Frequently updated pages

[philell]

I have a page to list the editorials I write for my job, and I update it on a nearly daily basis.
http://www.philellsworth.com/commentary/commentary.html

What I've been doing, basically, is open the last one I saved in 1st Page, paste the new text over the old text, re-save it and upload the page to my Web Host.

Then I open the most recent individual page http://www.philellsworth.com/commentary/c022.html
in 1st Page, and do a "save as" for the next consecutive number. Then I paste the new text over the old, save it and upload it. For this example, like
http://www.philellsworth.com/commentary/c023.html

I'm sure there is a faster way to do this, but is it something someone with very basic html and css skills can figure out?

Here's another
http://reese.king-online.com/
page that is more along the lines of what I'm looking for, functionality-wise. the link is reese.king-online.com, but when you go to it, it gives you reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040414/index.php or whatever the most recently updated page is. I know absolutely nothing about .php files. I wouldn't mind learning a little about it, but I don't want to spend months learning it, as I'm not sure it would pay off in terms of time saved. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Terminator1138]

It looks like you are wanting the whole page to be replaced by new news content, correct?

I think your answer might be in PHP, but I don't know a lot about it. I will try to find what you might be interested in, but any comments from fellow posters are welcome to help.

[philell]

Much appreciated! I just wondered if there was a simple way I didn't know about.

Yes, each time I update, I add a new link and replace the existing column with a new one.

[Terminator1138]

You might just make a template and keep uploading the whole new page. That would be the easiest. I think that is what you are doing now, correct?

[philell]

Yeah, pretty much. Ideally, I'd like it to be set up to work the way some blogs do, with the ability to e-mail updates, and have it update automatically without all the copy-and-paste work involved. But I think that's some pretty hairy technology, at least for me. Anyhow, I appreciate your thoughts on this!

[fshagan]

Depends on how much you want to spend. Interactive Tools has a product called Page Publisher that would let you log in using Internet Explorer and update the page from your browser (IE 5.5 or later only). You could edit the page live, or cut and paste the new entry in. It runs $99 at http://www.interactivetools.com/products/pagepublisher/

There is also a free version called "HTML Area" found on their same site; you would have to create a log in for it to prevent it from being used by hackers.

The other way would be to have the web page import a text file, and re-upload the text file each day. That might save a little time over a complete upload of the page each day. PHP has a function to do so, which I have used in the past (I use it on my phpBB forums as a mod to put a "tagline" under the Forum Name).

[philell]

Hmmm! I kind of like the look of that Page Publisher. I figured there must be something around like that, I just hadn't heard of it. I may have to give that some more thought and try the demo. Thanks!

[fshagan]

PagePublisher works very well. I have it on one of my sites, and though I haven't used it in the manner I first thought I would, I have used it for minor updates while away from my home computer.

[Terminator1138]

Is it like macromedia contribute or similar?

[fshagan]

I'm not familiar with macromedia's product; it simply allows you to insert special HTML-like codes to allow editing by Internet Explorer (you log in using a username and password, and then can edit the portions of the page between the HTML-like codes in a WYSIWYG editor). If you log in as ADMIN, you can edit any part of the page from your browser, although it won't be WYSIWYG.

[Terminator1138]

Interesting, I have a client that is interested in updating content only, and I only knew about Contribute since it works well with Dreamweaver, I have also used Zope and I like that also for content, but my host does not have Zope on it.

[fshagan]

There's a class of scripts out there based on the IE 5.5 and later ability to act as a WYSIWYG editor on HTML pages online. Page Publisher is the best one I've found, as it makes it very easy to define a section of the page the customer can edit. You put comment tags around the section to be edited:

<!-- publish --> Edit this content <!-- /publish -->

You can have those tags around nearly any content, and you can set up multiple users with access to only certain pages based on their log on.

[Terminator1138]

does it work with other browsers or just IE? ie, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera? Most of my clients us IE, but I cannot always guarantee that.

[fshagan]

The browser editing function works only in IE, as far as I know. There was talk of it being incorporated into Opera and Mozilla, but I don't know if that ever happened. I know it isn't in the last version of Netscape, which has been abandoned by AOL-TIme Warner.

[azlatin2000]

Actually, netscape 7.1 which is based on The Gecko engine has it. Since Mozilla 1.3 Final there is a engine like in Internet Explorer called Midas. Since Netscape 7.1 is based on Moziila 1.4 it should have it. I have a html editor i am making that is sort of cross browser. But i quit on it once i learned php and mysql. For opera i am not sure, but so little people use that i wouldn't worry.