Distributed publishing with Front Page

[Edward Spodick, HKUST Library, 2358-6743]

We are in much the same situation here, although the distributed publishing is with Netscape Composer, rather than FrontPage.  It has worked out fairly well.  Even though Composer is very limited in what it can do, all the basics are there.  I would love to try DreamWeaver, but we can't afford that many licenses.

Anyway, what I did was create a mirror site on a different port, with a different configuration file so that all relative URLs would work on either the mirror or the master site.  Our authors can do what they want on the mirror.  When they get a page the way they want it, they send an e-mail to a departmental account, which is picked up by one of our Library Assistants.  

He then goes to a restricted-access CGI I wrote, where he verified the code (skipping those problems where Composer does not make truly compliant code - most annoying, but less so that FrontPage), then compares the look of the page to our standards.  He also fixes the image links as needed (since they need to point to the icons and images directories, and the author might have made everything local to the directory on the mirror), and activates a 'rollout' script.  

The rollout script verifies the existence of the input file, makes a backup copy of the destination (if an older version exists), runs wwwis.pl on the input file to force the inclusion of accurate height and width tags on all icons/images present, strips out control-Ms from the PC world (Composer should do this, but does not), and copies the file to the destination.  

He then verifies that the file is ok, and that nothing got missed.  If there is a problem, then it is urgently repaired (usually does not happen).  We update/rollout about 100 pages per month this way.

Edward Spodick, Systems Librarian
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
lbspodic at ust.hk


At 5:17 AM +0800 7/29/98, Leigh Mason wrote: 
>Greetings,
>I am in search of ideas from other libraries where the use of 
>MS Front Page has been implemented as the primary web editor among a 
>distributed group of web authors.  Our automation 
>department is currently attempting to do so and as the web site 
>coordinator (and, I might add, not very warm to this idea of 
>broadly implementing Front Page - I don't use it myself) I have some 
>concerns about the use of the publish function from Front Page and 
>the file management system which would be necessary to manage 
>distributed publishing and prevent accidental file replacements and 
>such.  
>
>Has anyone applied Front Page in this manner?  
>
>If so, was this approach successful?
>
>If problems were identifed, how were they addressed?
>
>What precautions, training and expectations were found to be 
>helpful? 
>
>Are there any tips for managing Front Page publishing in a 
>distributed publishing environment?
>
>Any help that might be offered would be appreciated.  Thanks!
>-- 
>Leigh Mason                
>Carrier Library
>James Madison University
>masonal at jmu.edu
>540-568-6686


- - - - -
Edward F Spodick, Systems Librarian - lbspodic at ust.hk
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Library
tel:  852-2358-6743    fax:  852-2358-1043