Friday, August 01, 2003

Webmonkey: authoring: Contribute 2: Doin' It For Themselves

Webmonkey: authoring: Contribute 2: Doin' It For Themselves "Macromedia Contribute's main asset is still its ease of use. Anyone with even the smallest bit of common Web sense is able to publish changes to a live website.
The whole idea of passing off a webpage to one of the sales drones for edits and updates is still enough to make a more than a few developers cringe, but keep this in mind: You have control over user permissions, and you have the ability to revert the file or change anything that doesn't jive with you. Macromedia has taken a bit of flack over the fact that Contribute is designed to push updates to a live server and not a staging server. After all, what happens when somebody publishes sensitive information, forgets to check their spelling, or drops a 2MB JPEG on a product page?
Macromedia's stance is that the software was designed specifically to take all of the day-to-day publishing chores out of the hands of the developer. If a Web developer is forced to review and approve every change to the live site, then Contribute's efficiency starts to become less potent — you're still babysitting your content team! The goal is to allow the content-only types to gain greater control over their little corner of the site. And, by doing so, the sense of responsibility over the quality of that specific content is multiplied.
So, with that in mind, Webmonkey can heartily recommend that you try out Contribute 2 and start telling those suits in marketing to make their own damn changes."

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