Idiot Proof CMS?

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mneylon

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Can anyone recommend an idiot proof CMS?

Basically the situation is like this....

Once a week a writer produces an article and wants to publish it to his website after it gets published in various newspapers.

The writer is able to follow simple instructions, but a blog or similar is beyond him (I already tried!)

Ideally - and this would be the holy grail - he would be able to shove a title into a form and upload a word document which would be automatically converted into clean (X)HTML.

That last bit is a bit aspirational, but we're talking about someone who is not going to be able to manage a text editor unless it's really idiot proof and allows him to copy and paste .. I'm not even sure he'll manage that

Any suggestions?

I dont' care which platform the solution suggested runs on by the way, as I simply need a solution that will work, as I no longer have time to "babysit" his project
 
L

louie

New Member
I thing you need an HTML clean up function.

When you paste from Word, there are a lot of tags added to the text. You need to clean them up, before going into the database.
main ones are the font format (size, style,..).

Code: 
Function RemoveHTML( strText )
Dim TAGLIST
TAGLIST = ";!--;!DOCTYPE;ACRONYM;ADDRESS;APPLET;AREA;BASE;BASEFONT;" &_
"BGSOUND;BIG;BLOCKQUOTE;BODY;BUTTON;CAPTION;CENTER;CITE;CODE;" &_
"COL;COLGROUP;COMMENT;DD;DEL;DFN;DIR;DIV;DL;DT;EM;EMBED;FIELDSET;" &_
"FONT;FORM;FRAME;FRAMESET;HEAD;H1;H2;H3;H4;H5;H6;HR;HTML;I;IFRAME;" &_
"INPUT;INS;ISINDEX;KBD;LABEL;LAYER;LAGEND;LI;LINK;LISTING;MAP;MARQUEE;" &_
"MENU;META;NOBR;NOFRAMES;NOSCRIPT;OBJECT;OL;OPTION;PARAM;PLAINTEXT;" &_
"PRE;Q;S;SAMP;SCRIPT;SELECT;SMALL;SPAN;STRIKE;STYLE;SUB;SUP;" &_
"TABLE;TBODY;TD;TEXTAREA;TFOOT;TH;THEAD;TITLE;TR;TT;U;UL;VAR;WBR;XMP;"
Const BLOCKTAGLIST = ";APPLET;EMBED;FRAMESET;HEAD;NOFRAMES;NOSCRIPT;OBJECT;SCRIPT;STYLE;"
 
Dim nPos1
Dim nPos2
Dim nPos3
Dim strResult
Dim strTagName
Dim bRemove
Dim bSearchForBlock
 
nPos1 = InStr(strText, "<")
Do While nPos1 > 0
nPos2 = InStr(nPos1 + 1, strText, ">")
If nPos2 > 0 Then
strTagName = Mid(strText, nPos1 + 1, nPos2 - nPos1 - 1)
strTagName = Replace(Replace(strTagName, vbCr, " "), vbLf, " ")
nPos3 = InStr(strTagName, " ")
If nPos3 > 0 Then
strTagName = Left(strTagName, nPos3 - 1)
End If
 
If Left(strTagName, 1) = "/" Then
strTagName = Mid(strTagName, 2)
bSearchForBlock = False
Else
bSearchForBlock = True
End If
 
If InStr(1, TAGLIST, ";" & strTagName & ";", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
bRemove = True
If bSearchForBlock Then
If InStr(1, BLOCKTAGLIST, ";" & strTagName & ";", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
nPos2 = Len(strText)
nPos3 = InStr(nPos1 + 1, strText, "</" & strTagName, vbTextCompare)
If nPos3 > 0 Then
nPos3 = InStr(nPos3 + 1, strText, ">")
End If
 
If nPos3 > 0 Then
nPos2 = nPos3
End If
End If
End If
Else
bRemove = False
End If
 
If bRemove Then
strResult = strResult & Left(strText, nPos1 - 1)
strText = Mid(strText, nPos2 + 1)
Else
strResult = strResult & Left(strText, nPos1)
strText = Mid(strText, nPos1 + 1)
End If
Else
strResult = strResult & strText
strText = ""
End If
 
nPos1 = InStr(strText, "<")
Loop
strResult = strResult & strText
 
RemoveHTML = strResult
End Function

something that I use on a website cause I got fed up in cleaning his database.

Also FKEditor has a button that will allow you to paste from MS Word as well which will clean up all the tags that are not nedded. Might be a bit too much for him as is not really user friendly unless you are familiar with MS Word itself.
 
A

Arch-Stanton

New Member
Something like Joomla would be far too complex for him, however, there is an article publisher module for the system. So you could setup the Joomla system for him install the module for publishing articles and then present him with the finished product and give him 20 mins training on the article publisher only.

He doesn't even have go into the backend to publish, and it has a MS Word "clean up the tags" function aswell.

It could be an option!

D
 
A

Arch-Stanton

New Member
Yes, here

After he submits his article, all done without going into the backend, but you would have to show him how to publish the article. Just means loging in to the backend an click two icons.

D
 
Cormac

Cormac

New Member
that module sounds very very interesting. I'm in a similar situation with BK, i have a load of non techy guys trying to click buttons and use a mouse etc etc.....they never learn. This seems idiot proof
 
mneylon

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Arch-Stanton said:
I forgot to mention Limbo, a nice little one doesn't even need MySQL,

Have a look at http://www.limbo-cms.com/

D
Click to expand...
No MySQL for a small quiet site might be an attractive option, but I can't see that scaling well on a busy one. You'd run into some serious issues ...
Nice to see that they offer MySQL as an option :p
 
A

Arch-Stanton

New Member
Yes, a while ago I was testing it without MySQL, I threw up about 80 pages of junk and then tested the response. I must say it was quite good. It saves the files as text is a db folder. Handy for someone using FreeHost.

D
.
 
9

9barJoe

New Member
I dont know if I've misunderstood your clients requirements here .. but seems like you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

The guy wants to publish articles. We can presume the text formating plain enough. At the most he might want to add subheadings in or something. There was no mention of images.

Whats to stop him pasting his text into a perfectly normal text box, and wacking it into a sql cell? Line breaks are preserved and can be converted to <br> on output, so that lets him maintain paragraphs.

You only have to teach him 'edit' 'select all' 'copy' 'paste' ... if he's not up to that shoot him.

Have I missed something ?
 
mneylon

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Unfortunately - yes :)

I already tried the "copy paste submit" routine and it was a disaster
 
mneylon

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Looks like Joomla and a few extra components and modules might be able to do the trick...
The next issue is pulling in 3 years worth of static articles into joomla and integrating vbulletin :D
 
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