Changing pictures by a third party

[Monika]

I am using Publisher 2007 on XP.

I was asked to do a web site for someone but this person would like to
change pictures himself rather than through me. Now, I am not sure if I
express myself here clearly but this person said that it is somehow possible
for a third party to access the site and do such changes with a special
program?

This person does not have Publisher nor does he know anything about it or
even how to upload, etc.

Grateful for any suggestions.

Monika

 

[Spike]

Third party editing is not a recommended process
With out publisher or and extreme knowledge of htm code the third party will
be at a loss for editing images or anything else on the web site

Spike

 

[Don Schmidt]

The only way I've heard of for others to edit web pages is if the website is
created with Dreamweaver (maybe other similar programs) on a ColdFusion
server. Editing is then done on the server files directly. Anyone with the
security password could then edit the site. A ftp program, i.e., FileZilla
would be needed to upload image files and then reaccess the site to build
the link from the webpage to the image file location. This method works well
when you have multiple "webmasters" responsible for specific website pages,
each having responsibility for their own specific page/s.

 

[Rob Giordano [MS MVP]]

Not with Publisher.

Not a good idea to allow someone with no knowledge to edit pages, what you
would want is something like a content management system (CMS) like perhaps
ContentSeed (inexpensive and very good) this will restrict the user to only
making certain kinds of updates. However, you'll have major problems getting
a CMS to work with a Publisher generated website I think.

There are other ways as well, like using DWT's (Dreamweaver or Expression
Web)...

 

[GeoffreyChaucer]

Monika,

Since the person who wishes to change pictures appears to be the owner of
the website, it seems reasonable and I see no reason why you could not issue
that person with a simple set of instructions to perform this very simple
task.

To keep it simple, it would require that all pictures be of the same format,
i.e.: gif, or jpg, bmp, tif, etc. and be of the same size or, at the very
least, the person doing the replacement should be told that a replacement
picture must not exceed the size of the individual original picture.

It would also require you to give the original pictures generic names rather
than specific names, i.e.: pic1.jpg, pic2.jpg, pic3.jpg etc.

As long as the person does not mess around with the htm files and restrict
himself/herself to replacing pictures in the correct folders, a brief
tutorial in using ftp and in resizing and renaming pictures should suffice.

Many owners of the websites I design do their own maintenance. There
sometime is one or two hiccups in the beginning but, in the long run,
patience saves me the trouble of regular maintenance.

 

[Monika]

Spike, Don, Rob and Geoffrey,

Thank you very much indeed for all your input. Very useful as always.

I will give this all a thought and will have to talk to the person concerned.

Thanks again very much.

Cheers,

Monika

 

[Don Schmidt]

Monika,

'Don't know if it has been suggested but another way to have multiple
webmasters (those who are able to edit Publisher created websites) is:

All webmasters would need the same version of Publisher.

Upload the Publisher file and associated image files to the server so any of
the Webmasters could download them, edit and recreate the website files.
Then, upload the new webpages and the new Publisher file for the next edit,
whomever has the need.

Major drawback: Upload and downloading of the Publisher file can be very
time and server space consuming.

Good luck on your website.