Macromedia's Contribute Gets Manageable

Web content-creation tool adds management features from the company's Web Publishing System.

Dennis O'Reilly, PC World

Web developers may soon find their projects easier to manage with Contribute 3, announced this week by Macromedia.

The updated content-creation tool, which will sell for $149 (upgrades cost $79), includes a free access license to Macromedia's new server-based Contribute Publishing Services management system.

CPS is also a key component of the company's Web Publishing System, which is also being announced this week. WPS combines Studio MX 2004 with from ten to thousands of Contribute licenses.

Both Contribute 3 and WPS are scheduled to ship in August for both Windows and Mac OS X.

Simple Web Posting

Contribute is designed to help nondevelopers quickly and simply post information to Web sites or corporate intranets. It lets you add text and images to a page, or alter text and images on an existing page just as you would using a word processor. Users are restricted from changing other areas of the page or its underlying HTML.

The updated application integrates with Macromedia's popular Dreamweaver Web development program, updated last fall. Version 3 benefits from Dreamweaver MX 2004's enhanced support for Cascading Style Sheets. Previous versions of Contribute would not always show CSS pages correctly, but Macromedia says this glitch is fixed in the new Contribute release.

Contribute 3 also adds a "Send for Review" option that lets you approve changes to a page before publishing. When this option is chosen, Contribute displays a list of reviewers, and after one is selected, the program automatically sends an e-mail notification of the change.

Also bundled with the program is version 2 of Macromedia's FlashPaper program, which can convert any printable document into a file for display in the ubiquitous Flash player. FlashPaper even opens files in Adobe's Acrobat PDF format, without requiring the Adobe Reader program. FlashPaper 2 is available for the first time as a standalone program for $79.

Moving Up to Content Management

For many current Macromedia customers, the most significant changes to Contribute aren't in the program itself but in how it integrates with the company's new Web Publishing System. WPS differs from large-scale content-management solutions by approaching the process from the end user back to IT, rather than from IT out to the end user.

In the Macromedia model, Web developers use Dreamweaver and other Studio MX tools to design and construct the site, business people use Contribute to post information and updates to specific pages on the site, and the IT staff uses CPS to manage users, roles, and permissions.

WPS runs on Windows, Linux, and Unix servers, as well as under J2EE. It links to databases via Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and Active Directory.

WPS pricing starts at $2499 for 10 Contribute licenses and one full Studio MX 2004 developer seat. Current Contribute users can upgrade to WPS for $109 per seat.