Easy Site Editing - Part 1

[Mace Z4]

Right then, for those of you who make web site/pages with lots of images on, I take it that you use one computer for all of it right?

Ok then so what happens if you're away from home (and you don't have a laptop) to edit your pages while you're away?
A friend or work place says that you can access the page from their computer, but you don't want to fill up their hard drive with all your images...

Here's what I suggest you do, when you put an image on the page, use the full path address for the image, no matter how small or large it is.

For example, if you're using something like Dreamweaver to create your pages you'll have a root tree at the side of your screen showing you all the pages in your site, and if your organized enough you'll have an images folder with all your site images in.

The way that Dreamweaver will take your images from this folder and place them on the site is to link them like this...

Code: Select all

/images/image.png

This is fine as long as you are editing your site from the same computer all the time...

What I suggest is that you put the whole path name in the image field like this...

Code: Select all

http://www.mysite.com/images/image.png

This way when you take the page that you're editing you don't really need to take the whole images folder with you too.

You can make whatever edit you need to and then when you go to preview the page you've just edited the page will draw the images from your host rather than the hard drive.

Saves space and time with the up and downloads!

This also means that once you have all your images uploaded to your host you don't need to keep them on your hard drive all the time, they are on the web ready for you to use!

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Just remember you need an Internet connection that is always on for this to work properly!

[Dax]

I don't do a lot of web design, but that does make sense so you can edit where ever you are!
I guess all you need is something to up and download the pages you're going to edit, and the program to edit them with..!

[Mace Z4]

Yah an FTP would be handy, but if you're making a small change then you can always go into the page code and edit it by hand like I do...

But then again, I've always got my laptop with me and I have all my FTP and design programs on there...

[Joker]

I so need a laptop...lol

but this tut is very handy as there are times I've wanted to work on the pages while at someone elses house

[Mace Z4]

I'm so turning into a Drifter with my job!

Laptop, iPod, living out of a suitcase, driving in a van...

[iPodRx]

You could always code php so that you can edit your pages right on the site.
Wordpress is a good example of what I'm talking about.

[Mace Z4]

True, but I've found that there's a lot of people who won't actually touch php for one reason or another...

[Augur]

acutally relative paths work fine in DW (i.e. /images/<insertimagefilename>) as long as you have the site configured. Without the site loaded and creating a page on the fly is where you'll run into problems or even right click/editing.

Also if you move or rename any files linked, obviously you'll have to update the page and resave it. The broken links search works wonders ;o)

Also, CMS (Content Management Systems), or the like, imbedded into any flavor of a php distro often lacks understandable documentation; it also requires one to primarily have admin access or have set permissions for who all is allowed to do what to be of any benefit. Given the complexity of PHP code itself compared to HTML, making an observation to "code php so that you can edit your pages right on the site..." is something that I would neither allow or suggest, primarily because 99% of all web-based editors aren't worth the time installing and configuring to work properly, not to mention the potential for misuse. Wordpress for all intents and purposes is some-what similar in function to DW, in that you can edit pages, but it's also limited in overal functional capability compared to DW because it's a blogger's tool. While being relegating it to an "ease of use" question, I'd rather have something with more options (CMS) than something that lacks features, and a bitch to configure than a wannabe any day.

[iPodRx]

Wordpress was just an example of what I'm talking about. I'm sure I could get my friend to write some PHP so that you can do what you need on a website.