[thelist] Custom CMS

Ken Kogler ken.kogler at curf.edu
Wed Mar 27 18:57:01 CST 2002


This could get ugly, but bear with me:

The University I work for is currently rolling it's old website over to
a new one that was done by an outside firm. The problem we're running
into is that we need to come up with some way of managing the content.

Here's the university's requirements:
 - set permissions on a page-by-page basis
 - allow fac/staff to use a client-side html editor (like FP or DW)
 - all pages must fit into pre-developed template

This is going to be a nightmare to implement, and I want to find a
better way. The university is basically saying "we want the fac/staff to
be able to use FrontPage, but they can't be able to change the template"
- short of writing some kind of upload script to parse out all the
unnecessary code, I can't really come up with a way to do this. (The
university is against that upload script idea, too... They just want
people to map the live webspace to a drive letter and edit live).

The other issue we run into is that we have the same content in
different spots. The undergraduate admissions application, for example.
It's the same for Incoming Freshmen and Transfer Students. But the pages
they reside on are different, since the university is really big on this
breadcrumb trail idea they've got... And they want the breadcrumbs to
accurately reflect where the user is ("Incoming Students > Transfer >
App" as opposed to "Incoming Students > Freshmen > App"). So the logical
solution to that mess is to simply put the content in a database
(they're running SQL Server 7 here) and have the 2 separate physical
pages pull out the same content, which ties in to my next point
nicely...

If the content goes into a db, then I can simply build a web-based html
editor (we're all using IE here, so I can force browser compatibility)
to handle the basic requirements. All the fac/staff really needs to do
is <p>, <a href>, <img>, and <ul>... Setting up a system like the
article submission thingy on evolt should be more that sufficient.

So how do I convince The Powers That Be that an online web-based editor
is 1,000 times better than letting users use FP? I need ammo, people.

Anyone out there ever had to custom build their own CMS before?

-Ken Kogler

P.S. I have a feeling I'm going to be posting replies for clarification
for quite some time... :-)




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