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help help help! need ideas..nothing else

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 2:04 am
by crazytopu
Hi all,

I am lacking some ideas as how to make it possible to insert some content into my site. Basically, the contents will be inserted by a non-technical person (probably only some knowledge with MS word).

So, I keep a text box for the link, and a textarea to insert the content of that link and hit submit. The content is being saved into the database.

With plain text, this is all fine. But, when the user wants to insert a doc file with all text style ( bold, ilatic, bullet list etc.) it is not helping.


So, i suggested that the user first convert his doc file as a htm file and then open that htm file with notepad and copy the entire html code and paste it into to textarea. That way, I am partially achiving what i intented for - bold, italic,bullets are appearing now on my page.

But they are not appearing as it is in doc file. Because, when the user save the doc file as htm, the htm file automatically creats some css.

Any better ideas, as how could I make it appear exactly as it is in a doc file?

many thanks in advance even for the smallest tips.:)

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 9:33 am
by John Cartwright
search tiny_mce text editor.. sounds exackly what you need.

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:19 pm
by crazytopu
FAQ: Tiny Mice

Q: Why isn't there a color picker and/or a font selector?

A: There is no need for a color picker or font selector in TinyMCE due to the fact that it would break the layout standards of the site/system implementing it i.e. it would be to loose. Font and colors can be applied by using the CSS classes instead.


A non-technical person doesnot mean to know CSS, right? But, it's a cool text editor,no doubt -just not what I am looking for though.

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:21 pm
by feyd
uh.. you can implement your own for color selection. They didn't because they would have to make a visual call on it, which they chose to not do. Leaving that up to you.

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:27 pm
by crazytopu
ah! okay. I hope you are online feyd. Just needed to get a feed back from you.

Do you think, it's really possible for a completely non-technical person being able to update the contents of the web site? like, they wanna use an image in a page as part of the content, and how would they do it? I can help them upload their image to my "images/" folder on the server. But how come they are gonna edit the path?

Do you think a some sites are really being updated by no technical person..and not backed up by any tech guy? Or, it's just my client finding me pretty novice, is demanding a lot?

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:40 pm
by feyd
I don't know a company that doesn't have a technical person doing the web work. Either as an employee, contractor or pro bono.. The only places I know non-technical people have their stuff online is sites like geocities, or where they create a site from a tool (of some sort) that writes "correct" code for them, usually WYSIWYG.

So a rich text editor such as tiny_mce is the right direction, if your client wants to do the updating themselves. I would make them aware that you aren't responsible for whatever they create through such a tool then. ;) If they want you to be responsible, then have a maintainence contract drawn up. You should not make this deal under the development contract. The main reason is, they can basically deny you payments because they want to add some new stuff or something..

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:55 pm
by crazytopu
Many many thanks. I was really quite worried. Do you know, what sort of things were going through my mind? You know, I have made it possible for the user to create as many links (with content) as they want on the home page and delete them or update them as they need to. Recently, what strucked me is, what if they want to add a link inside the content? Like, they add up a some contents under "about us" link and now they want to see some relavant links appear on the same page.Obviously, in this case, the user is making some links out from nowhere. I was being quite stressed with how to make it possible to allow them to create links whereever they want to.

I think, that is surely not possible as you just said, there needs to be a tech-guy or else, who is gonna create those ad-hoc hyperlinks?