[thelist] DOC to HTML and a CMS

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Sun Jun 9 05:21:01 CDT 2002


On Sunday, June 9, 2002, at 11:50  am, Hershel Robinson wrote:

> I have a new client who has between 500 and 1000 articles in MS Word
> format.
> He wants to put them on a website.
>
> 1 Is there a utility to convert these into a usable HTML format
> automatically?

http://www.wvware.com/

>  Even if I were to hire a data entry person to convert by
> hand via MS Word's Save As Web Page feature,

If they're Word2k then expect a *lot* of work removing all the bloat
from Save As Web Page.

> I am then only going to want
> the BODY of the thing because I want to build the CSS myself.

Once you have clean HTML, it's not too bad. Strip them down to the
<body> and stuff that content into a template which you only have to
write once.

With something like
http://www.zope.org/Members/sf/HTMLDocument
you should be able to upload bare HTML docs which pick up your template
automagically.

> I do know someone who runs a fairly large site with a
> constantly-growing database of articles, and he puts new articles on the
> site via a secretary who cuts and pastes from MS Word into a private,
> online
> data-entry web page--this is an option but seems somewhat low tech.  Any
> ideas are appreciated.

Why do the documents need to be in Word at all? I've seen a few people
with browser based visual editors in their CMS so possibly the person
producing the articles could write them straight into the CMS without
knowing any HTML.

Here's a Zope one:
http://www.zope.org/Members/arvid/IEDocument

Structured Text is also useful for simple formatting without coding:
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/STX
http://www.zope.org/Members/mjablonski/StructuredDocument

> 2 Is there a pre-fab CMS which would be appropriate for such a site?  He
> does have the articles broken down into categories and subcategories,
> so I
> suppose it's actually only a matter of a small database, but I don't
> know if
> he plans to update the articles or to add a lot.

That's an important question, and the answer may determine whether he
needs a full CMS at all...

> The client is brand-new to
> the internet and doesn't know quite what he wants for this site just
> yet.

Clients with Internet experience are often the same. Only they often
don't  realise it.

Cheers
Martin
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