Let Client Edit Web Pages

Anon

I've got a client that wants to be able to edit certain pages on the website that I made for them.

In the past when this has happened I've set up an admin area on the site and let the user add / change / delete items (ie news items, specials, etc) which are stored in a mySQL database, then I've got some little PHP that displays the items. This is fine for a couple of paragraphs (some of the clients have even learnt some basic HTML so they can format the items), but not too great when entire pages have to be editable.

I've looked at HotScripts and found a couple of online editors written in PHP, but they're really basic in that they simply provide a large text box and tell the user to type in their HTML.

Are there more advanced online editors available? Preferably where the person doesn't have to know HTML? The user also wants to be able to add their own images to the pages.

I've found an ISP that has a thing called WebPublisher that does pretty much what I want (I don't know what language it was written in). The docs for it can be found at http://www.clear.net.nz/documentation/webhosting/webpublisher/index.html

alvinkoh

Hi Murray,

Here are some suggestions which might work.

To make the HTML codes a little easier for your clients, you can create dynamic buttons that add HTML tags in the textarea.

E.g. if you click a "URL" button, it'll prompt you with a javascript box requiring your client's input (e.g. http://www.php.net) . When that's done, the proper html codes will be appended to the end of whatever he/she was typing in the textarea.

Also, you can parse smilies (e.g. 🙂 😛 :o)automatically include the proper img tags. When they want to edit the codes again, "reverse" the process to give them back the smilies.

You could also create an image upload field for easy uploading of images which can be stored in directories coresponding to the ID of the pages.

Alvin.

cjones

Yeah I agree with Alvin. Writing a custom page to do this is much easier then trying to find something to fit your specific case. For images I allow clients to upload them and store the address by number in a mysql db. Then the client just either enters or click a menu that put [image]1[/image]. WHen I create the page it converts that to an image tag with the address to image 1. They seem to like it well and it does more then that but too much to list them all.

Oh almost forgot. another good thing is to replace linefeeds with <BR> tags.

Chris