Updating Your Website on a Shoestring:

Macromedia Contribute vs. Database-Backed Tools

It seems like everyone is talking about Content Management Systems these days. Are these tools the best way to allow non-technical users to update the information on your website? Well, it depends. There’s another very low cost option: Macromedia Contribute.

What is a Content Management System?

A lot of people are talking about website content management systems (CMSs) these days.  These tools allow non-technical users to update the information on a website.  So, for instance, the program staff might be able to update the phone number on a Contact Us page, add a new article about what the organization is up to, or even add a whole new section onto the website. 

The big buzz in content management is in regard to open source tools.  These are a specific kind of CMS that allow your technical team to download, install, customize, and launch sophisticated content management tools – all for free. The buzz is so big that it’s beginning to sound like a silver bullet solution:  it’s great for everyone!  In any situation!  You’re foolish if you’re not using one! 

Well, I don’t believe in all that.  Many of the open source content management tools offer fantastic value for complex sites, often saving months of man-hours.  But if your site isn’t particularly complicated and your primary need is to be able to update information and add some news stories and articles every couple of weeks or so, then pretty much any open source tool is overkill.  These tools fall into a category I’ll call database-backed content management tools – CMSs that store your text and images in a database.  More on these types of tools later.

There is notable overhead in setting up, configuring, and figuring out how to use these tools.  If you have a relatively simple site and simple update needs, using one will cost much more (in time, if not in money) than the alternatives.  So it’s worth understanding what the alternatives are.

A Case for Macromedia Contribute

There is a simpler solution to content management for straightforward sites:  use what’s called a WYSIWYG (a complex abbreviation for a simple concept: “What You See Is What You Get”) tool.  This category includes tools like DreamWeaver, FrontPage, GoLive and Contribute.  These tools show you an editable version of your website and allow you to update or create text and pictures like you would in a program like Microsoft Word.

While many of these tools are primarily designed for people creating new websites, Macromedia – the people who created DreamWeaver – have designed Contribute (www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/) specifically for technically unsophisticated folks who need to update a website.  And in my experience, it has done a great job:  there’s no other tool that offers equivalent ease in doing the types of updates that most of our clients want to do most of the time.  I don’t work for Macromedia; I don’t get any kickbacks for this; I don’t get anything if you decide to use it – I just think it’s a great tool that’s too often overlooked.

What does Contribute do particularly well? 

• Finding the information you want to update is incredibly intuitive.  Open Contribute, browse to the page you want to change like in any other browser, and click the Edit button.  A version appears that you can edit like a Word document. 
• Review and publication are no-brainers.  There’s no need to muck around with FTP tools.  Want to publish your changes to the site?  Click the Publish button.  Want to send it to your boss?  In the new 3.0 version, just click the Send a Review Copy button.
• There are no limitations to the look, layout, or format of your website.  Unlike a lot of lower-end database-backed content management tools, you don’t need to design your site around the tool.  If you can build the layout in HTML, Contribute can support it.
• Powerful and flexible formatting of pages.  Want to add a picture in the middle of an article?  No problem.  Want to add a data table?  Sure.  Need a new sub-header?  No problem.  All of these things can cause more difficulty or complexity in a database-backed tool.
• Centralized control over the site layout and styles.  Because too much power can be a bad thing, Contribute allows the website developers and administrators to lock down aspects of the site.  The admin can make table structures unmovable and whole sections un-editable (when using DreamWeaver in conjunction with Contribute).  It plays very well with style sheets – users can simply pick a style out of drop-drop down box to change body text to a fancy header or vice-versa.
• Ability to very easily create new pages from existing ones.  To add a new page, just find a page that’s close in format, click the New Page button, and change the text as desired. 
• Can be easily integrated (sometimes) to existing sites.  It’s possible that you could use Contribute with your website right now.  In theory, Contribute can read and allow editing of any HTML page.  In practice, it’s extremely sensitive to deviations from perfect HTML syntax.  If your site has clean code, you could have Contribute up and running in ten minutes.  However, if it doesn’t, a tedious page-by-page cleanup could be necessary for Contribute to be useful.
• It’s $20 on TechSoup (www.techsoup.org).  Need I say more?

Contribute is really great at making simple updates to simple, static sites.  If you’re currently updating your website less than once a week or so, and you’re just looking to move the process out of the hands of actual coders, Contribute could be a great solution. 

But Sometimes You Need a Database Backed Tool

Like any software, Contribute isn’t all things to all websites.  For some common purposes you would be better served by a database-backed content management tool – one that puts text and images into a database and allows more power over when and where this information is displayed.  This category includes most tools that are called CMSs and many that aren’t:  many blog tools (like WordPress or Moveable Type), open source CMSs (such as Mambo, Plone, Drupal, or EZPublish), proprietary CMSs (such as HotBannana, PaperThin, or CrownPeake), or database solutions that you might build yourself.

The idea of a database-backed tool is that you enter your text and images into an administration tool – often web-based – that is one step removed from the website itself. So to enter a new article on your site, you might go to a web-based admin tool, type the title of the article in a field, type the author in another field, add a description, choose some categories that describe the article, choose a picture to upload, and then enter the article text itself.  This information all is stored in a database, and when a visitor clicks on an appropriate link they are shown all of this information put together into a nice looking article.

Why does it matter?  Because all the information is in a database, you can write code to define what it shown where and when.  Although you only enter that article once, it can be shown in a bunch of places around the site.  Perhaps the title and description is shown on the homepage for the first week it is posted, and then removed automatically.  Perhaps the title, author, and image for the article are shown on several pages summarizing all the articles for a particular category – in chronological order of posting.  Maybe there’s a site index which just shows the title and the author, in alphabetical order by author.  All of this could happen automatically when you create the article in the admin tool. 

You would likely be better off with a database backed tool if:

• You need to frequently post many small bits of similar information.  For instance, you post frequent additions to a calendar of events or provider listings.  A database-backed content management tool can streamline the process of entering information, making it quicker and less error-prone.
• Your information goes out-of-date quickly.  It can become very tedious to manually remove events from your homepage after they have past, for instance.  A database-backed tool can manage this process for you through rules – to, for instance, automatically show only events that are in the future.
• You want to show the same information in a number of different places.  A database-backed tool will allow you to post information once and then have it appear in multiple places on a site– for instance, a blurb about a new publication might appear on the homepage, on the news page and on a features page.  To support this in Contribute, you would have to paste that same blurb in all three places by hand – and then make any updates in three places. 
• You want to display information based on metadata.  Let’s say your site displays hundreds of publications, which are all categorized by subject, focus country, and target audience (this type of data about the data you are storing is called “metadata”.  You might well want to allow visitors to choose how they would like to see these publications – perhaps some might want to see a list of all documents about British organizations, while another would want to see all those intended for Parents or about Child Welfare.  With a structure like this, adding a new publication in Contribute would become an ordeal of finding each appropriate page… and then what if you need to update the publication description?  This model is a relatively easy task for a database-backed system, however.

Note that it’s certainly possible to support updates for one section of your site – like a list of upcoming events, for instance – through a database backed content management tool while supporting the rest of the site through Contribute.  This is a model that we’ve used a number of times with Alder sites, and it can work quite well.

About Alder Consulting: Alder creates internet solutions that support nonprofits' missions without breaking their budgets. For more information, see www.alderconsulting.com, email us at laura@alderconsulting.com, or contact us at 718-208-8172.