Ask Slashdot: Live Update Web Pages on Linux? 140
Mike
wonders about the following issue:
"I am working on development of a Linux hosted web server
that will allow users to edit their own web spaces. I
realize that there is FTP for file/web-page management
purposes, but for many of my users, this would be a
disaster, since they don't understand the in's & out's of
managing a site thru FTP. Are there some kind of
extensions for Apache (or any other Linux-based servers)
that allow me to do live & in-place editing?"
I wonder if something like this is necessary with the
difficulty of FTP becoming less of an issue with the better
of the graphical clients out there. It allows users to use
better Web Development tools on their own machines as well.
What do you all think?
Try AOLServer (Score:1)
Pretty neat server, it scales, and it's free (but not open source)
www.aolserver.com
Re:samba (Score:1)
Hidden Syntax
Re:samba (Score:1)
-pete
Peter Daly
pdaly@usa.net
WebRFM (Score:1)
[geocities.com]
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/
It supports WebDAV (and can be used with M$ Web Folders) along side having a more traditional form
based interface.
Re:FrontPage? (Score:2)
If you can get away with it DON'T INSTALL FP as it is a cancer that will keep webmasters and users on your back to restore pages thay have killed and to change the structure of the web. The security is completely non-existant. Stay away from it, it is rubbish, users love it, but your admin time will increase enormously and your security will dissappear.
Peter
Re:Drall -- Web-based File Manager (Score:1)
Drall -- Web-based File Manager (Score:3)
Problem Solved (Score:1)
Still, people were complaining they didn't know HTML. They only wanted to update the news page. So I simplified it for a goddamned monkey. All I did was had all the fields that the news update required (topic,updater,updater's email,news submission). It then opened a temp file, and copied line for line from the old file. When it came to just above the old news, it placed the submission above it. It then continued writing the rest of the file. Then the files were unlocked and switched. The temp file gets deleted. Job done.
This was my first decent cgi/perl program. I'm sure you could write one in under a few hours. Mine took me under 100 lines of code. Really inefficient little hack-job.
Good luck to ya.
Re:FrontPage? (Score:3)
Re:Web page updates and SSI (.shtml) obliteration (Score:1)
You pull down an SHTML page in Frontpage, the tags will remain in the HTML and appear as comments. Unless you delete them.. they will still remain when you save the file to the server.
--
Solutions, Solutions, Solutions (Score:4)
There are MS Frontpage Extentions from http://www.rtr.com [rtr.com] for Apache. These automate common tasks such as access controls, simple CGI. Frontpage, even thought it is a Microsoft product, isn't that bad of a program. It provides a fairly good UI for WYSIWYG editing of web pages along with a file manager resembling Microsoft Explorer. Frontpage 2000 will also feature a way to directly access your web pages from Microsoft Explorer via Network Neighborhood... which is pretty cool.
There is WebDAV from http://www.webdav.org [webdav.org] for Apache. WebDAV is the "standard" extensions for Apache for web site editing. All your favorite programs should be using it in the future including Frontpage 2000, Dreamweaver (unconfirmed.. but hinted at), etc. It is currently supported by IE5's little editor dealy as well as a few simple clients for Unix.
More and more webmasters are having to conceed to using a WYSIWYG editor, as well they should. Web standards today are not exactly the simple tags they used to be. You have CSS, XML, XSL, HTML 4 with their complex box algorithms and silly incompatibilities between web browsers which make WYSIWYG programs very attractive. WYSIWYG editors have their place, don't dismiss them simply because the common-folk use them as well.
Then again, don't abandon source editing altogether, nothing beats a text editor when you need a quick fix
--
Re:QuickEdit HTML editor (Score:1)
hope those perl scripts werk better then that login does
Re:Zope Suggestion (Score:1)
I haven't had the same stability problems as you
seem to have had with Zope's built-in Python Web
server, and I'm running the "old" 1.10.2 release
with ZopeHTTPServer. This is on Solaris 2.6,
though. There's always ZServer with the later
releases.
If it's just web pages.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Opinions on Zope? (Score:3)
Zope can handle large volumes -- see their page on case studies -- several online newspapers use it on a commercial basis for high volume/high traffic situations.
They also have a chat board product (with threaded discussions) that you can plug in. Zope also has an indexing facility built-in that automatically gives you a search capability.
As for editing, Zope has just implemented WebDAV which allows for distributed authoring and versioning. You can try webdav editing with IE 5.0 and Zope to see if this fulfills your needs.
You manage the entire website with just a browser 99.99% of the time, so you don't have to worry about deploying client software.
It also has an ACL like hierarchy based user access/security interface so you can fine tune the capabilities that you give your users to access or modify your data.
As for converting your back issue articles, it maybe just possible to use ftp to transfer all your back-issue html files into zope. Zope has a builtin ftp server that can be used to transfer files between your ftpclient and the webserver's internal object database.
If this is not what you want, you can probably create a program to do that for you. Its all open source, so the code is available for your modifications.
It also has a dynamic community of Zope advocates that are very helpful in bringing newbies up to speed. They have an active mailing list you can join.
In terms of commercial support, Zope is backed by a commercial company, Digital Creations, who originally created the software as proprietary closed source and saw the light, turned it into open source. If you want commercial support or do it quickly you can hire those guys.
Now, the negatives (not entirely). Zope uses a scripting language named DTML (document markup template language) -- it's like HTML which is easy enough to learn but also subtle enough that it can take a while to become an expert in. Also, while not required, it would help a lot if you know Python, because that's what its written in.
I would urge you to try it out or at least check out the web site( www.zope.org [zope.org]) because I'm certainly impressed by it and all the people I know who started using it are also mightily impressed by it.
WebDAV (Score:2)
Telnet? Yeah, cleartext passwords... (Score:1)
mechanisms of telnet and ftp are too insecure.
The users should develop the web site on their local hard drive and then simply synchronize files with some secure transfer like ``scp -R my_dir me@website.com:public_html''
That gives you the most flexibility. You can
version control all your stuff locally, test it
carefully, etc.
The web server is just a place where you showcase
a snapshot of your work. It's not where the work
should be taking place. That's just fundamentally
dumb.
Re:okay, I'm curious... (Score:1)
Like I said, I never learned HTML very well, because I refused to apply myself to it. Because of that, all the content I wrote was just that, _content_. Because of the way Zope works, all of my content automatically had Sam's styles applied to it, without any work on my part.
And now, I'm almost accidentally learning HTML.
I'm contributing to the site as well -- in spite of my lack of knowledge of HTML, I'm _very_ good at discovering things and experimenting with them, so I often write up some pretty cool DTML (that's Zope's form of server-side HTML) which Sam later on moves into the root where anyone can use it.
It's a fair trade -- I don't need to know HTM, he doesn't need to learn DTML. We both do anyhow, of course, just because.
-Billy
Re:Zope problems, clone in Perl? (Score:1)
1) It's in Python. Ack. I *want* to like Python, but there are just too many factors keeping me from affording any time to it. I'm still a Perl Monger.
You are right to be afraid -- once you spend the half hour needed to know Python well, you'll never want to look at Perl again.
I'm joking, of course. Perl is a cool language, and you'll never stop using it now that you know it -- however, you'll find that text processing is actually NOT the best way to do everything. Including CGI.
2) Major control needed over the server, which sucks when you don't own the server and have no possible say over configuration. Most commonly, Perl and *maybe* a database are available to me. Installing Python, and web server extensions is verboten.
Then Zope is forever off-limits to you. I'm sorry.
On the other hand, perhaps it might be worth your while to appeal to your ISP (whom _you_ are paying to provide a service) and convince them to add what is a very minor and highly useful program.
3) It's all dynamic. No static publishing of pages which are, for the majority of the time, static. Granted there's a cache, but can that be as fast as spitting an HTML file instance of a content object into the web doc root and letting Apahe serve it up?
Zope is *highly* optimized, and if there's a fast way to do something it'll do it. All of the bottlenecks are written in C, thanks to Python's extensibility.
It's a pretty sophisticated program; don't underestimate it.
And no, it's unlikely that a static page would be served faster -- although that would have to depend on your machine, your bandwidth, and the hit rate (and your OS). If Zope's not running your stuff fast enough, going to static pages might provide a speedup over some of that domain -- but then, it might not.
I've been working on what's partially a "clone" of Zope, in that it has much of the same functionality, written in Perl.
I'd say you're wasting your time -- but of course, I don't really believe that. I wish you luck.
You're not going to be able to match Zope, though; Python doesn't have CPAN, but it does have a HUGE number of useful scripts for a huge number of purposes. Zope has ACL security, transaction-level undo and redo, highly optimized code, and a solid support community.
Oh, and you don't have to learn Python to use it -- but you will, you will. Once you've seen what Python can do so easily, there's no way you'll remain satisfied with the Old Way of doing things.
-Billy
Re:Zope problems, clone in Perl? (Score:1)
Ah. I see the problem. "Selling" Zope to them might sound like fun from the outside, but whew... :-)
That's why the feature to publish static pages via file system or FTP upload is attractive to me, since I might not even have to install a Web Application Server (mine or Zope) on a remote server. Just install one here and use it as a development machine, and have static updates rolled automatically to the client's machines.
Well... Okay, here's the scoop. Separate publishing is a major goal for Zope, meaning that it'll be coming along very soon (we're working on WebDAV in the current version). I don't have any idea on when and how, since I don't follow the mailing list.
Well, I'm hoping that, once I complete the first revision's batch of features and release it open source that I can attract some fellow Perl Mongers to waste time with me. :)
Good luck -- it's quite likely that you'll succeed.
And good luck to all of us if you do -- I'm seriously afraid that having two competing products in this new niche will jeapordize both. I'm probably just paranoid, and aside from that worry I'm excited about your project -- quite aside from my puzzlement about why you're redoing all that work in the first place.
Well, from what limited experience I have with Python, I like it. But my time is limited, and I don't want to devote time to mastering another language for just one product (i.e. Zope) when I have skill in Perl and use it every day. THen again, maybe after an attempt at matching that one product, I'll find that further time might be better spent with Python.
Python is great, but in all my work with Zope I haven't so much as seen a single line of Python code. Why should I? Don't shun Zope because you're afraid of learning Python -- Zope won't force you to learn Python.
-Billy
Re:Zope problems, clone in Perl? (Score:1)
Ah. I see the problem. "Selling" Zope to them might sound like fun from the outside, but whew... :-)
That's why the feature to publish static pages via file system or FTP upload is attractive to me, since I might not even have to install a Web Application Server (mine or Zope) on a remote server. Just install one here and use it as a development machine, and have static updates rolled automatically to the client's machines.
Well... Okay, here's the scoop. Separate publishing is a major goal for Zope, meaning that it'll be coming along very soon (we're working on WebDAV in the current version). I don't have any idea on when and how, since I don't follow the mailing list.
Well, I'm hoping that, once I complete the first revision's batch of features and release it open source that I can attract some fellow Perl Mongers to waste time with me. :)
Good luck -- it's quite likely that you'll succeed.
And good luck to all of us if you do -- I'm seriously afraid that having two competing products in this new niche will jeapordize both. I'm probably just paranoid, and aside from that worry I'm excited about your project -- quite aside from my puzzlement about why you're redoing all that work in the first place.
Well, from what limited experience I have with Python, I like it. But my time is limited, and I don't want to devote time to mastering another language for just one product (i.e. Zope) when I have skill in Perl and use it every day. THen again, maybe after an attempt at matching that one product, I'll find that further time might be better spent with Python.
Python is great, but in all my work with Zope I haven't so much as seen a single line of Python code. Why should I? Don't shun Zope because you're afraid of learning Python -- Zope won't force you to learn Python.
But I want to learn the hard way for now. :) Anyone else interested?
No, but can I be your arch-enemy? ;-)
Really, though, good luck. And whatever you do, PLEASE study the competition before you release! I've seen far too many inferior products crowd out good ones, to both ones' demise.
-Billy
Zope (Score:5)
It has database support, and there are modules to handle slashdot-like forums ("Confera"), WebDAV, and many other things. Its default interface (when not using webDAV) is simply HTML -- you can administer (and add content to) your pages from any web browser which supports passwords, frames, and forms.
It's trivial to install, and the default package is essentially a trial (it stes itself up on another port to not get in your way), so it's harmless to play with before you commit. It's a breeze to use, but almost frighteningly powerful.
I'm an experimental sort, so I never learned HTML well enough to make a page look good. Because of Zope, though (and a little help from CSS), my web page was able to inherit the look and feel of my friend's web page, and automatically change when he changed his. So now I provide the technical design, and he makes the site look good -- and there have NEVER been any maintainance headaches, and we both know that if someday there were it wouldn't matter because we could always 'undo' the problem.
Get it. Learn it. Live it. Zope.
-Billy
FrontPage? (Score:1)
Be forewarned that there is a lot of concern over how secure the current binary-only implementation is, though.
Re:Perl! (Score:1)
Re:FTP = plaintext logins = bad (Score:1)
Re:Perl! (Score:2)
Re:Zope (Score:2)
from the right kind of company with an
excellent business model and a superb built-in
scripting language.
With Zope you have the power to do day-to-day
managment with a minimum of effort while
still having all the freedom to extend,
improve, and fundamentally rework every
component of the system.
This is the *only* complete application server
that is true open-source. Zope is professionally
supported and is maturing extremely rapidly.
You won't be disapponted if you commit to
Zope for your platform.
Telnet and a menu driven restricted shell? (Score:1)
Just give them access to a curses based file manager, and a text editor, or something similar? Just a thought.
On a secure network use Samba. (Score:1)
They'll love being able to just save files on to the web server and all but the very dumbest will eventually get how links work.
If it's insecure then use FTP and recommend some GUI ftp client to them, DON'T use frontpage, it's *incredibly* insecure.
Re:samba (Score:1)
Re:Opinions on Zope? (Score:1)
So as you can see Zope was created to manage the content of these newspaper companies.
Oliver
Re:Tried and True (Score:1)
QuickEdit HTML editor (Score:1)
I use it to maintain several web sites, and one of the servers has a public login for people to try it out:
Don't upload warez to the site!If you want the source code just email me and I'll give you the latest set of Perl scripts and the installer script. Just don't redistribute it.
Ja.
-Paul
Damn, they need some way to remove posts. 9_9 (Score:1)
Ick, what a way to mention your html editor when you can't even generate readable html in your post. I'm going back to bed.
Re:okay, I'm curious... dreamweaver (Score:1)
And as we all know, BBEdit doesn't suck.
Re:Solutions, Solutions, Solutions (Score:1)
Can Newbies really FTP a site in? (Score:2)
I think it is necessary. Have you sat and watched newbies attempt to get something up on the web? We are all so used to file structures, HTML goodness, the niceties of networks and everything else required to get working pages from our computer to a server that we forget they are starting from scratch. These are people that break out when faced with saving a file and finding it again from Windows Wordpad. They are the ones that Microsoft included that Most Recently Used Documents pop up a few dozen pixels above the Start button for.
I've watched (and helped) friends get stuff up on Geocities, and they are quite happy to use that frames based JavaScript page builder thing. Some have even graduated to typing their own HTML into the forms based page editor that Geocities makes available. But they have yet to master getting files from here to there. The concept of editing a page on their own machine and then uploading it is still foreign to them. So simple web based tools are necessary and useful to get the neophytes started on one of the things that makes the internet such a revolution in communication, the ability to self publish.
In so many words, yes, it is necessary.
Look at Zope (Score:1)
http://www.zope.org
Re:Zope Suggestion (Score:1)
Re:Netscape Composer (Score:1)
try webdav (Score:3)
Don't do it! (Score:1)
Don't allow your people to edit live pages - they never know who is going to load that mis-edited page they haven't debugged yet!
web pages should be tested out of the public web arena, then merged in when - and only when - they have been finished.
Why not use homesite? (Score:1)
Intosi
A couple of thoughts (Score:2)
On the other hand, for my intranet server, I just mounted
Anyway, good luck!
Vince
Re:samba (Score:1)
This is actually how I admin my personal website now. I must say that it's one of the most friendly ways that I've ever seen, and you can make it pretty secure (allow/deny in smb.conf, for example). I use a text editor (PFE for Windows), and save my files in a share that's mapped to a local drive. It works quite well.
Again, like the other posters have said, it will break scripts unless you ask Samba to do CR/LF translation, which will break pix. But then, if users are wanting to use scripts, they're probably bright enough (or should at least understand how they should be) to use FTP. I mean, letting users install scripts without having them know even basic Unix is a little extreme in the "luser empowerment" movement.
If they're on Windows clients, using Samba will make their day a lot easier. Just edit the files "locally", and they "magically" appear on the website (provided that you set-up permanent shares on the Windows client).
I don't know about FrontPage working in this setup or not, but you really don't want FP extensions on your website. That would be a Bad Thing.
The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false.
Re:samba (Score:1)
True, true.... There's just no way to set it as default, so I tend to forget.... :)
The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false.
Re:okay, I'm curious... dreamweaver (Score:1)
wysiwyg html editor. The code it outputs is relatively clean, and the interface is pretty good. I still write it myself, but, were I going to use a tool, it would be Dreamweaver
Gossamer Threads' FileManager 1.0 (Score:1)
Gossamer Threads' File Manager [gossamer-threads.com]
--diva
Re:Zope problems, clone in Perl? (Score:1)
1) It's in Python. Ack. I *want* to like Python, but there are just too many factors keeping me from affording any time to it. I'm still a Perl Monger.
2) Major control needed over the server, which sucks when you don't own the server and have no possible say over configuration. Most commonly, Perl and *maybe* a database are available to me. Installing Python, and web server extensions is verboten.
3) It's all dynamic. No static publishing of pages which are, for the majority of the time, static. Granted there's a cache, but can that be as fast as spitting an HTML file instance of a content object into the web doc root and letting Apahe serve it up?
I've been working on what's partially a "clone" of Zope, in that it has much of the same functionality, written in Perl.
Beyond being a clone, I'm also working on scheduled static publishing features. And publishing can mean writing a static file to the web server path, or uploading to a remote FTP server.
And, being in Perl, I want to leverage the whole of CPAN behind making a library of content classes. (i.e. POP3 enabled objects, IRC objects, FInger objects, whatever)
I'm also working on making it mod_perl friendly so that, when you are using it to serve up dynamic objects it shifts from static pages to a mod_perl accellerated server.
Basically, when I'm done, I want a system that's flexible enough to fit many scenarios. You can have it on your home linux box as a dev site, FTP'ing updates automatically to Mom&Pop's ISP. You can have it on a whip ass Apache/mod_perl server providing published static and dynamic content.
Why all the trouble? Ninjacode.com. We want to put together a Webmonkey-like site, but maintained and written entirely by the community. Delegate editorial control of certain sections to trusted people, allow article submission by anyone, allow peer-review of CGI scripts through SlashDot-like forums, etc so forth... and all administered via web.
Anyway... I'm done babbling. Just want to see if anyone's interested in my project, or if anyone can give me really good reasons to learn Python and stop reinventing the wheel..
Re:Zope problems, clone in Perl? (Score:1)
Hmm... but I like writing things like s/$!$*..$%$#/#$@/xcvb and having it do cool things.
Then Zope is forever off-limits to you. I'm sorry.
On the other hand, perhaps it might be worth your while to appeal to your ISP (whom _you_ are paying to provide a service) and convince them to add what is a very minor and highly useful program.
Unfortunately, the owners of servers where I work are not hired by us. We're hired by them.
That's why the feature to publish static pages via file system or FTP upload is attractive to me, since I might not even have to install a Web Application Server (mine or Zope) on a remote server. Just install one here and use it as a development machine, and have static updates rolled automatically to the client's machines.
Zope is *highly* optimized, and if there's a fast way to do something it'll do it. All of the bottlenecks are written in C, thanks to Python's extensibility.
And no, it's unlikely that a static page would be served faster
That's the gist I'm getting so far... And unless I can recruit people to the project who can do those optimisations for me, looks like I will fall behind in performance.
I'd say you're wasting your time -- but of course, I don't really believe that. I wish you luck.
Well, I'm hoping that, once I complete the first revision's batch of features and release it open source that I can attract some fellow Perl Mongers to waste time with me.
You're not going to be able to match Zope, though; Python doesn't have CPAN, but it does have a HUGE number of useful scripts for a huge number of purposes. Zope has ACL security, transaction-level undo and redo, highly optimized code, and a solid support community.
So far, I have the versioning of objects to do transactions, have access control, but not the optimization or the community. HOping the community will come, and from there the optimizations and support. But maybe I'm too optimistic about the 'Build it and they will come' concept.
Oh, and you don't have to learn Python to use it -- but you will, you will. Once you've seen what Python can do so easily, there's no way
you'll remain satisfied with the Old Way of doing things.
Well, from what limited experience I have with Python, I like it. But my time is limited, and I don't want to devote time to mastering another language for just one product (i.e. Zope) when I have skill in Perl and use it every day. THen again, maybe after an attempt at matching that one product, I'll find that further time might be better spent with Python.
But I want to learn the hard way for now.
Re:Xoom used FTP (Score:1)
Why would we WANT to help this? (Score:1)
Look, an optimistic estimate would be that 99.9% of all web pages suck. That's pretty much a given. Why do they suck? Because people who don't know anything about human interface design, HTML standards, accessibility, and are often color-blind and respond only to blinking lights and shiny objects (thus explaining the popularity of animated GIFs and the BLINK tag).
The U.S. Gov't has recently mandated that all gov't and contractor web pages be accessible, striking a blow for a usable Web.
We should be trying to *RAISE* the level-of-entry training needed to make a web page, not *LOWER* it.
Make 'em use FTP and vi and the W3C specification like real designers do. Ban Sams.Net's alleged books. Make 'em pass a certified site design course *AND* have their pages pass validator.w3.org and Bobby before their page can be viewed by anyone else. Imprison the inventor of animated GIFs.
We can have a decent, readable Web, or we can have point-and-drool "Information Superhighway Publishing Made Easy In 12 Minutes, Unlimited Edition!"
Re:Funny you say that.... (Score:1)
Ah, so you're an Infernal Exploder luser? Congratulations, you're a victim, just like everyone else who subjects themselves to that crap, and especially to ActiveVirus! Did you reformat your HD, at least? What kind of fool admits to using MSIE on /., anyway?
Go on, then, critique my web site. What "horrid" feature of it don't you like:
I just checked usage stats for my site - last month, 5152 sites made 9249 visits and received 13219 pages and files (excluding sounds and images). And that's to a PERSONAL HOME PAGE. You didn't even have the balls to link your own page in. What do you get, 1 hit a month?
I looked over at your work site, www.jyster.com, and I feel sorry for any customers you victimize... and I didn't even experience it in its full shockwave suckiness.
_ _______________
--- jyster.com ---
[LINK]
[EMBED] You need a browser that supports Netscape plugins or ActiveX
controls to view this page.
if you see a broken puzzle piece above, click here to get the plugin.
click here after the Shockwave installer has completed. You do not
need to restart your browser.
_________________________________________________
--- 1032 ---
Just shoot your computer, your cow-orkers, and yourself now, and get it over with, for the good of the Web. Yeesh.
So post screenshots (Score:1)
Xoom used FTP (Score:1)
Right from the start, Xoom used FTP. Even though it's tough for newbies, they *will learn* how to do it. Xoom's been around for a while and they have a lot of clueless people with webpages on the server.
Some suggestions (Score:2)
I don't have any good references on the above, but that should be a start.
Screw _that_. (Score:1)
Too bad the "FM" for FTP doesn't list more modern and easier methods to do what the questioner wants to accomplish. WebDAV is much superior to FTP for these purposes, but if you enjoy hangin' with the dinosaurs with your beloved FTP mastery (har har), I won't stand in your way.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
samba (Score:3)
Im sure there is a lot of reasons for this not being a good idea, in that case please enlighten me cause I was thinking of setting up something like this
If you're using a vserver, try Vlinto (Score:1)
If you are wanting an Apache extension/module... I think WebDAV is better, although I haven't used it (yet).
http://customcgi.net/vlinto/
Re:Perl! (Score:1)
It runs all scripts as the user and not as root and/or nobody
mc is your friend! (Score:1)
If your customers can navigate the Windows FileExplorer, then they will have no problems whatsoever with mc.
Tried and True (Score:1)
Web page updates and SSI (.shtml) obliteration (Score:2)
All server-side includes, variable, macros, conditional text directives, and just about anything else interesting in the original, before-processing, dynamic HTML file is OBLITERATED. The budding webdesigner doesn't even realize anything is being lost as the original dynamic page is replaced with a static one.
I've seen this happen in several places, different users, etc. It's critical to either:
1) Make sure they're editing the original file with all the tags, includes, etc., visible, or
2) Hide everything behind a cgi-based editing/submission system so they -can't- mangle special parts, or
3) Only let them edit
Another common problem is when symlinks are replaced with normal files in the update process (the enduser usually doesn't even know what symlinks are, and Samba doesn't show them as being different from files and directories either) This can confuse the people who knew what the symlinks were for, and worse, break scripts that depended on them.
Have fun....
Re:samba (Score:1)
I use samba to connect to my unix machine, and the control over file permissions etc withing the smb.conf is great. I havent tried using windows networking voer anything less than a local lan tho.
Yeah, and while we're at it... (Score:1)
You want 'decent' content on the Web?
Make some.
You don't want to see 'non-decent'/'non-readable' content on the Web?
Close your eyes or stay the fuck offline!
Flame me.
chris
Re:Some suggestions (Score:1)
Re: Netscape Composer (Score:1)
Netscape Composer (Score:2)
Is that pretty much what you are looking for?
Re:Tried and True (Score:1)
server: sol.wlcc.edu
user name: w
password:
directory:
All of this, especially the last line, was too much to handle. And they didn't use FTP often enough to remember that all the info was already stored in a WS_FTP profile. Why, it was too much for them to remember what "FTP" and "WS_" were!
We solved the problem with a special FTP client that automatically transfers files. It downloads the appropriate section of the site onto the user's HD and queues files for transfer when it sees changes on either the HD or the server. It has actually worked quite well, in combination with Dreamweaver (highly recommended).
(Please e-mail me if you're interested in the FTP client. Remove the "spammenot".)
Re:Zope Suggestion (Score:1)
The developers of PHP3 say it's better than CGI scripts (under Apache and with mod_php3), because the mod_php3 module is loaded into memory only once. When you call a PHP3 page, on a server running mod_php3, it doesn't have to spend the time loading the interpreter, nor does it have to waste the memory loading multiple copies of the interpreter.
I'm not trying to say PHP3 is better; on the contrary, Zope's features look VERY cool. But how does it get around this "problem"?
Ryan
Opinions on Zope? (Score:3)
Thanks a lot!
And perhaps best of all... (Score:1)
CJK
Re:Can Newbies really FTP a site in? (Score:1)
Re:Tried and True (Score:1)
Editing web pages in place (Score:1)
Two thumbs up (Score:1)
I don't have a clue how well Zope handles large loads but as far as functionality goes, anything you can do with Python you can do with Zope.
All you need is PHP (Score:2)
The last place I worked, we hosted some commercial sites for Real Estate Salespeople and other computer-illiterate types.
Using PHP, we had a simple template where they could upload pictures of their properties they were selling, add prices, descriptions, etc. I no longer work there, and did not part on the best of terms, so I no longer have access to the code - or I would gladly share.
I know it was not too much to write it though. PHP is relatively easy to learn.
A simple solution (Score:1)
If the users know HTML then Gossamer-Threads FileMan script is handy solution for this (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/fileman/
Chris
Re:Is making it easier a good idea? (Score:1)
Errr.... you can do this with the GNU Midnight Commander under linux... you can create a shortcut on the desktop to an FTP site and it looks and feels like a directory... I think.... it's either that or KDE that I'm thinking of, but it works with one of them. Either way, drag and drop, in-place editing, deletion, etc... all work with it.
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
Where to get Homesite. (Score:1)
'Real' in-place editing (sort of) (Score:1)
Oooh, one can only hope for real standards compliance...
Emacs + ftp (Score:1)
Database Management? (Score:1)
tred@f+N0SPAM+3d.net
I think you can figure it out, just remove the +nospam+ :). I'll get you in touch with him if neccisary.
Re:Xoom used FTP (Score:1)
Re:Drall -- Web-based File Manager (Score:1)
Another solution - Midgard (Score:3)
I know that you have been told about many other application servers by now. But there is another one that you might find interesting - Midgard.
Midgard is built over the foundation of PHP3, MySQL and Apache, and works on the ideology that there will be no normal files on the server but rather that all the queries are validated with a database table containing instructions on what to do with incoming URLs.
It is actually easy to create good-looking and effective web-based interfaces with this. I've done it with a few sites, and even normal sales personnel and school people have been able to create content to their pages.
So if you are interested, check Midgard out at http://midgard.greywolves.org [greywolves.org]. The system is under LGPL, and came publicly available just last night.
I like the system, but then again, it can be said that I have bias...
--
FTP is not hard (Score:1)
One problem that might come out of letting folks edit their webspaces directly on the server is that the quality of their pages will slip. The quicker and easier something is to do, the more likely it is that someone will do it poorly.
I do believe that clueless people are entitled to their own sites. Freedom is important. Instead of maintaining their active files directly, you could let users play with a safe copy-- either on their local machines or on a secure part of your sever. Then, after the user has taken a GOOD LOOK at everything and VERIFIED that they have created something that is decent and clueful, apply their changes to what's on the server.
Hey-- isn't that how comment posting works at
I've done it this way with my personal site for years. I keep an exact copy of the site at home (on a windows box, so shoot me!) and mess with it all night long until it looks good, and only THEN do I FTP everything to the university server. If you replace "FTP" with "click the Big Red Button(tm)" my grandma could do it.
Check these sites (Score:2)
http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki
http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/O
Fastrack Bites! (Score:1)
FASTRACK?! NEAT?!
Fast track for responsible for putting me off hosting under UNIX. That program bites. It was less stable than IIS under NT, it shut itself down at least twice a day, and it's not like it was dealing with load either, say about 250 hits an hour. It sucks *BIG TIME* :)
And don't get me started on WYSIWYG editors *spit*
Is making it easier a good idea? (Score:1)
OK this is a rant, because my brother in law wants to setup a web site of pictures of my nephew *grin* and AOLs web interface is horrible!
Call me a throw back if you will (they do at work because I use EditPad for all my web coding needs *grin*, unless I'm doing ISAPI stuff, Visual C++ yummy) but ever since the spread of WYSIWYG editors (FrontPage, Netscape's built in job, Hotdog, Dreamweaver et al) the standard of HTML on the web has gone to hell.
Now I know I'm guilty of writing dire HTML ( my home page [bann.co.uk] sucks), but most of the time it's viewable in pretty much everything (ah the kludges to get stylesheets working cross browser, thanks Netscape)
It's all very well people putting up pages, but the lack of understanding on whats underneath is getting inexcusable.
In one of my last projects a government agency wanted to use FrontPage to keep a 10,000 page web site up to date, because they didn't want to learn HTML. Heck it's not difficult, and by hand coding you get smaller, nicer, more portable HTML.
Now I don't mind making FTP easier, I quite like IE5's ftp interface, and I long for the day when I can map an ftp site as a directory, but this dumbing down of the web IMHO is a bad move.
Of course this could be because my job involves writing web sites! OK I'm going back to bed *rofl*
Funny you say that.... (Score:1)
A several paragraph rant regarding how most webpages suck, yet your own website is utterly horrid.
It's amazing the number of hypocrites in the world...
~Rorschach
P.S.: That wonderful "virus alert" sound got a great laugh from most of my friends. Extra-lame, indeed.
Re:Tried and True (Score:1)
> that automatically transfers files. It downloads
> the appropriate section of the site onto the
> user's HD and queues files for transfer when it
> sees changes on either the HD or the server.
I think a lot of people would find that useful - would you consider making it publicly available ?
New Linux website software (Score:1)
Zope Suggestion (Score:1)
I strongly suggest using ZAP (Zope Apache Server, or configure your apache server for the task) since it will start python with a CGI script. I have yet to have a crash, and even simulating one with a "killall python" and connecting back up to the server, apache will restart the cgi in a few seconds.
One other word of advice, edit the apache start script where:
-c "RewriteRule ^/Zope/(.*) $dot/../Zope.cgi/\$1 [last,e=HTTP_CGI_AUTHORIZATION:%1,t
=application/x-httpd-cgi,l]" \
and change to:
-c "RewriteRule ^/(.*) $dot/../Zope.cgi/\$1 [last,e=HTTP_CGI_AUTHORIZATION:%1,t
=application/x-httpd-cgi,l]" \
if you wish not to have to put your web server address with a
Me again with Opinions on Zope. (Score:2)
Currently ours searches a database (mysql) and has been working great, blows the NT / Oracle server out of the water (and the Zope machine is running on a computer with fewer resources and is doing much more than the NT box). So far, we have put together a server that is faster, feature rich, much easier to use, doesn't crash, and everyone is happy with and done in a couple of months where the NT / oracle equiv. took about six months, crashed continuously, needed more ram than what we had, had no remote admin/ hard to input data, and was SLOW!
Zope Rules!
Re:Check these sites (Score:1)
I'm personally biased toward Jiki (http://www.jiki.org).
Re:samba (Score:2)
you would have a cron job to update the pages to a webserver using sitecopy ( http://www.lyra.org/sitecopy/ [lyra.org]).
You could make a web form to allow each user to configure Sitecopy for them.
Best of luck!
WebRFM (Score:2)