Is Contribute the right solution for me?

[lessmess]

Hi,

we are a small company of 6 people and are having a website designed. The site
requires certain passworded areas and will work hand in hand with an image
database in NetPublish. Once the site is up we will be updating the site text,
photos and movies on a regular basis both in the public areas and the private
membership areas. I believe the site will have a database at the back end to
facilitate this.

Our site designers are offering to build the site with their own in house
custom made CMS system but it is way beyond our budget - any other suggestions
about which CMS system to use all seem to be way too expensive for us also and
it was suggested to me that maybe we could just get Macromedia's Contribute and
use that instead of pay out ?6 - ?10k on a custom made solution.

What are the issues I need to consider? Clearly there is a massive price
difference but what is the performance and functionality difference behind this?

The choices seem to be that either the site is built with an integrated CMS
right from the start, or else the site is built and we implement a CMS on the
finished site - what difference does this make? Does it really make any
difference?

What are Contribute's limitations in comparison with an 'all singing and
dancing' solution?

Any advice, suggestions, guidance, much appreciated,
thanks for reading.

[David Burley]

Contribute is a good product.

Contribute alone will not give you what you might be looking for.

It is best used in conjunction with template pages created by Dreamweaver.
If you do not have the ability to build the templates yourself and you
depend on the company who created the site to build them, the expense will
add up quickly depending how many styles of pages you have.

If you need your pages to be more rigid and you want to limit what a content
editor can do, you will add expense to the price of the templates.

I really like the product, but you need to spend significant time building
contribute friendly pages.

dburley at hannaford dot com




"lessmess" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:dmhl6k$6n4$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> Hi,
>
> we are a small company of 6 people and are having a website designed. The

site

> requires certain passworded areas and will work hand in hand with an image
> database in NetPublish. Once the site is up we will be updating the site

text,

> photos and movies on a regular basis both in the public areas and the

private

> membership areas. I believe the site will have a database at the back end

to

> facilitate this.
>
> Our site designers are offering to build the site with their own in house
> custom made CMS system but it is way beyond our budget - any other

suggestions

> about which CMS system to use all seem to be way too expensive for us also

and

> it was suggested to me that maybe we could just get Macromedia's

Contribute and

> use that instead of pay out ?6 - ?10k on a custom made solution.
>
> What are the issues I need to consider? Clearly there is a massive price
> difference but what is the performance and functionality difference behind

this?

>
> The choices seem to be that either the site is built with an integrated

CMS

> right from the start, or else the site is built and we implement a CMS on

the

> finished site - what difference does this make? Does it really make any
> difference?
>
> What are Contribute's limitations in comparison with an 'all singing and
> dancing' solution?
>
> Any advice, suggestions, guidance, much appreciated,
> thanks for reading.
>

[Room446]

By looking at all the unanswered posts on this list, how can you think that
Contribute is good for anyone? Even Macromedia has abandoned us. I am faced
with redoing in Dreamweaver a substantial part of another's work in Contribute
because the program is so broken.

... so I'm not recommending it to anyone. However, make up your own mind ...
but look at all the frustrated users and many, many problems they have, and the
lack of support. Makes you think, doesn't it?

[David Burley]

A couple of things...

This is a user group so there will always be a lot of unanswered posts.
There aren't many usenet usergroups that are managed by the software
company. You'd like to think that someone from Macromedia would monitor
this and manage the bad press, but, at this time they don't so you get a lot
of user levels answering questions they may or may not be qualified to
answer, myself including. As compared to the Dreamweaver group, there
aren't many posts in this group.

And, I agree that there are bugs, problems, etc. but compared to some
alternatives, it's pretty good. I'll take this over frontpage any day.

But, this is still a relatively new progam and hopefully it will get better.
I've seen major advances from version 1.




"Room446" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:dnl2mg$j7g$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> By looking at all the unanswered posts on this list, how can you think

that

> Contribute is good for anyone? Even Macromedia has abandoned us. I am

faced

> with redoing in Dreamweaver a substantial part of another's work in

Contribute

> because the program is so broken.
>
> ... so I'm not recommending it to anyone. However, make up your own mind

....

> but look at all the frustrated users and many, many problems they have,

and the

> lack of support. Makes you think, doesn't it?
>

[mzanime.com]

David, thank you.

Yes, Contribute is still very new, its only at version 3. Ask yourself, what
version are GREAT products like Dreamweaver and Photoshop currently at?

Innovation, takes time. But it is getting there. Contribute is most effective
if you first setup Dreamweaver templates and THEN deploy those templates to
users who have Contribute installed.