Mike wonders about the following issue: "I am working on development of a Linux
hosted web server that will allow users to edit their own web spaces. I realize
that there is FTP for file/web-page management purposes, but for many of my users,
this would be a disaster, since they don't understand the in's & out's of managing
a site thru FTP. Are there some kind of extensions for Apache (or any other
Linux-based servers) that allow me to do live & in-place editing?"
WebDAV :
Look at the DAV extensions to Apache. The only sad thing is the best GUI client for
DAV right now comes with IE 5.0.... ;-)
Frontpage? :
The FrontPage extensions are not quite in-place editing, but are often demanded by
users such as you describe who also use FrontPage for editing their website.
Be forewarned that there is a lot of concern over how secure the current
binary-only implementation is, though.
Telnet and a menu driven restricted shell?
Couldn't you accoplish this, or pretty close, by using Telnet and a menu driven
restricted shell?
Just give them access to a curses based file manager, and a text editor, or
something similar? Just a thought. ;-)
Samba :
You could do it with samba, the users would save their files to a network drive
like usual (in w98 and NT you can map sambashares using ip instead of wins names).
It would also be easy to set up the right create masks to get the permissions
right.
Try webdav :
web-dav ( http://www.webdav.org/ )
(web distributed authoring and versioning) is a good first place to check,
i think with the appropriate apache module it supports in-place page locking and
editing via msie 5. if your user community is semi literate, you might also look
into cvs ( http://www.cyclic.com/ )
to manage web development ( http://durak.org/cvswebsites/ ), which
is easier and more effective imho.
Drall -- Web-based File Manager
I am making a web based file manager you might want to look at. It is pretty
extensive already. New stuff being added as we speak.
http://www.edlund.org/projects/drall/
Zope :
At www.zope.org, you'll find a complete system to do exactly that, complete with
transaction-based undo (that is, anything you can do you can undo later, without
having to undo anything else if you don't want to) and access-control-list based
security. It's open source.
It has database support, and there are modules to handle slashdot-like forums
("Confera"), WebDAV, and many other things. Its default interface (when not using
webDAV) is simply HTML -- you can administer (and add content to) your pages from
any web browser which supports passwords, frames, and forms.
It's trivial to install, and the default package is essentially a trial (it stes
itself up on another port to not get in your way), so it's harmless to play with
before you commit. It's a breeze to use, but almost frighteningly powerful.
I'm an experimental sort, so I never learned HTML well enough to make a page look
good. Because of Zope, though (and a little help from CSS), my web page was able to
inherit the look and feel of my friend's web page, and automatically change when he
changed his. So now I provide the technical design, and he makes the site look good
-- and there have NEVER been any maintainance headaches, and we both know that if
someday there were it wouldn't matter because we could always 'undo' the problem.
Get it. Learn it. Live it. Zope.
All you need is PHP :
The last place I worked, we hosted some commercial sites for Real Estate
Salespeople and other computer-illiterate types.
Using PHP, we had a simple template where they could upload pictures of their
properties they were selling, add prices, descriptions, etc. I no longer work
there, and did not part on the best of terms, so I no longer have access to the
code - or I would gladly share.
I know it was not too much to write it though. PHP is relatively easy to learn.
Another solution - Midgard :
I know that you have been told about many other application servers by now. But
there is another one that you might find interesting - Midgard.
Midgard is built over the foundation of PHP3, MySQL and Apache, and works on the
ideology that there will be no normal files on the server but rather that all the
queries are validated with a database table containing instructions on what to do
with incoming URLs.
It is actually easy to create good-looking and effective web-based interfaces with
this. I've done it with a few sites, and even normal sales personnel and school
people have been able to create content to their pages.
So if you are interested, check Midgard out at http://midgard.greywolves.org . The
system is under LGPL, and came publicly available just last night.
I like the system, but then again, it can be said that I have bias...
Try AOLServer :
AOLServer is availiable for linux, and supports http put using AOLPress and
Netscape Communicator.
Pretty neat server, it scales, and it's free (but not open source)
http://www.aolserver.com/
FTP from KDE :
If you can get them to use KDE, then FTP becomes really easy. Open up a file
manager window, and type ftp://user@site/path/to/their/webspace and hit ENTER.
KDE will prompt for the password, and then open a window that works basically just
like a window on a local directory. Drag and drop files between the local system
and the remote system.
Netscape composer :
Doesn't Netscape Composer pretty much let you do this? It's got a WYSIWYG editor,
and then you click on the publish button, which from there you would put in
ftp://ftp.mydomain.com/home/users/username/public_html (or whatever directory
you've set up), then put in your username and password, and it will upload the
page, and all the associated files.
Is that pretty much what you are looking for?
Don't do it! :
Please, don't do it!
Don't allow your people to edit live pages - they never know who is going to load
that mis-edited page they haven't debugged yet!
web pages should be tested out of the public web arena, then merged in when - and
only when - they have been finished.