It’s big mod time at my main EE site, and one of the main changes is the way we’re adding content. Up until now, most entries have been e-mailed to me, and I copy them from Word (or whatever) to Dreamweaver, format, add images, and post. Only short blog posts are entered directly by users/writers, and those usually don’t include images. I’ve been putting my images in a directory structure that gives each entry its own directory, and hardcoding the image code in my entries.
In our new incarnation, most posting will be done directly by the writers. (About eight of them now, with a potential maximum of maybe twice that.) I’ve already decided to give them limited control panel access in which they’ll enter content in a Wygwam field. (No SAEF or Safecracker.) I’m unclear on how best to handle images. I’d like to have my writers be able to pull images off their own systems and say, stick this on the left or on the right around here, and have Wygwam pull the correct CSS. (The CSS part is pretty much handled.) I’d also like them to be able to look through existing images and reuse those. Ideally, I’d like to be able to pull images directly off the web from Wikimedia Images, for example, without first saving them on their systems.
Wygwam will work with the EE file manager or with CKFinder, which is included with Wygwam. But there’s also Assets, which seems to have a bunch of cool abilities (and which Wygwam will work with), and there’s Channel Images, and who knows what others I haven’t run across yet. And there’s Matrix, which seems to give some flexibility within templates, and then there’s Structure, which I have a vague feeling might be useful.
So what have people done with this kind of situation? Given the ability for a small group of trained users (though some are not, as they say, good with computers) to put images more or less where they want them in the entry, how should I have them specify those images (keeping in mind that my ability to manage the images is also a selection criterion)?
I’m enjoying using Devot-EE as a repository for all my non-free add-ons, but the add-on situation differs from “regular” software: often when searching for a program to perform a specific task, I’ll download a bunch of shareware and freeware, see what works best for me, and implement the winner. (And paying the shareware fee if appropriate.) You can’t really do this with add-ons; I suppose I could buy everything I think has a chance of working and use the guarantee for ones that don’t work out, but it seems if everybody did that it would drive the Devot-EE guys crazy. And unless a need is very specific, I find it difficult, from the Devot-EE content, from the add-on site’s own content, and even from the docs that are generally available, to figure out if something’s what I want. Generally a fifteen minute test run gives me more information than all the docs in the world.
You know what would be nice? A five to seven day license. Download all the possibly useful stuff, try it all out, pay the license fee on what you end up using, let everything else expire.
Okay ... getting far afield of the original question. Thoughts, everyone?
Thanks,
Nathan