Content Management, I think (Long)

["Marie C. Paretti" <mparetti -at- vt -dot- edu>]

I'd search the archives or the web on this, but to be honest, I'm not 
really sure what I'm looking for, and that's where I need help. If someone 
could point me in the right direction, I'd be thrilled. Searching on things 
like "Single Sourcing" and "Content Management" open a pandora's box, so I 
need to narrow my approach. It could be that the current discussion on 
databases is what I need. Right now, I'm looking for a direction to 
investigate.

Here's the situation: one of my long-standing clients wants help 
streamlining their writing process; they produce and 
maintain/update   something like business plans for their customers. My 
client has ~3 people (not writers, and while not computer-illiterate, not 
wiz-bang techies either) producing/updating these plans. My client wants 
two things:

        1. A series of boilerplate documents that his people can then 
open, save to a new file, and edit as necessary. The plans they write will 
have any number of common pieces (the boilerplate text), but each plan also 
gets tweaked based on the customer's situation. In addition to the text, 
each plan may include maps and other GIS data, and reports generating from 
another program that is itself build on an Access database. The plan gets 
printed (nicely formatted of course) and handed to the customer.
        - This part is at least doable. I can create the boilerplate docs 
in Word, make them read-only, give my client's employees a down & dirty on 
styles, and show them how to insert individual files into a single 
document, and probably even work around incorporating the material from 
other programs - I need to look at their GIS system to be sure. Worse comes 
to worse, that info is a separate appendix (that's what they do now - print 
from the relevant programs and tack the printouts on to the end).

        2. The complicated part - the client wants an *easy* system for 
putting the finished plans on a password-protected web site, and updating 
the web version of each plan sort of on the fly. That is, suppose my client 
is maintaining 75 plans, each made up of 4 documents: A, B, C, and D. Let's 
assume A, C, and D are customized versions of the boilerplate that are 
different for every customer, while B is a fixed text - say, current market 
pricing information. If the market price info changes and my client updates 
document B, he wants to not only be able to generate a new printed version 
when the time comes (they update printed versions once a year for every 
customer), but be able, in one fell swoop, to update all 75 plans on the 
web in "real time" - i.e. update the web version of B and have that change 
all web versions of the plan.
        Part of what makes this complicated is that this is something his 
employees (again, not professional writers, not people up on all the latest 
writing-related software or on HTML) need to be able to do regularly 
(probably biweekly or monthly). They need to be able to quickly create the 
web version of each plan from the print version, and readily make changes. 
Word is the writing tool of choice, though if I could come up with another 
*easy-to-use* system, that might fly as well.

The options I've come up with so far:
        - Word's Save as HTML feature, which produces . . . shall we say, 
"weak," code but which might serve this purpose (but might not, the printed 
docs will have extensive formatting and all kinds of things would like get 
screwed up)
        - Word to PDF, with embedded links referencing the various 
documents. This is what I'm leaning towards.
        - Some sort of content management system or database structure 
that I admittedly feel at a loss on developing (but there's no time like 
the present to learn new skills).

Either of the first 2 I can handle, but if you think the third one is my 
best bet, I need help getting started. Before I launch myself into the 
content management fray, I'd like to know whether or not that's the 
direction I need to go, or if the Word to PDF option would be equally 
(maybe more) effective.

Note, too, that my client is a small company without a lot of $$ to invest 
in new software; budgets are tight all the way around.

TIA,
Marie



Dr. Marie C. Paretti
Assistant Director of Professional Writing
Department of English
Virginia Tech
mparetti -at- vt -dot- edu
http://www.english.vt.edu/~mparetti/



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Check it out! Get some cool freebies when you buy RoboHelp! You'll receive
SnagIt screen capture software and a 10% discount voucher for RoboHelp
Consulting. This special offers expires March 29, 2002.
www.ehelp.com/techwr
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.