Update Your Web Site Yourself…Easily!

After a web site is up and running, many clients ask about the possibility of doing their own updates. Until recently, these do-it-yourselfers had only a couple of choices. The first was to buy some web page software such as Dreamweaver, and learn to use it.

Since most of these small business owners only need to learn how to change text and pictures, a short session with their web designer was enough to get started. Of course, there are no safeguards that prevent you from accidentally ruining a page, which is enough to make most owners willing to pay their web master monthly, quarterly, or on an as-needed basis to do the updates.

Buying a Content Management System (CMS) can solve this problem. These are generally aimed at larger companies that have many people allowed to update certain parts of the web site. You can get a system custom designed by a programmer, or you can buy a ready-made package. A CMS allows non-technical people to safely update sections of a web site they have permission to work on. Either of these solutions will be more expensive than most small businesses care to spend to change their newsletter page once a month.

A New Solution

Now, however, there’s a relatively new product that makes sense for just about anyone interested in updating his or her own web site.

Macromedia’s Contribute 2 costs only $99 and will let you safely change text, add pictures, create new links, even add new pages that look just like the rest of your site.
If you have a large site and different people in charge of certain sections, they can each be allowed to update pages, but only in their assigned areas. You can even assign an editor who must approve changes before the pages are posted live on the site.

The way this works is your web designer first uses Contribute to mark off the sections of each page you want to update. Regions you don’t want to mess up, such as the logo, the navigation, or any of the code, can be locked down to prevent any accidents. If worse comes to worse, there’s even a Revert command that will bring back the most recent version of a page.

Contribute can be integrated while a site is being built, or it can be added to an existing site. It doesn’t matter if the site was created in Dreamweaver, GoLive, Front Page, or even hand-coded, although I’m guessing it may be a bit smoother in a Dreamweaver site since both programs were created by the same company.

You can download a complete fr*e working copy that’s good for a 30-day trial. Whether you’re a web site owner who’d like to try your hand at your own updates, or a web designer whose clients are looking for a good solution, I urge you to try the fr*e download. There’s a decent tutorial to walk you through the program, and lots of written support on the Macromedia web site.

Conclusion

Finally there’s an updating program that’s inexpensive, safe, and easy to use. Try out Contribute 2 for a month and see if it is just what you’ve been looking for.