Has anybody used Macromedia's Contribute? Is there a big learning curve? I am just looking for opinions good and bad. I have a real tight deadline on a project and am looking at anything that might help cut corners anywhere.

Peace
Mike

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Peace
Mike
http://www.eclecticpixel.com

Hi Mike,

It depends on from whose perspective you look at things. For a regular Web developer, there may be some learning curve. To successfully use Contribute, you also need to know how to use Dreamweaver and its template feature (among other important features). This may take some time to get used to, but it can be worth the investment.

For the end user, things can be as easy as using MS Word or another text editor, although you should of course invest some time in educating the people that are going to maintain the content. There are a few important concepts your users should be aware of before they edit a site, to avoid broken layout, bad links or other stuff a Web professional hates to see on a web site.

Just curious though: How do you think Contribute can help you meet your dead-lines? What part of the project do you want it to solve?

If you want to know more, feel free to ask.

Cheers,

Imar

Hey Imar
Thanks for the info, one reason I was asking for opions was that I read somewhere that it was sluggish, but that was one opinion.

The reason I was looking at contribute is the client for this site wants to keep the content updated themselves, such as their newsletter, like a rich text application with the ability to place photos, more pages ect. I was thinking this might be a good way to keep control of the look of the site by only allowing certain fonts, colors, etc. I would still need to build the database driven pages. To save time I figured I would be able to just post the templates and let the client go ahead and update their content(after training). I am not familiar with other rich text editors that allow you to have as much control, or I would have to look at creating something to allow for this.

Peace
Mike

Well, it can certainly perform the rich editing functions you describe, and IMO, it does it very well. The lock down features, blocking users from messing with th font, width, colors etc is great.

So, for static content, it's a great maintenance tool. You still need to build something for database driven content, as you pointed out.

I have had no troubles with its speed. What version are you talking about? Version 2 or 3?

Imar

It would be the lastest, version 3. I found a big comparison sheet about it on the macromedia site. I will definetly be looking into this more. I don't think there will be more than 10 users, so that will save cost also. Appreciate the help.

Mike