Embedding HTML Code into a Site

Freeway
1

There are two of us cooperating on the implementation and maintenance of a website. The problem is that I’m on a Mac using Freeway Pro and he’s on a PC coding essentially in html.

The site itself can be described as having two parts, the “container”, and the “content”.

The container consists of a number of pages, each page consisting of four parts, from top to bottom, a header containing graphics and text, a menu, the content area containing graphics and text, and a footer containing graphics and text.

The content is all of the graphics and text that will be in the content part of the above mentioned container.

I’m responsible for the container and my associate is responsible for the content.

The content is passive in that the entirety of the navigation within the site is done through the container.

The question then is whether it would be possible to embed the html code for the content for a page into the content area for that page within the container.

The ideal situation would be that the content html items could be updated without one having to make any changes to the container generated in Freeway.

Answers, comments, suggestions, and such will be greatly appreciated!

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2

What you are describing would be well served with a CMS. I would recomend MiniCMS for a really simple type of CMS that you could make editable without changing your “container”. It is very straight forward to implement but does require php be available on your web server.

What your partner will see on his end once he logs into admin page is an editor very much like TinyMCE. Within the area you assign as being editable your partner could put whatever he wants into it.

There is an action available for this also from Joe Moscara. Here is link to action ActionsForge - The Complete Repository of Freeway Actions

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3

Many, many thanks for the reply!

I’m a bit unsure of what I found on the link. What do I need to install and what does my PC using partner need to install?

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4

You would need to build the site using one of the CMS solutions + Actions. Depending on the exact solution, this might include a database on the server to hold the dynamic content. Your partner with the PC will need a browser. Nothing else.

The way that these systems work is they separate content from presentation. Freeway builds templates, and the database and application server fill those templates with content to generate the finished site. (Each system is a little different in how it does this exactly, but that’s the general idea from 10,000 feet up.)

Walter

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5

I don’t know a lot about server side includes, but isn’t this
something you can do by just inserting the URL for an include per
Keith Martin’s tutorials? I was going to use WebYep for a list of
archives that have to appear on several pages, for example, and when I
saw Keith’s instructions about server side includes, I tried it and
it’s perfect. I’m having trouble bringing up the site right now, so I
can’t give you the exact link, but the instructions say (because I
filed them in my DB):

to place the
include reference in a visual page layout. Click the HTML Item tool in
the Tools palette, then sketch out a regular HTML box where you want
the included data to appear. Make this the width required; this will be
used for the table width dimensions in the subsequent HTML code,
and therefore, usefully, the width the included data will normally be
allowed in your layout.

With the item selected, click the third tab in the Inspector palette
and change the Type popup menu from HTML to URL. Type the
file’s name in the text field, including the path to the folder as
necessary, and change Content from Image to HTML.

Couldn’t the PC person work on the content pages and upload them, and
the container pages would call up the content pages with the include
URL link?

On Oct 31, 2008, at 7:12 AM, waltd wrote:

You would need to build the site using one of the CMS solutions +
Actions. Depending on the exact solution, this might include a
database on the server to hold the dynamic content. Your partner
with the PC will need a browser. Nothing else.

The way that these systems work is they separate content from
presentation. Freeway builds templates, and the database and
application server fill those templates with content to generate the
finished site. (Each system is a little different in how it does
this exactly, but that’s the general idea from 10,000 feet up.)

Robin Stark

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6

Sometime around 31/10/08 (at 07:58 -0500) Robin Stark said:

I don’t know a lot about server side includes, but isn’t this
something you can do by just inserting the URL for an include per
Keith Martin’s tutorials? I was going to use WebYep for a list of
archives

Sure, that could be a perfectly viable solution depending on the
detailed needs.

That tutorial is at
http://www.vortex.co.uk/content/tutorials/freeway/ssi/serversideinclud.html

It is rather old now, but it still works fine of course; SSI is no
different now even though Freeway has advanced. However, what this
tutorial doesn’t really tackle in depth is the issue of how the
client goes about updating the text data that’s to be included.

If that’s a concern then Max’s WebYep actions combined with the
WebYep server tool itself may well be the answer. I’ve found that it
lets me take giant leaps forward with content-managed site design and
production, where I would otherwise be fiddling around with smaller
solutions.

WebYep isn’t a magic bullet; it has its share of limitations. But it
is a great tool.

k

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7

On Oct 31, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Robin Stark wrote:

Couldn’t the PC person work on the content pages and upload them,
and the container pages would call up the content pages with the
include URL link?

Yes, as long as the PC person was careful to only make page
fragments, not entire HTML pages with html, head and body tags.
When you make a server-side include, the resulting assembled page
must still only be one page. Most authoring software that’s more
complicated than a plain text editor will insist on wrapping the
fragment (a single DIV or a table or similar) with a complete page.
Your partner would need to be aware of this and strip all that out
before saving the file to the server.

There’s another issue with SSIs, in that they mean a lot of work for
both of you, not a division of labor. Unlike a CMS or other dynamic
system, there is no way to make a page layout that can be re-used.
You would need to make a shell for each unique page. Where SSI sits
up and works for a living is in a situation that is exactly inverse
of what you describe – if you had a footer that appeared on all
pages, and was the same on all pages, THAT would be perfect for an SSI.

The underlying issue that I forgot to mention earlier is that Freeway
does not read HTML or use it internally in any way. Not a single
solitary angle-bracket of it. So if your partner is editing HTML that
you created, that edited HTML will be noticed by Freeway as a change
to a file which it “owns” and overwritten by Freeway on the next
publish cycle.

In order to create separate work domains for a Freeway user and a non-
Freeway user, it is necessary to create a complete separation of tasks.

Walter

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8

I’m a bit unsure of what I found on the link. What do I need to install and what does my PC using partner need to install?

There are a couple of steps to implement this. First of all you must download and install MiniCMS on your web server (a simple upload to root). There is a modest charge per domain for this from the developer. http://minicms.eu/home.html
Take a look at the documentation only to see if this makes sense for you.

The second step would be to add an editable area tag with a unique name to your layout. The earlier link is to the action that makes adding the editable section to your Freeway page simple is a separate product. The way you implement it once it’s installed is to select an html box in your layout to designate as editable and apply the action to it. Very straight forward.

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9

I’ve downloaded the tutorial to which Keith provided the link.

If my understanding is correct the non-Freeway generated code can be inserted by the server into an area on a Freeway page. If the height needed for the inserted text and graphics exceeds the height of the Freeway specified area will that area automatically stretch to fit?

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