[WEB4LIB] web publishing process

[Brian Williams]

We generally create pages on our pc's then ftp them to our unix server.
That means each person creating pages has to have an account on the unix
server, but that has worked ok. The main problem being, from my point of
view, that people have problems with ftp (wsftp) and in general do not
understand file systems, overwriting files, etc. There is quite a bit of
computer literacy required, or desirable, for people working on a unix
system, even if they do have pico to use instead of vi.

On our intranet, running on an NT server, people can map to the drives and
file systems of that server and work right on the pages with no transfer
required. That's the easiest way, imho. I'm not ready to swap out the unix
box for an NT one, however, for the internet site.

You could run nfs on the unix box, but we don't to avoid the various and
sundry security problems with it.

Not a perfect universe!

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, 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
> 

Brian Williams			Automation Administrator
Multnomah County Library  	801 SW 10th  Portland, OR 97205
(503)248-5227 (v) (503)248-5226 (f) brianw at nethost.multnomah.lib.or.us