12/05/2007

Go to page: 1 2  3   Printer Friendly Version

If you allow users to add new images, you once again get control of the operation. Besides setting where those images get placed in the file structure, you also get to place limits on the size and dimensions of images. Thank goodness … no longer do you have to deal with massive images that show up on the screen like a mongoloid from the deep.

Rollbacks

Every good document creator and programmer knows the godsend known as rollbacks and multiple revisions. You get to set the number of rollbacks that get kept on the server as your contributors edit. If they totally destroy something this is your chance to get back the last good revision. Keep in mind, though that each time they "save" their work it becomes a revision. So, the trick is finding the right balance between safety (high number of rollbacks) versus storage and complexity (obviously less revisions, less space, fewer files).

Other Settings

The most important user settings I walked through above. You still get to set some other key restrictions however. With "New Pages" you can set the default extension to .htm or .html as you like to maintain consistency across the site. The "Compatibility" settings dictate the level of compatibility between different versions of Contribute allowing for backward compatibility. "Enable PDF Embedding" indicates whether users can embed PDF content or whether it forces users to link to an external PDF document.

"Administration", "Publishing Server", and "Web Server" allow you to alter any of the initial settings you created for the site, configure the process to publish to an intermediary server, and set default pages (index.html, default.html, etc.)

Connection Keys

The connection keys are what make all this work in a distributed publishing environment. You create a connection key for each of your users based on their role and settings, and then send it to them. They simply double-click on the connection key to start up and automatically configure their copy of Contribute.

Once again, go to Edit, Administer Websites and you'll see this screen again. Choose the user/role that you wish to send a connection key to and then click on "Send Connection Key"

Choose whether you are sending the FTP login you already created or are creating a new one.

Choose the role for this connection key:

Then choose whether you will be emailing the connection key or sending it another way. If you are inside your firewall sending via email is most likely secure enough. You also choose a password to give the contributor to access their key. It goes without saying that you don't include the password in the same email as the actual connection key. Treat this as you might any other piece of encrypted data.

The file will be sent via email and then the contributor only needs to click on it to configure Contribute and be up and running.

In Part II of this series I will pick up where I left off here and illustrate the contributor's experience of Contribute.

Go to page: 1 2  3   Printer Friendly Version