Macromedia Contribute: What is It, and What Does it Mean for Us?

 
Nov 09, 2002
By Judith Dinowitz, Editor-in-Chief

I?m sure if you listen in on the lists today, on House of Fusion or the Macromedia forums or any of the other major CF mailing lists or resources out there, you?ll hear a lot of buzz about a product called Contribute. Macromedia has already put out press on the front page of their site and in the Desdev center (see our coverage of their articles, and others, below). But amidst all the buzz, we really need to ask ourselves the following two questions:

  • What is Contribute? What does it do?
  • Who is its target audience?
First, I can tell you that it?s not a database-driven content management system, like Paperthin?s CommonSpot Content Server or Ektron?s Empower.

Macromedia describes Contribute as "a groundbreaking new desktop application that enables anyone to easily update, add, and publish web content to existing websites without requiring technical skills beyond basic word processing." The key here is that this is not a server application. It runs on your desktop, and uses a basic browser interface to connect to websites and allow non-IT users to make changes to web pages and publish those changes.

Now that?s heretical, isn?t it? I mean, if a non-IT person can update his own website without the webmasters help and handholding, where is the power of the webmaster? Gone is his complete control! His domain is no longer his alone.

But the idea that an IT person should have to concern himself with every little change that needs to happen on a site can cause massive problems and bottlenecks, and can keep content from getting up on the Web where it belongs. Macromedia?s concept here is that the Web developers? domain should be not the mechanical, cut-and-paste updating of a site. No. A Web professional should be concerned mainly with the code that runs the site, the design and architecture. By giving non-IT people an environment to directly make changes on their websites, and by locking away and protecting all dynamic and site-building code, Macromedia aims to take the hassle out of Web development (hence their slogan or End Hassle).

Whether this product succeeds will depend on two things: How easily Contribute interfaces with the regular, non-web-savvy user, and how well it does the job of protecting the code of a site while allowing for updates. I?ve seen this demoed twice now, once as the editor of Fusion Authority and once as a user group manager. The product looks sleek and easy to use ? but I have not had the chance to test it out on a website yet. I will be using it in the next few weeks, and I will write a full report on this in a future issue of Fusion Authority.

So we?ve spoken of what this product is, and what it does. I will let you read the details of that in the Macromedia articles and press releases that they?ve put on their site. But the question still remains: Who is the target audience for this? Can you use this for all sites, and what does it interface with?

Erik Larson, Senior Product Manager at Macromedia, cites three kinds of customers who would fit Contribute?s profile.

  1. Small business or non-profit websites
  2. Middle tier, corporate education and government websites
  3. Intranets that use the web to communicate with others in their organizations
You might guess (and you?d be right) that Contribute is designed for websites that use more static pages and not for websites that put their content in databases. The application is sold on a per-desktop basis, like Dreamweaver, and retails for the introductory price of $99 ($79 for educational customers). There will also be bulk discounts for educational institutions (the pricing quoted was $999 for unlimited licensing for schools with less than 500 students and $1499 for unlimited licensing for schools with more than 500 students.) The first version of Contribute is in English for Windows, but versions in French, German, and Japanese, and a version for the Mac OS X, are due out in 2003.

Contribute can connect to a site anywhere in the world, as long as you can get there by FTP or through your Local Area Network. Macromedia has put a lot of effort into interfacing this product with Dreamweaver MX and Studio MX. But, in Macromedia?s own words, It works with ?any HTML website, including those coded by hand or created with tools like Macromedia Dreamweaver MX or Microsoft FrontPage.? The integration with Dreamweaver especially is tight, but it can also take any HTML page you?ve got and create a template from that.

An added bonus is the new Dreamweaver update that ships with this software. (The update will be available for free to all Dreamweaver customers, whether they buy Contribute ornot.) Whether you use Dreamweaver or not, Contribute might be a great way to get some of your smaller clients to do the updates to their websites on their own and to get them off your back. (Do I hear some sighs of relief in the background?)

I don?t really want to give you a canned press release here. I?d just like to highlight some of the features of this product that Macromedia is emphasizing so that you can decide if Contribute is something that would fit your workflow:

  • Users are only allowed to edit static content on pages predetermined by the IT person in charge. By default, all scripts, dynamic code and form tags, form input, and CSS code are locked away and untouchable.
  • Contribute respects security settings of the webserver, database, ColdFusion server, etc. All of these settings are included in the program?s connection key, with 128-bit encryption.
  • A three-step process to browse, edit and publish pages with "no hassle."
  • Drag and drop capability for previously created Word or Excel documents, integrating them directly into a website. Contribute actually cleans up the excess formatting and generates HTML to reflect the website's styles.
  • 508 accessibility compliance in generated code by default.
While the product is not out until December, we now have several weeks to play with Macromedia?s ?Technology Release? version, to discuss and debate it and decide if this product is for us. Whether a database-site version of this might be in Macromedia?s roadmap is sheer speculation at this point and would probably depend on the reaction to this product and the wishes of Macromedia?s customers. I would highly recommend that we all at least download the Technology Release of this and try it out, even if only to see whether we want to recommend it to clients and customers, or to use it ourselves for our smaller sites.

You can download the Technology Release of Contribute at www.macromedia.com/go/contribute/.


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