User editing of SSI

[John Geddes]

I am deploying Contribute CS3 for a small charity's website. The member of
staff who will update the website is sensible but not web-savvy.

I want the staff member to be able to add new items into a menu structure -
but this will not be a frequent change.

My first thought was to set up the Menu as a template-based htm file, and to
pull it into each page using a Server Side Include (SSI). This works fine,
apart from the fact that Contribute offers the illusion that it will allow
edits to the included Menu text from any of the pages that have the SSI. In
fact, when the page is Published, the included page is left unchanged - so
technically, this achieves what I want. But it doesn't seem very professional
to be installing a solution that behaves in such a misleading manner. I hate
training people to ignore what they are told on the screen.

Ideally, I want to be able to set a template-based page so that it is editable
in Contribute if opened directly, but not when it forms part of a page as an
SSI. I've searched and failed to find anything - does this facility exist?

The only alternative I have come up with is to name the included htm file with
a non-htm extension (eg "includedText.abc") and then to specify in Contribute
that "abc" files are to be edited using an alternative editor (eg nvu) . Just
about viable but hardly elegant!

Has anyone a better way?

[aaronjstewart]

Hi John,

If you can stomach using a .NET server, you might try using Webstruxure's
siteNav ([url]http://www.webstruxure.co.nz/sitenav/demo/[/url]). It will give you your
ideal scenario, with very easy editing in Contribute, especially if the menu
items are templated as repeating editable regions.

One charity site that's using siteNav in this fashion is
[url]http://www.aspire.org.uk/default.aspx[/url].

[ThinkInk]

You could also consider creating a CSS style list (ul and li) and save it as a
SSI (f.i. menu.inc.php).
Provide your user with a bookmark in Contribute to this list-menu, so he/she
can browse to that page in Contribute and edit the list.
Best to put the include menu in the root, because of the way Contribute
handles hyperlinks.
I don't know if this is professional enough to you, but my clients never seem
to be bothered, becauce Contribute overall is such a simple to use updating
application in comparison to other programs.

[richsky]

I use php includes, only problem, the relative path rewritten by Contribute.
So you can provide site map containing all your includes and a link on each
menu item so users can browse them and edit them.

[[aps]]

John, I have handeled this using ThinkInk's method above, though not in the
root directory, my includes are "virtual" not "file" type. I am using it for
SSI's that are side bar new and highlight elements the school needs to edit. I
have not given them the ssi for the nav, but if I trusted them I think it would
work fine.
I am however unable to get the templates to be visible within Contribute 4,
but I will post that separate...