Some of my clients would like to have a way to update text and tables in
their HTML pages without the need for or understanding of complicated
updating programs. Does such a program exist?

My concept is to have tags embedded within the page that would be
recognized by the application. Transparently the "tagged areas" would
be updated using nothing more that Excel and or Word (everything behind
the scene would be done automatically - without the client knowing
anything about FTP or HTML).

Example of the tags could be

<!-- {# name="Text1" type="Text" #} -->
This is some text.
<!-- {##} -->

<!-- {# name="Text2" type="Text" #} -->
This is some text.
<!-- {##} -->

<!-- {# name="Table1" type="Table" #} -->
<table>
<tr>
<td>
Line 1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Line 2
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Line 3
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- {##} -->

About a year ago I wrote the core code for doing this but some other
projects forced me to put it aside. However, I do not want to reinvent
the wheel.

Todd
Ariste Software

Todd Cary wrote:
[color=blue]
> Some of my clients would like to have a way to update text and tables
> in their HTML pages without the need for or understanding of
> complicated
> updating programs. Does such a program exist?[/color]

Hi Todd,

it might be a bit of an overkill, but a content management system should
provide just that. I am lacking names, but if you google for it, you
should find plenty.

Regards,

Martin

Todd Cary wrote:
[color=blue]
>Some of my clients would like to have a way to update text and tables in
>their HTML pages without the need for or understanding of complicated
>updating programs. Does such a program exist?[/color]

You want a content management system, or CMS. Now, everyone and his
sister seems to have written one, and since I barely have experience
with any of them, I won't give any names. Google for them, and you'll
find quite a few. Basically, I see two mechanisms:

1) Server side processed, using a database on the server, and a
templating mechanism for producing the actual pages. The web pages are
thus always produced on the fly. This is what news sites etc. generally
use.

2) Home side solutions, where you write simplified content pages, and
make some templates, and when you're done writing, you just generate the
final pages, which you can then upload to your server. Some programs
even take care of the uploading (of only those pages that actually got
changed) for you.

I personally feel that for your client, you want the latter.

BTW I found a rather complete list of Open Source (= likely freely
available) CMS programs at <http://www.la-grange.net/cms>, and a more
more complete list of any kind of license, at
<http://www.clueful.com.au/cgi-bin/cmsdirectory/browse/Products>.

--
Bart.

Bart Lateur <bart.lateur@pandora.be> wrote in
news:7l5aiv0e6kg9qlnghr0g60a63ia54gd10u@4ax.com:
[color=blue]
> Todd Cary wrote:
>[color=green]
>>Some of my clients would like to have a way to update text and tables in
>>their HTML pages without the need for or understanding of complicated
>>updating programs. Does such a program exist?[/color]
>[/color]
The cheapest option is probably to use include files, which could be plain
text, say "news.inc" which can be embedded in your nicely designed page. It
could even include p tags, as long as they know not to touch them. This
means giving them FTP access, but it is cheap. Content-Managed sites vary
in price, but you are looking to pay 1k+ for a fairly simple CMS website.

Adam