What a cool new online tool Adobe has come up with. It is called InContext Editing and allows any site you create with Dreamweaver to be a content management site. Specifically, this means that any site you create with the proper syntax and is set up on InContext Editing can now be edited by your customer using a browser and no HTML knowledge.
To take advantage of this new tool, here are the steps. You set up your site with Dreamweaver templates, locking down certain sections of a page where you don’t want your client to change – like navigation or footer information. Then you set up the “FTP bridge” on InContext Editing and then load your real files and templates to your own web hosting server.
InContext Editing allows the client to login to a control panel, call up a page from their real web server and change the areas that you have approved right there in a WYSIWYG mode. The client can publish the updated page with one click. Clients can even add pages to their site, links, and images.
What a great innovative new product! I will be doing some in-depth testing in the next several weeks and will update my blog with my thoughts after I have really taken it for a whirl, but at first blush, it seems like an excellent tool that allows the end-user to be in control.
What is great from my view point, is that you can create the ease of a content management site without the headaches and programming overhead that a typical content management site needs. On top of that, our websites are built for search engines unlike a content management site that is built for user friendliness, so keeping the optimized code in place yet allowing the client to change wording or add things when they want is an excellent feature.
Right now the application is free, but don’t expect it to stay this way forever. I will be very interested to find out what Adobe feels that they want to charge for the application after they’ve gotten web designers in to take it for a test ride.
In the meantime, you can check out more information and even watch a video demo on Adobe InContext Editing on Adobe.com.