Case studies We learn so little and forget so much.
Case 11 - Beta testing CityDesk - my first site November 6, 2001
I've been beta testing new web publishing software called CityDesk from Fog Creek Software. They expect to have an official release around December 1, 2001. Here are some of my ongoing notes. By the way I am using CityDesk to publish this and all of case studies as well.
I'm starting to get "it." Here is my first CityDesk site http://tk-jk.net/Bridgers It's a memoir site for a friend's retired father who is computer-phobic. I have three goals for the site: To publish his memoirs, to motivate his family to type the memoirs so I can publish them, and finally, to motivate the author to overcome his fear and start surfing. The third is a long shot but who knows.
I quit programming for a living in 1983. I've been knocking around with FrontPage in my spare time for about a year. "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing" has been my textbook.
Using CityDesk has been a lot a fun and ideal for this task. It took a week of my spare time learn enough CityDesk to get it this far. It will probably take a few days for the next site and most of that will be on design and content.
I use three "article" folders, three templates and three loops: One for each of two memoirs, and one for the main menu. I'm hoping there is another memoir in the works in which case I'll just add another folder, template, loop and diddle with the index page.
The publishing process is: The family types a chapter, e-mail it to me, I paste it into an article, and publish. I think I could turn this over to a family member and have them do it themselves.
The directory structure is a thing of beauty:
Title of the Website index.html
Mainpages (contains my "main menu" pages) Deducation About Contact
Shaggy (contains chapters and scans) Scan of Cover Scan of Inside Cover Scan of handwriting Shaggy Dog Chapter 0 Shaggy Dog Chapter 1 Part 1 ....... Shaggy Dog Chapter 1 Part 6
Pictures Little shaggy scan Shaggy cover ....... (and the rest of the images)
Here are the three loops in the index.html page: I'll put these in later when I can figure out how to do it. I don't how to put CityDesk scripts into an article with CityDesk trying to execute the scripts.
It's either me or a bug in the "beta."
The loop that generates the main menu and links: {$foreach x in (folder "Mainpages")$} {$x.headline$}(this blank lines makes a blank line between the menu links) {$next$}
The loop that generates the "Shaggy Dog" chapter listing and links: {$foreach x in (folder "Shaggy")$} (this blank lines makes a blank line between the chapter names) {$x.headline$} {$next$}
The loop that generates the "Crick" chapter listing and links:
{$foreach x in (folder "Crick")$} (this blank lines makes a blank line between the chapter names) {$x.headline$} {$next$}
The publishing process is: The family types a chapter, e-mail it to me, I paste it into an article, and publish. I think I could turn this over to a family member and have them do it themselves.
My wish list so far:
I'd love to have some keywords or script so that I could have "previous chapter" and "next chapter" links in my articles (chapters). I would rarely use them but they are appropriate for these memoirs.
I would like to include an identical menu on every page of my site. CityDesk can do that just fine. I want an extra feature that says: If I am viewing the "contact" page, deactivate the "contact" link in my menu. In other words, if a link points to the page your looking at, deactivate it.
This might be a problem for folks to use just such a link to go to the top of the page.
My Silver Bullet CityDesk has stretched my thinking about the ideal web-publishing tools for non-technical communities. I'm enjoying CityDesk and expect it to be even better when it's ultimately launched.
What would make CityDesk nearly perfect for me would be a way to manage forums, e-mail alerts, and mailing lists from within the CityDesk environment: When I publish a new article, lets say, the new weekly calendar, I'd like to e-mail it automatically to my online community. Or, to have CityDesk ask me if I want to send it. If you are familiar with the Greenspun's free services , I want to have SPAM and LUSENET as part of the CityDesk package The services don't have to be free though.
So: Imagine that I have used a CityDesk feature to subscribe and pay for a mail and forum service running on the Fog Creek server farm. Then I create a template with a function that says: "When I publish an article for the first time with this template, send the "teaser" to this mailing list or:
On another template, I'd use another function that says "Put the forum on this page" or {$includeforumhere
"forum-id"$
{$includelinkto "forum-management-id"$}
I recognize this would require cash and major programming for the desktop and server and that I might be the only person in the potential market; but there it is.