ContentManagementApplications

Content Management Application, usually thought of as server side tools with thin web client interfaces, can also have thick desktop components, and even be entirely client side, as BlogEd so neatly demonstrates. BlogEd edits the Blog content locally, and then pushes the changes to the server in the form of html and RSS files using ftp or ssh. It could easily be generalised into a wiki editor, and presumably a more general Content Management editor.

Some advantages of a thick client Web Content editor are:

• Network connection is not necessary to compose the content. This is important since content composition can take a very long time, and be subject to numerous rewrites.
• Spell checking and grammar checking tools, as well as other Office gadgets that work best with very quick response times, can be built in
• The well known button toolbar interfaces can be offered to mark up the text as well as the more hackerish wiki or html notation, thereby enlarging the end user pool. Whatever interface the end user prefers, the client can hide the subtle differences between the various wiki formats allowed by the numerous servers in existence.
• Synchronisation with thick Content Management Servers such as SnipSnap or this wiki can be done in the appropriate way by using the MetaWeblog or Atom APIs.
• Content can be controlled by the author. Since he always keeps a version of it on his thick client, he can keep a history of his contributions across the web, and track changes or responses to it. This points to the merging of news reading software such as JNN^? with client side content management tools.

Yet unexplored possibilities also open up. If every client keeps a log of his blog/wiki entry contributions and their referenced or related entries, then a distributed image of blog and wiki space would exist on each authors and readers computers, that would perhaps just require a peer to peer jxta like application to create a distributed and resilient thought space.

-- HenryStory - 23 Jul 2004

webpublisher is an application to help manage content on a remote web server using FTP. Unlike most FTP programs, webpublisher keeps a history of what has already been sent. This and other tricks help minimize network traffic and bandwidth. It also reduces the amount of operator interaction. Webpublisher is a time saving program for webmasters.