Off-loading content management (thoughts/opinions)
Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:57 pm
Hello, all.
My current project is to completely redesign my company's intranet. I will be using PHP and MySQL in this endeavor, as it will not be a huge site--although I'm sure a bit of scope creep will occur.
One of my goals is to offload content management onto other staff members, so that I can focus on improvements to the business logic, and not the content of the pages. Lately, I've been wondering how best to go about this.
- One obvious option is to keep all content inside the database, and just create and edit it from there. In order to make this option scalable, I would likely need to keep a list of all site URLs in the database, and create links to a separate content table using foreign keys.
- Another option is to keep content in HTML files, which can then be edited using some form of on-page editor such as TinyMCE, or another off-page editor. To make this scalable, the web user would need permissions to the file structure in order to create and delete pages. Potentially, this can be dangerous.
- Yet another potential option is to keep content in XML files, and allow an editing/scaling scheme similar to the HTML option. Admittedly, I don't know exactly what this option's benefits and drawbacks are.
What are your opinions on these hypothesized solutions, and--perhaps more importantly--what are your experiences with off-loading content management? What pitfalls did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?
My current project is to completely redesign my company's intranet. I will be using PHP and MySQL in this endeavor, as it will not be a huge site--although I'm sure a bit of scope creep will occur.
One of my goals is to offload content management onto other staff members, so that I can focus on improvements to the business logic, and not the content of the pages. Lately, I've been wondering how best to go about this.
- One obvious option is to keep all content inside the database, and just create and edit it from there. In order to make this option scalable, I would likely need to keep a list of all site URLs in the database, and create links to a separate content table using foreign keys.
- Another option is to keep content in HTML files, which can then be edited using some form of on-page editor such as TinyMCE, or another off-page editor. To make this scalable, the web user would need permissions to the file structure in order to create and delete pages. Potentially, this can be dangerous.
- Yet another potential option is to keep content in XML files, and allow an editing/scaling scheme similar to the HTML option. Admittedly, I don't know exactly what this option's benefits and drawbacks are.
What are your opinions on these hypothesized solutions, and--perhaps more importantly--what are your experiences with off-loading content management? What pitfalls did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?