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Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating

Posted by timothy on from the shirinking-gap dept.

comforteagle writes "One of the greatest hurdles for people wishing to 'switch' to FOSS and Linux is finding a good replacement tool for what they are accustomed to using. In Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating Mark Stosberg investigates what open source solutions are available to replace Dreamweaver's powerful templating capabilities." Update: 01/09 by J : Hey, just for the record, Template Toolkit, which provides the solution Mr. Stosberg settles on, also powers much of Slashdot.

3 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Includes? by markjugg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm the author, and I'm a professional Perl programmer. I prefer Perl because I know Perl better.

  2. Faced the same problem - wrote my own CMS by kafooey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I faced the same problem with friends and professional clients - a mixture of common problems left them mith a real mess, and wary of consultants and designers.

    I ended up writing my own Content Management System, and am now trying to slow things down...

    I haven't even finished writing it and the company I work for (a systems integrator) want to license it for commercial use for several big projects. I have agreed with them to let me keep it open source and free for non commercial use - so you can find out about it on the PluggedOut webspace where I give all kinds of code away.

    Actually - the CMS project has been a real eye opener to the problems of getting corporates to understand open source... another story for another time :)

  3. A great replacement for Dreamweaver by jd142 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've moved most of our site over to a database backend with users able to edit the page from within IE using the SPAW web editor from Solmetra. http://www.solmetra.com/en/disp.php/en_products/en _spaw/en_spaw_about.

    Yes, I know, IE, but remember that's what most people use. They're working on a gecko version currently, but it's still in beta. The current version works fine in firefox now except that you don't get wysiwyg editing, just html.

    The way it works is this:

    We have a web page layout designed by a graphic artist. The content part of the page is stored in a database. The user logs into to the system and as the user surfs the site, any web page that the user can edit has a button at the bottom saying "edit this page". Permissions are done through a mysql database. Spaw doesn't care how you do security, they just provide the editor. When the user presses edit, the page is reloaded, but this time the content is loaded in the spaw editor embedded in the browser. User edits page, presses button to publish and the data is pumped back into the database and published instantly.

    I *really* like this system. I can customize the menus and create my own styles for the style menu. I put the official company colors as a style on an external style sheet and then add it to the menu. People that want to hightlight text can then use the official company colors. If the colors change, I just edit one style sheet.

    It really has worked well for us. No more licensing or software install hassles. Need to work from home? If you've got IE 5.5 or higher, and soon the gecko engine, you're set.

    While it isn't quite the same as Dreamweaver templates, the result is similar. Users can only edit the parts of the page that we give them permission to edit. We don't have to worry about a user deciding not to go with the approved layout and template.

    I really can't say enough good things about the SPAW product.