RE: Macromedia Contribute

Does anyone on this list have experience with Macromedia Contribute?  In particular, I was wondering if the Contribute repository stores the pages as fully assembled HTML or if it does the assembly (that is, putting together all the HTML fragments - header,footer, left nave, etc.) during a "publish" process? Or, does it use SSI?

>From what I can tell, it seems like Contribute is like DreamWeaver MX plus a simplistic workflow (content approvals) and does not truly separate content from presentation.  Am I correct?

You are correct. Contribute does not separate presentation from Content. The "repository" is a simple file system and it stores complete html pages, not page components. It has a simple approval mechanism that uses drafts and email.

That being said, we are using it as the system for our html content because it's just what we need. We have 50 editors using it and it's virtually support free since it's so easy to learn and use. The editors love it. 

If you contstruct your pages properly using server side includes and commenting well, you can indeed "separate content from presentation" for export as XML into a portal.

If you are considering using this I would strongly recommend buying the book Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3 by Joseph Lowrey. I avoided a lot of pitfalls by reading this book first and the system works beautifully for our needs.

Christine L. Mitchell
Penske Truck Leasing
Content Manager
610.775.6494
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>