[GLLUG] Re: Portal/CMS/Web site builder

[Scott Henry Harrison]

> I'm wondering if you know about a project that allows a CMS system to
> create web sites without users having to know HTML.  I'm talking about
> WYSIWYG textarea fields, but wizard based page building like tripod.com

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> We don't want users to have HTML access or WYSIWYG to prevent creation
> of ugly pages.  As long as we provide the template, or many to choose
> from, we hope that updating content in strict text form will do the
> trick.

A quote from http://www.cmsinfo.org/ (as regards http://www.campware.org/)
"At the core of CAMPSITE is CAMPFIRE, the Java Editor
supporting Unicode, which allows contributors and editors to publish
content and control layout online in their native alphabets. Formatting can
be altered in a similar way as in editors such as Wordpad, that is, no HTML
knowledge is necessary for formatting text." 

My experience: 

Campfire is a slick easy-to-use wordpad-like java applet tool
that creates html pages (allows for image "importing" also).  No HTML
knowledge and none of the new WYSIWYG functionality
is required.  It can be liberated from the surrounding
Campsite software and dependencies and run standalone
(I know, I did it) with just a simple cgi-post handling
script as opposed to its more complex database-linked cgi-handling
daemon.  It is GPL. 

I have played around with it a fair amount and it works and
is reasonably browser-independent.  Of course, it is java
and may likely crash on older browsers/OS scenarios. 

I myself have never been happy with an html form "wizard"
for building web pages.  And, many of the modern CMSs are
placing all of their eggs into the WYSIWYG basket as I am sure
you are discovering. 

Regards,
Scott