Ask Slashdot: Live Update Web Pages on Linux?

Mike wonders about the following issue: "I am working on development of a Linux hosted web server that will allow users to edit their own web spaces. I realize that there is FTP for file/web-page management purposes, but for many of my users, this would be a disaster, since they don't understand the in's & out's of managing a site thru FTP. Are there some kind of extensions for Apache (or any other Linux-based servers) that allow me to do live & in-place editing?" I wonder if something like this is necessary with the difficulty of FTP becoming less of an issue with the better of the graphical clients out there. It allows users to use better Web Development tools on their own machines as well. What do you all think?

Comments

Solutions, Solutions, Solutions

[Jordy]

First there is of course CVS from http://www.cyclic.com. CVS isn't just for source code you know. It provides all that's needed to do complete web site management between a number of webmasters at once. It keeps a copy of every revision of every file, giving you access to it in case you change something by mistake. Other control systems like Aegis and RCS are equally usable.

There are MS Frontpage Extentions from http://www.rtr.com for Apache. These automate common tasks such as access controls, simple CGI. Frontpage, even thought it is a Microsoft product, isn't that bad of a program. It provides a fairly good UI for WYSIWYG editing of web pages along with a file manager resembling Microsoft Explorer. Frontpage 2000 will also feature a way to directly access your web pages from Microsoft Explorer via Network Neighborhood... which is pretty cool.

There is WebDAV from http://www.webdav.org for Apache. WebDAV is the "standard" extensions for Apache for web site editing. All your favorite programs should be using it in the future including Frontpage 2000, Dreamweaver (unconfirmed.. but hinted at), etc. It is currently supported by IE5's little editor dealy as well as a few simple clients for Unix.

More and more webmasters are having to conceed to using a WYSIWYG editor, as well they should. Web standards today are not exactly the simple tags they used to be. You have CSS, XML, XSL, HTML 4 with their complex box algorithms and silly incompatibilities between web browsers which make WYSIWYG programs very attractive. WYSIWYG editors have their place, don't dismiss them simply because the common-folk use them as well.

Then again, don't abandon source editing altogether, nothing beats a text editor when you need a quick fix :)

--

Zope

[William Tanksley]

At www.zope.org, you'll find a complete system to do exactly that, complete with transaction-based undo (that is, anything you can do you can undo later, without having to undo anything else if you don't want to) and access-control-list based security. It's open source.

It has database support, and there are modules to handle slashdot-like forums ("Confera"), WebDAV, and many other things. Its default interface (when not using webDAV) is simply HTML -- you can administer (and add content to) your pages from any web browser which supports passwords, frames, and forms.

It's trivial to install, and the default package is essentially a trial (it stes itself up on another port to not get in your way), so it's harmless to play with before you commit. It's a breeze to use, but almost frighteningly powerful.

I'm an experimental sort, so I never learned HTML well enough to make a page look good. Because of Zope, though (and a little help from CSS), my web page was able to inherit the look and feel of my friend's web page, and automatically change when he changed his. So now I provide the technical design, and he makes the site look good -- and there have NEVER been any maintainance headaches, and we both know that if someday there were it wouldn't matter because we could always 'undo' the problem.

Get it. Learn it. Live it. Zope.

-Billy