Multiple authors editing a Bluevoda site

[pgmason]

Hi

I am an SEO spe******t working on behalf of a client who has a site hosted with Vodahost and built with Bluevoda: http://www.brownearthlandscapes.com/

Normally I use Dreamweaver (or for simple sites sometimes even notepad) to edit clients' sites and upload the finished pages via FTP. However I'm a bit concerned that if I do this in the case of this particular client, she might not be able to download the edited pages to her bluevoda package for further updating, due to the proprietary publishing method. I have experienced similar issues in the past with sites which make use of Frontpage features - they sometimes stop working if edited and uploaded outside of Frontpage. Is this a concern, or am I being paranoid?

Should I attempt to make my changes using Bluevoda (I've downloaded it, but not yet tried it out) or am I OK continuing to use the tools I am familiar with? Are there any other issues to think about with multiple authors editing a site built in Bluevoda (other than not working on it at the same time of course)? The changes I am talking about are mostly adding content, modifying titles and meta-data etc - nothing too complicated. My normal working method is to create a copy of the site in a sub-directory, and make my changes to that version for the client's approval, and then copy that to overwrite the live copy of the site. Are there any problems likely to arise with this method in bluevoda (I'm thinking of possible problems with URLs in particular - for example I know some versions of frontpage have different ways of dealing with URLs on a local and remote copies, that causes broken links if they are not published properly).

Thanks

Pete Mason

[navaldesign]

Re: Multiple authors editing a Bluevoda site

You are right, you need to optimize the pages directly in BV or, the next time she makes any change and re-publishes, all your work will get lost.

Yes, there are other issues: images, in BV are retrieved from local computer path. So, the best thing would be to mail her back the edited .bvp file and have her publish the page after your work. Also, images will NOT appear in your BV, during your work, but that's not important, you can add alt tags and any other feature to the blank image frame, after she recieves the files from you, everything will appear ok again (because she has the images in the correct parth in her computer).

BV has though a feature that allows you to do some primization work: for EACH single element you can view and edit the html code (right click, html) in the before, Inside and After Tag- this allows for some easy work.

URLs: you can use absolute (recommended) or relative(that's what i use) URLs. In no cas will there be any problem, unless your client has used some complicated folder structure.

[pgmason]

Re: Multiple authors editing a Bluevoda site

Hi, thanks for the reply.

So I will need to get her to send me the original .bvp files from her computer, edit them on mine, and then send them back to her for her to publish - is that correct? I can't see a way for me to download them from the remote site and save them in .bvp format. If I just copy them down via FTP they won't be converted to .bvp for bluevoda to work with, I presume, or is there a 'reverse publish' procedure I haven't found yet?

Thanks
Pete

[navaldesign]

Re: Multiple authors editing a Bluevoda site

No, BV will import them as html and will actually recreate the pages, but they will NOT be excactly the same. BV can't read Javascript or PHP from the net, so what you will import is the html output of the code. Text will not be justified, hyperlink styles will not be imported. Also menus will not be menus any more (because BV uses Javascript to create them) , but single linked images. Drop downs will NOT be imported at all, form validation (if used) will be ignored etc.

Have her mail you the files, it is the simplest way.

[pgmason]

Re: Multiple authors editing a Bluevoda site

Okay, thanks for all your help.

Pete