web publishing process

[David Vose]

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