue
is something that I'll definitely have to consider before purchasing this
product. Hopefully Macromedia will clear up this bug ASAP. Please keep me
posted on any updates if you can.

[JoBean3]

I tried figuring this out a month or so back and had no luck. Now it is a much
more pressing problem as I am going to begin a new ASP.NET project and the user
would like to maintain the site content. Would be disappointed to recommend
something other than Contribute, but it simply has to recognize the style
sheets.

[kwilliams]

Absolutely. We don't only use stylesheets for regular formatting, but we also
use it for navigation popups. So I wouldn't be able to use it with that big of
a problem. I have been messing around with my trial version of Contribute 3,
and have been using stylesheets successfully with this setup. I have several
stylesheets that are located in a subdirectory, I have a Server-Side Include
page that contains links to these stylesheets along with other data (i.e.
meta-tags). I then called the SSI files from a template created in Dreamweaver
MX 2004, and wala, it works. I've also tried calling a stylesheet directory
from a page without using the templates, and was unsuccessful, but this setup
has been working for me so far. But I'll have to create a sample ASP.NET page
to see if it also works with that technology. Thanks again for the heads-up.

[JoBean3]

By the way, I am having a terrible time resolving my dot net issue. I really
want to resolve this so I can recommend the product to clients. However, before
you purchase it, you might want to check with me and see if there is a
workaround on my stylesheet issue (and... hopefully what the workaround is).

[kwilliams]

I agree. I'm very disappointed with Macromedia's support for Contribute, and I
haven't even purchased it yet. If this is the way that they treat their
Contribute customers, I'll definitely have to think twice about going down that
road. Being a local government, we've gotten several other offers from content
management companies to use their products. Altought I was hesitant to do so,
mostly because of cost, I'm starting to see that the cost of customizing
Contribute with little or no real support might cost us more in the long run.
Please do keep me posted on whether or not your issue with ASP.NET is resolved,
and good luck to you.

[JoBean3]

Hi - To finish up this topic... I finally have a resolution to the problem...
You must put <html>, <head> and <body> tags in the aspx page, even though in my
case they are completely duplicative (this info is already in an ascx file). IE
and Netscape don't care if the extra stuff is there. Then when you go into Edit
mode in Contribute, it is able to find the style sheet. Unfortunately it is not
enough to simply repeat the <head> tag which contains the style sheet
reference. You must include <html> and <body> as well.

My problem was finally escalated to someone who was following what I was
trying to ask. It's not a great solution but it does work.

[kwilliams]

That's great news. I'm glad that you were able to come up with a solution to
that problem, and I'll definitely keep that in mind when I start my conversion.
Unfortunately, I never received any help from this forum for the bug I kept
running into, and now my trial version has run out. When I or my coworker
opened the trial version of Contribute 3, the home page stated that we couldn't
edit it because it was being reviewed. This was impossible because neither of
us were editing it, and it showed up as 'published' in the list; not 'under
review'. Hopefully someone will help me out with a solution to this issue, but
now my trial has run out, I'm in the process of figuring out if we should go
the route of Contribute 3 or something else for our Content Management system.
If you ever see a solution to the issue that I ran into, any help would be
greatly appreciated. Thanks again for your input, and good luck to you.

[Jeff Radwill]

kwilliams,
I don't think you want to use Contribute as a Content Management System, per
se. It's main purpose is to let non-web-savvy users edit and create content,
not to manage it. (even tho a Google for Content management system Contribute
shows MM Contribute at the top of the hit list).
It is not a centralized database for content management.
At best, in the CMS world, it is a 'content-editor-management-system.'

[Lizzie]

We use aspx & I think the problem is that in Edit mode in Contribute it doesn't
render any ascx inserts. So you have to make sure that your html is valid with
or without these. It wouldn't render the stylesheet when I had that in one of
my ascx files, but displays it fine when the style is imported directly in the
html.