[FrogMaster]

Hi!
I am planning a new large intranet project, covering around 70 locations in 40 countries.
My main concerns are about very decentralized content management and easy page design.
Most potential local webmasters are not IT people.
I would like them to be able to design, manage and publish their own sections of the portal without the assistance of IT which will be unavailable at many remote locations. This with minimum training, most of them being smart marketing and/or communications people.
Hosting,administration, database design and all technical stuff will be centralised. Standard templates, graphics lay-out and processes would also be developped and maintained centrally.
What in your opinion would be the easiest to use publishing tool for these people?
Contenders are Frontpage, Open Market, Dreamweaver, Click and a few others. Some are pretty 'simple' wysiwyg easy to use tools, others are quite powerful and complex content publishing platforms.
Has any of you smart guys had a similar issue to solve?
Well ... my next bonus may depend on your valuable input

[clutch]

I have been a fan of FrontPage for functions like this, but I have never been a fan of using FrontPage Extensions on the server (v2002 is out, and it seems more solid and quicker than previous versions tho) unless I need to as in the case of Visual Interdev. It's very easy to get around in, and people can be up and running in minutes. Now, I have gone to Adobe GoLive! 5, and I have the HR guy using it now. It's really easy, writes slimmer, trimmer code and was pretty cheap (less than $150US) for the competitive upgrade from all the free versions of FrontPage 98 that we have with our NT 4.0 Server CDs. If any of them have used Photoshop, they can pick up on this really quickly. Plus, if they are using Photoshop and Image Ready, they can save GoLive! code in their work and GoLive! will then allow for further tweaking of various behaviors (such as mouse-overs and the like) that can be defined in Image Ready.

[FrogMaster]

Thanks for your reply, Clutch.
I did not think of Golive! first. Very good idea as my company may negociate a bulk package with Adobe so that users have the whole consistent toolbox.
Real wysiwyg is a plus for them. No table hassle, just drag'n drop, copy and paste, position objects, with pixel precision, and upload to the staging server I believe.
Is is that way?
Regards

[clutch]

Very much so. You get a "box" of tools in the traditional panels that are on the right side of most Adobe products, and you simply drag and drop whatever you want to use. If I need to do a quick layout, I use that first as it works really well. I will also do some ASP coding in it occasionally (though I use Visual Interdev for anything with "depth" to it), and it will connect to databases as well. If you are looking for an app that can get people up and running quickly but will not be easily outgrown, then that's the one I would recommend. To me, it's what Dreamweaver/Dreamweaver UD should have been in the first place.

[FrogMaster]

Excellent Clutch,
I am going to have a deep look at the Adobe suite and do some live evaluation.
This may take some time before I get corporate IT guys buy-in but I'll let you know.
Another question : will it be possible to link to Lotus Notes "legacy" databases? I have close to one gig of LN stuff to migrate one way or another.
Best regards - Frog -

[clutch]

That I don't know. I haven't messed with Lotus Notes, so I really couldn't tell you. What data are you trying to get? Email info, or other collaborative data?

[FrogMaster]

No mail inf, rather collaborative data, folder structures where people/workgroups put any kind of documents like *.pdf, *.doc, *.ppt, *.xls, photos in any format, drawings and a bunch of Access or other kinds of databases.
Well heterogeneous attachments and stuff they need to keep somewhere so that anybody can read and use.
All that "public" content would be candidate to migration to web-based platform.
Regards

[clutch]

Are you guys thinking of going to Exchange? While I have used Exchange 5.5/2000, I am more centered around the mail and OWA (Outlook Web Access) functionality of it than its collaborative portions. I have worked with a little bit of CDO coding to make apps that access calendars and such, but I haven't really gotten into the posting and sharing of documents into "Team Folders" and the like.

[FrogMaster]

Well, some years ago my company made a competitive evaluation of Exchange and Lotus Notes. The outcome was that Exchange was cheaper but did not offered the powerful collaborative functionalities of LN, which was chosen in the end.
People have got used to it and create very easily databases where they put their shared documents.
Now, we have thousands of such databases around there. This is nice but puts a pretty burden on top of the infrastructure because of all those needed replications and huge storage space.
And many databases have lost their owners over time which makes administration tricky.
On the other hand, these databases, even those dead, constitute a huge asset of knowledge.
This is the challenge.
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Regards
Frog