How a non-technical person can add announcements, events or other changing information to their website without calling a programmer.

By Rick Johnson

Your website looks pretty good. You've put a lot of effort into writing and assembling all of your content. Your web developer has done a good job and it's finally online.

Now take a hard look at your site. Has it changed lately? Is it like an advertisement that lays out your information but never changes? Would someone want to visit your site more than once, or is it just the same old thing?

If you really think about it, you've probably got some new information you could add. How about a page with company news or a section on your home page that features announcements? The point is to have some changing information somewhere on the site that gives your visitors something new when they return. Maybe you could include a new product announcement. Perhaps having a changing calendar of upcoming events or some industry news. Information about new things people are doing in your company or organization is always interesting. Once you start looking for information, you might be surprised at how much is available.

Updating your Site

Assembling interesting information is one thing, but then how do you technically get this information onto your website? You could call your web developer or hire a technical person to do it, but isn't there an easier way for a non-technical person to simply update a website on an ongoing basis?

This is basically how the update process works.

1. Assemble new information for the website.

2. Update the web page. Once you've assembled the information, you need to get it into a web page format, usually an HTML page. To many, unless you're a programmer or have nerves of steel, the thought of opening up an HTML document and adding information is kind of like deciphering secret code. Although not really that hard, one misplaced character could mess up the page.

3. Transferring the page up to the web server. Any changed web page needs to be uploaded to the web server. Again, although a relatively easy task, one miss step could render your site inoperable. Even seasoned professionals make mistakes such as deleting files or copying to the wrong subdirectory.

Doing it Yourself

What is needed then, is a way for a non-technical person to quickly update a website. Fortunately, there are many ways available. Most of these ideas require a programmer to initially set up, but then make it easy for anyone to update a website, or in some cases update themselves, automatically!

We're going to stick to simpler techniques of updating information to a live website. Web database solutions and CGI server based technologies can be used to input information to a website but are beyond the scope and space limitations of this article.

Updating a Page

Let's start with some simple ways a non-technical person could update a web page.

1. Update a simple HTML page. Have your programmer place comment tags in a web page toshow exactly where to enter new information. A comment tag is seen in the code, but not seen when viewing the web page online. The code would look like this…

<!----Place text below this line----->

The new updated text goes here!

<!-----Place text above this line----->

This page could be opened up with a simple text editor such as "Notepad" and then saved and uploaded. Some HTML tags would be needed, however such as line breaks <BR> , but they could be kept to a minimum.
This is the standard way most websites are updated, but we're looking for a simpler way to update a page without seeing or editing any HTML code.

2. Use a WYSIWYG web page editor. Why not use an editor like FrontPage or Netscape Composer, the editor you probably already have if you have Netscape? Well, you could especially if you kept it simple. These editors are as easy as typing in any word processor, but updating a page that has navigation or more complex features could become tricky, and it would be easy to get into a jam where suddenly the page didn't work. One idea might be to build a part of your site using frames so that only the announcement page would be updated while leaving the navigation alone.

3. Server Side Includes Server side includes (SSI) are a way to insert text into a webpage from a secondary file. They're a very powerful technique that can be used in a variety of ways by the web programmer. The primary web page contains a simple line that looks like this.
<!--#include file='note.txt'-->

In this example, the SSI inserts into the page whatever is contained in the file "note.txt". For our purposes, this could be simple text information, for example, a company announcement. The text formatting and other coding would be on the primary page, and our update could be a paragraph created with a text editor with minimal HTML code. We would create the file "note.txt" and upload it to the web server. The page would then contain our new update. SSI can be used in many other ways such as a menu that is used on many pages throughout a site. By changing just one file, all pages with the menu would be updated. SSI pages usually have the extension ".shtml" and require a properly configured web server. Often your ISP can help with information about SSI.

3. Java Applets that read a text file. There are many Java Applets that display text in interesting ways. Perhaps you've seen a scrolling message or ticker applet on a website. Often you can control the color, font, display mode, and use graphics and links as well. The trick here is to find one that reads its text message from a separate text file. Again, the non-programmer simply updates a text file and uploads it to the web server, no programming required! A good website to find Java Applets is JARS http://www.jars.com/.

4. Update a graphic. Another idea would be change graphics on your site. If you have graphics creation capabilities, new graphics could be created to periodically replace ones on your site. Since graphics are separate files from the HTML pages that contain them, creating a new graphic, giving it the same filename and uploading it to the web server would change your site without touching your HTML pages.

Uploading a Web Page

OK, you can create a simple text file, but uploading a web page is scary, right? Uploading, or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) as it is usually called, is really just copying a file from one computer to another. (Your computer to the web server.) When we view a web page we are downloading a file, and it is actually transferred to our computer's disk drive. Anyone can take our web pages, but only the person with a password can upload a file back up to the web server. After all, we wouldn't just anyone changing our site.

We need a simple way to transfer our files up to the web server while still maintaining the necessary security.

FTP Basics

First a few FTP basics.
1. Always have a back up. Before you copy files to your web server, back up your files just in case you make a mistake. That way, if something does go wrong, you can quickly put the old files back.
2. Make a separate folder. If you're routinely updating just a few files, place them in a separate directory so you can easily see what you're doing. Many websites can contain hundreds of files and it's easy to get confused when looking a huge list.
3. Check your site after the update. Always view your site online after an update to make sure every thing still works. Viewing with several different browsers and computers if possible, is also a good idea.
4. Don't use capital letters in filenames. Many web servers are case sensitive. For example, the filenames, message.htm, Message.htm, and message.html are not the same. Every web developer has learned the hard way when a graphic doesn't show up on the live site because of a misplaced capital letter. Always using lower case letters in filenames will solve the problem.

FTP Software

There are many good FTP programs available. Here are just a few. A great source for FTP (and lots of other software) is TUCOWS http://tucows.fishnet.com/ftp95.html.

WS_FTP is the old standby for the PC that is easy to use and preferred by many professionals. The shareware program from ISP Switch - http://www.ipswitch.com/Products/WS_FTP/index.html is available for download all over the Internet. With several versions available, the "Lite" version is actually free to qualified users. The program has selectable interfaces. You can choose either the 'Classic" interface with two windows, the left is your computer, the right the remote computer, or a "Windows" like interface with drag and drop.

Other variations of FTP software are programs like ftpNetDrive (Shareware $26.50)
http://www.knowareinc.com/ftpnd.html
This program will give you the ability to map a network drive letter to a remote ftp server such as your web server. Once mapped, any standard Windows application can access the remote files simply by using the standard File Open/Save/Save As dialogs. You edit a file and simply save it as you would any file.
Knowareinc also publishes a program called Internet Neighborhood that works with the Windows Explorer file manager to access FTP sites.

Another software package called NetLoad (Shareware $39.95) http://www.aerosoft.com.au/netload automatically updates a file or directory on an FTP server. This would be a great way to update your website automatically. Whenever a file is updated on your computer, the same file will be updated on your website.

Putting it All Together

Let's say you have a calendar of events you want to periodically update on your web site.
Have your web developer build a page that reads a simple text file as we described above. Perhaps it would use Server Side Includes that would read in the file or maybe a scrolling Java Applet that reads a text file.
Then you get a software program like Netload that automatically uploads a file from your computer to your website server every time it's changed.

You then simply type out your update with your text editor, save it, and the next time you log on to the Internet your website is updated.

Another Solution

A really interesting product is software called JustEdit from Mainstay. http://www.mstay.com/justedit_promo/ ($49.95, $99.95, or free promotional version)
The software is actually a Java applet that updates a specially configured web page. You revise one of your web pages by inserting special tags that create fields for your data. For example, you might create fields for "announcement1" and "announcement2". Then you create another web page that will be your update page. This page has text boxes labeled with your fields, "announcement1" and "announcement2". You upload these two new pages and also place the JustEdit java applet in the same directory on your web server.

You simply bring up your new update page with a browser connected to the Internet. After you enter your web server name and password, you see the your current info in text boxes labeled "announcement1" and "announcement2". You simply type in a new message, press "save", and your web page is changed!

The free version is fully functional but attaches a banner ad at the bottom of your web page. Paying for the registered version removes the banner ad.

Next month we'll look at ways to automatically add changing content to your website. Your site can be updated everyday and you don't lift a finger. Best of all it's free!

Rick Johnson is a Web Developer for Vallon, Inc. in Minneapolis.
He can be reached at rickj@vallon.com