User placing content themselves

[Nilgni]

Is there a place where I can read up on this topic?
I cannot find anything!

I want to place a small section on the front page of my site that users can update.

I plan on putting the information in an Access database and dynamically placing it on the page. I suspect though that punctuation and spacing for paragraphs wouldn't translate?

Thanks for the help

 

[Sheco]

Do you mean like this message board is a web pages where the users add content themselves?

Here the content is asking and answering questions... is that what you mean? Please explain.

 

[Nilgni]

Not exactly,
I created a database site that tracks wrestling bouts. I want to let the same users that populate the bouts in the database to be able to update a small section of the home page. I will populate the rest.

I am able to load a section of the page from another page using a small frame.

If it were just a word or a few words it wouldn't be an issue, but it will probably be sentences with punctuation and other unforseen things. I am concerned that the memo field in MS Access will not tolerate or display the users entries correctly. What I wondered was.. is there an asp add-on that turns the user input into something html?

If not, is there a tutorial that explains how people have done this before?

Thanks for your help, Happy Thanksgiving
Keith

 

[damber]

Keith,

You want 1 of 3 things:

1. A Content Management System (CMS) - Do a google search and you'll turn up loads of info on this, some are free, some cheap, some expensive - but unlikely to fit with your current site too easily, so it may be more hassle than it is worth - as you're only editing a small section and you seem to position your issue as more the formatting than anything else.

2. A good book to help you write the features yourself - An unlikely option since you asked for a ready-to-go option.

3. Use a Rich Text Editor (RTE) and develop the functionality for users to edit the database text that is used to populate the section of the page in question. There are several available - some free, some low cost. They will allow users to edit text like they would in Word/WordPad etc (e.g. Bold / Underline / Image / Font / Colour) without the need for HTML knowledge. The resultant text will be HTML and can therefore be posted to the DB and retrieved later as is - either for display or editing.
Examples:

http://www.webwizguide.info/asp/sample_scripts/RTE_application.asp

http://www.fckeditor.net/

http://www.download.com/DevEdit-ASP-Version/3000-2181_4-10220447.html

As an aside the Memo field in Access will store any type of written Latin based text you can think of - and more besides, so this shouldn't be an issue.

A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!

 

[Sheco]

Perhaps the formatting issue to which SkyChief refers is that HTML compresses white-space... this is not really an Access issue... it is an HTML issue and would happen with any database.

To fix it just use the <BR> HTML tag in place of CRLF and maybe five "&nbsp;" instead of TAB.

This really isnt a big deal since you might be replacing single quotes anyway.

 

[damber]

It could be what SkyChief means - though considering this statement:

and other unforseen things

.. SkyChief would find that an RTE component would resolve the now and the then - as it's effectively a WYSIWYG editor.

A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!