How to store cms article content - content-management-system

Basically i have requirement to build a CMS kind of site.
if user submits a article what is the best way to store the article. whether it is xml or database.
the article will contain rich text formatting like content,images,highlighting source code.
sample article looks like http://www.dotnetfunda.com/articles/article1498-how-to-work-with-or-create-master-pages-in-aspnet-.aspx. Take this article as example which has images,content, source code highlighting and rich text formats. so how to store this kind of content to our website.
please guide me best way of how to store.

If you are planning to implement a CMS I would strongly recommend that you look at the open source CMSs that are out there before you start rolling your own.
WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal are the big three CMS and would be able to do all the things you have suggested.
On the issue of whether to store in the database or as files or has had an answer here: CMS: store custom pages as files or in MySQL database?
The question of whether images should be stored in a db vs filesystem is a recurring theme and this seems to be one of the best QandAs on it
Store pictures as files or in the database for a web app?

Related

How do I Server My WebApp files with Couchdb

I would like to develop an application with CouchDB, I believe that is possible to use ONLY CouchCB to server html, css, fonts, icons, js, etc. files as well as to store the data and handle them.
The problems I am facing is:
How to serve my files using CouchDB (without having to use any middleware like nodejs), what I found is that I can upload them as attachements to a _design document, but I find it not a practical way to do so for every single file
You are looking for couchapps. There are tools that take care of the uploading part for you like erica and couchapp.
Couchapp documentation is in the wiki part of the repo. Here is the file structure to design doc mapping guide.
For erica everything is in the readme.

How to migrate a Dreamweaver site into Kentico

I have a site that was originally built with FrontPage and then transferred over into Dreamweaver. There's a lot of old coding in there and a lot of image maps (think PhotoShop image slicing) for navigation etc. I need to move the site over to Kentico (not my choice) and I'm wondering if there is an easier way of doing it.
I was able to rebuild the whole template in Kentico and now I'm left with creating all the pages and importing content. Currently I'm copying and pasting all the content (text) into the pages I've built and I'm uploading all pdfs and images into the new system. That's all fine and dandy, but there are literally HUNDREDS of pages and THOUSANDS of pdfs. Is there any easier way of doing this? I'm going crazy!
Regrettably there is no easy way to achieve your goal as Kentico is ASP.NET application and your website is built with HTML pages at the moment.
You will need to manually transfer all the pages or you can use Kentico API to handle this programatically but you will need to parse the HTML pages on your own, so in this scenario... the best option is really to transfer all the content manually (or you can pay one of Kentico partners to do this for you).

CMS with Word import or paste

I am working on a project where we are taking a bunch of documents authored using MS Word and placing them online. Currently they are being published as PDF documents in order to maintain the formatting.
We are evaluating Content Management Systems (CMS), however, there is a bit of reluctance among the content publishers to use the CMS built in WYSYWIG editor. I can understand why, they are nowhere near as good as Word!
Some CMS have decent 'paste from Word' functions, but the one I have found that handles images as well is this Wordpress pluging.
My question is - are there any Content Management Systems that have been built with Word integration in mind? Something that makes it as easy as possible to publish Word documents as HTML.
So far from what I have seen, Microsoft Sharepoint had the best integration with the MS Office. I think most of them use Sharepoint as a intranet portal, but it could be also hosted as a public facing website. But compared to other CMS, it can be little pricey. But it has tons of features apart from content management.
Sharepoint Demo
Public Facing Sharepoint Websites
Microsoft Word does publish documents as HTML.
File > Save As > Web Page (Filtered)
Office.com - Save a document as a webpage
ahmednuaman/gdrive-cms-php uses Google Drive as a pseudo back-end to store and edit pages (Documents).
The self-hosted PHP and MySQL CMS requests text/HTML-exports of to display as web pages.
It also simplifies authentication and group permissions (if the editors are already Google/Drive users).

Is there a Platform-independent Web-based replacement for Word Templates?

The above Title is my Manager's words, not mine. :)
This is a follow-up to a question that I posted previously. After reading my assessment on the impacts of converting Word Templates from PC to Mac, I have now been asked to investigate whether Word Templates can be replaced with a "Platform-independent Web-based solution" (her words, not mine). She has suggested using Adobe Forms (ie. Adobe Designer).
Personally, I think the only truly platform-independent web-based solution is text files or html forms. What do other people think?
It's called WordprocessingML (aka. WordXML, WordML)...
Overview of WordprocessingML [Word 2003 XML Reference] at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa212812(office.11).aspx.
MSDN Search for "WordML" at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US?query=WordML&ac=3
It could be called XForms...
The Web was suppose to be platform-independent electronic documents. In other words, if you truly want platform-independence, then I agree with you and your forms should be in HTML. Yet, HTML forms are really not a good development platform. That is why Adobe, Microsoft, and others provide "form" solutions. XForms is an attempt to make developing and using HTML forms more flexible, overcome its limitations, and provide a platform-independent object model for completing HTML forms. You might want to look at XForms at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/.
But, I wouldn't call it PDF
In my opinion, working with PDF files is difficult. I have not looked at the file format specification, but I heard it is not trivial. Moreover, you need a custom editor and you are locked into one vendor, which is Adobe. (Yet, there are other open-source and vendors who support the file format.) Adobe is not know for creating programs that are easy to use.
My Suggestion
If you are already using Word, then moving to WordML should be fairly easy. You can easily convert your existing Word documents into WordML by simply saving them as XML from the Save Dialog; therefore, you can automate this process through code. In addition, I believe WordML supports form templates (the actual form) and data documents (the actual data for a form).
It's called PDF...
At the core (and without the million of extra unnecessary features" that's exactly the niche that Adobe PDFs were designed to fill.
I'd suggest you look more into Adobe Acrobat Professional for more info. Although, I don't think there's any good way to directly convert Word docs to PDF format.
Note: This question should be moved to Super User since it's not really programming related
Google Docs meets those requirements of a Platform-independent Web-based solution. Your mileage will vary with Google Docs though - if you just want to use it for letters, it's good. Much beyond that, it's rather limited. Unless you get the Premier (read: Corporate) version which you have to pay for, you won't be able to programmatically fiddle with the templates.
If you want a "Platform-independent solution", go with ODF or OOXML. You can make either "web-based" to your hearts content - maybe with HTML5 or another solution such as Flash or Silverlight.

Interactive PDF Creation Alternatives to Acrobat?

Are there any good alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for creating interactive PDFs? The terminology is a little fuzzy here - by interactive, I mean "able to be filled in", and not necessarily "scriptable". So this form would be for data collection, rather than report generation which seems to be the common scenario for pdf-related questions on SO.
The trick is that they need to be fillable using Adobe Reader. For those who have not experienced the many frustrations of Acrobat - by default, Reader cannot fill in a form unless it was created using Acrobat Pro >8.0 and has specifically enabled usage rights. That's fine and it basically works (except then Pro users can't save their data - WTF?).
Because I am getting frustrated, I would ideally like to avoid Adobe products altogether (that is on the design side, for the users Reader is still a necessity or I would just do it as a db-backed web form). I'm wondering if anyone has has good experiences with alternatives? Either software libraries or products?
Thanks!
EDIT - Thanks, matt b - I'd seen iText before but didn't know it could create forms. Unfortunately, it looks like Reader cannot save filled-in data to the forms generated by iText (or generated by OO Writer). I've got the nasty feeling that what I want is fundamentally impossible except using Adobe's own rights management tools. If there are other ideas. I'd love to hear them.
You can create fillable form PDFs using OpenOffice.org as well as LibreOffice.
To create the initial form elements in the *.odt documents, enable the View --> Toolbars --> Form Controls tools, which allow you to add clickable checkboxes + radiobuttons, fillable text fields, pushbuttons and some more to the page(s).
When you're finished with your document, use File --> Export as PDF with the checkbox Create PDF form enabled.
Now your PDF form will be editable (and saveable!) with any non-Adobe PDF viewer.
NOTE, however: Adobe uses an own proprietary way to create and fill PDF forms. Adobe Reader does only support to fill PDF forms which were created by an Adobe product (and which have been assigned 'extended rights' so Reader can indeed save the formdata alongside the document).
Adobe Reader will not work with PDF forms you created with OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice ('work' in the sense of: 'allows you to fill+save the form data'.). The technical mechanism behind this is that Adobe digitally sign their form documents with their own key (which is known to the Adobe Reader, and which you agreed to not reverse engineer when you accepted the Adobe Reader EULA...). --
This means:
Non-Adobe PDF Readers will not be able to 'fill+save' forms created with Adobe products (they can 'fill+print' them however).
Adobe PDF readers will refuse to 'fill+save' forms created with non-Adobe products (they will 'fill+print' them however).
The latter two points will be true for all the tools and utilities mentioned in the other answers to this question. If I'm mistaken here, please let me know in a comment...
iText is pretty much the standard in the java-world for generating PDF files programmatically. Perhaps it can also be used to create PDFs with forms in them as you would like?
The open source page layout tool Scribus has a bunch of features oriented to creating interactive PDF forms. I haven't personally used them, but they appear reasonably complete and are covered by the tutorial.
Scribus is worth knowing about if you ever need to do serious page layout in any case.
XSL FO is some thing we used to create PDF files out of existing form data. Unless you want the fillable pdf to be sent out the client, this is a valid option.
IText lets you create Annotations (there are essentially 3 types of 'interactive' components - forms (old style FDF and new XFA) and Annotations. Acrobat and lots of third party tools should let you modify the Annotations values.
There is also a DotNet version of IText called ISharp - both are freeand extremely powerful.
CutePDF Pro allows you to turn a PDF into an interactive form.
Foxit reader allows you to save any pdf with the filled in fields.
I recently dabbled with Scribus. I found it to be an excellent tool if one has enough time to configure and play around with it. I highly recommend it. Wufoo is also very good.
I am not a fan of Acrobat / Adobe. A software should make my life easier not challenge me at every step.
If you search the net with these keywords - FREE FORM CREATOR and you can add the word HTML5.
You will find an array of sites where you can log online and all your clients can have their separate login, fill in data and the form remains in the Cloud and declutter your hard drive. All stakeholders can access the form and edit at anytime. The account can be used as a folder for your business. These forms can be accessed on any device and any platform.
Many of these forms are HTML5 driven, they are so beautiful and fluid. Keep away from macros, they carry viruses.
www.homebasedofficeservices.com