[WEB4LIB] Re: web publishing process

[Andrew Mutch]

Mark,

I recently moved from a position where I was hand-coding all my pages and was
able to tweak to my heart's content to an environment where everyone uses
FrontPage to create their web pages.  I think what you'll find is that the
majority of users need to be prodded just to create pages in a WYSIWIG editor.
Some users will be enthusiastic page creators and a very occasional user will
actually be interested enough in HTML to go digging into the code.  Unless you
are willing to go to the trouble of either:

1) Following behind everyone and cleaning their code up for them
2) Taking over all the work and doing the code yourself

you are going to have to accept the fact that code-bloat is going to take
place.  Unless you have a very small server or very bad editor, I don't think
you'll find that the bloat is worth the time it would take to go back and clean
it up.  The only exception to this would be those situations where the editors
are creating such bad code that the page "breaks' in one of the major browsers.
If it really is a concern, make sure you keep your hands on the most prominent
pages so that you can keep them clean and lean.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Techician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI

Mark Gooch wrote:

> Thanks for providing me with an opening to ask a question I've been
> wondering about.  What I am interested to know is are people concerned about
> the "bloated" files and less than clean HTML code produced by some of the
> HTML editors (Netscape Composer, Front Page, etc.) in this type of
> situation.  I've been contemplating whether to have staff here create pages
> on their own with Composer or some other editor.  I'm concerned that the
> less than stellar code  which is created (and I don't consider myself an
> HTML "purist") will eventually fill our server with files which are larger
> than necessary.  Also, when people run into coding problems I will likely be
> the one who has to hunt through this code to find the problems.  What do
> others think about this?
>
> Thanks
> Mark
>
> David Vose wrote:
>
> > Our library is migrating staff computer accounts from UNIX to NT. Our
> > web server will remain on the UNIX box but all web page authoring will
> > be done on PCs on our staff NT server. Prior to this change, all web
> > authoring was done with pico and pages were quickly and easily made
> > live. Of course this process did not provide for html validation. With
> > the new arrangement, staff will have to do all editing/authoring on
> > their pcs and then it will somehow be sent to the unix web server.
> >
> > THE QUESTION: In this split environment, what is the best way to get new
> > or updated pages from the staff pcs to the unix web server. One
> > suggestion is to have all authoring done on individual pcs (as opposed
> > to doing it in a shared directory space similar to what can be done in
> > UNIX). When an html file is finished, the author would copy the files to
> > a "waiting" directory on the NT server. All files in this directory
> > could be validated there (unless the authoring tool does it) and then
> > ftp'd to the webserver with an automated process. This seems time
> > consuming and less than ideal since there would be three copies of each
> > file: one on the author's pc, one in the waiting directory, and one in
> > the live space.
> >
> > I'd be interested in hearing how others that work in a split environment
> > like this publish their pages.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > David Vose
> > Binghamton University Libraries
> > (607) 777-4907
>
> --
> Mark D. Gooch                                Cleveland State University
> Government Information Librarian   1801 Euclid Ave.
> Cleveland-Marshall Law Library     Cleveland, Ohio  44115
> (216)687-5579  Voice                    (216)687-5098  Fax
>                             Mark.Gooch at law.csuohio.edu
>                      http://www.law.csuohio.edu/lawlibrary/
>
> "I guess we still have some bugs to work out,"
>  --Bill Gates at Comdex 98 in Chicago as Windows98 crashed on him