MACROMEDIA CONTRIBUTE 3-DEPLOYING CONTRIBUTE User manual

CONTRIBUTE



Deploying Contribute

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Acknowledgments

Project Management: Jennifer Rowe

Writing: Chris Bedford, Jennifer Rowe

Managing Editor: Rosana Francescato

Editing: Mary Kraemer, Barbara Milligan, Lisa Stanziano, Anne Szabla

Production Management: Patrice O’Neill

Media Design and Production: Adam Barnett, Christopher Basmajian, Aaron Begley, John Francis

Special thanks to Ken Sundermeyer, Eric Lerner, Chris Denend, Joel Huff, Lawson Hancock, Erik Larson, Sheila McGinn,

Emilio Passi, Yoko Bayer, Scott Richards, Melissa Baerwald, Deb Galdes, Kimberly Oslob, Dennis Griffin, Jon Varese,

Brady Kroupa, Josh Margulis, Gavin Anderson, Deeje Cooley, Vickie Chapman, Kaori McLister, and the Contribute engineering

and QA teams.

First Edition: July 2004

Macromedia, Inc.

600 Townsend St.

San Francisco, CA 94103

CONTENTS

Deploying Contribute to Departments and Enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Contribute deployment responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Deployment tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Deployment issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

User management models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Contribute user roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Contribute and website security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Website connection distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Deploying Contribute across an organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Approvals and site structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Content design considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Contribute Publishing Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Contribute case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4 Contents

Deploying Contribute to Departments

and Enterprises

Macromedia Contribute is a website editor that lets people connect to departmental and other

websites so that they can update web page content. Administrative assistants, product managers,

human resource managers, and other people in an organization can use Contribute to update

their workgroup’s web pages without having to contact a web team or other departmental

resources.

The following examples show how Contribute might be used in an organization:

•Updating schedules

•Posting job requisitions

•Updating an employer’s work-related policies and guidelines

•Editing organizational charts

•Sharing information among team members through a departmental intranet

This chapter, which is intended for website administrators and IT professionals, describes the best

practices for deploying Contribute within an organization. It explains how to set up Contribute

in a variety of IT environments so that content editors and website administrators can enjoy the

power and flexibility of this application.

This chapter contains the following sections:

“Contribute deployment responsibilities” on page 6

“Deployment tasks” on page 7

“Deployment issues” on page 8

“User management models” on page 16

“Contribute user roles” on page 17

“Contribute and website security” on page 18

“Content design considerations” on page 24

“Contribute Publishing Services” on page 29

“Contribute case studies” on page 29

6 Deploying Contribute to Departments and Enterprises

Contribute deployment responsibilities

As a system or website administrator, you play a large part in deploying Contribute. The

deployment responsibilities include the following tasks:

•Installing the Contribute software.

•Creating connections to websites that users of Contribute (called content editors) access.

•Defining roles (a collection of privileges that you assign to a specific user or group of users).

Roles determine which users have, or are denied, access to a specific website.

•Installing Contribute on individual computers throughout your organization.

•(Optional) Integrating Contribute with Contribute Publishing Services.

The size of your organization and the job roles associated with your organization’s websites

determine who assumes responsibility for deployment. A single system administrator may be

responsible for all deployment, or other members of the organization’s web team or IT staff may

be involved. Administrators manage Contribute websites by controlling who has access to the site

and by specifying what kinds of changes content editors can make to a website.

Administrators, web masters, and web designers

If you are a system administrator, this might be your first time to work with web pages and web

content. Your role as a system administrator may intersect with the role of web designer. A web

designer can help you determine the editing and access requirements of your site and help you

construct the site so that users with limited web-design skills can easily update content.

Contribute gives you a great deal of power and flexibility in determining who can edit web pages

on a website and what types of changes they can make. For example, you might decide that all

Contribute users, with the exception of the web-design staff, are limited to editing text on web

pages, and that the web-design staff can edit text, apply new text styles (for example, change the

type font), and insert new images.

Contribute job functions

The following table describes the function of each role that relates to Contribute:

Role Function

Contribute administrator Responsible for installing Contribute, setting up user roles and privileges,

and determining the degree to which users can access and update

websites.

Contribute administrators are often members of an organization’s IT staff,

responsible for maintaining server and network infrastructure, managing

user and file permissions across an organization’s network.

System administrator Maintains web servers and web server access. This role often overlaps

with that of the Contribute administrator and may be handled by the same

person in smaller organizations.

Web designer Designs websites, determining their look and feel, and creates and

maintains the site’s content.

Deployment tasks 7

These roles vary from organization to organization. In smaller organizations and workgroups, a

single person may handle the job of administering Contribute and determining the design of the

website. Larger workgroups and departments may have a team of people involved in maintaining

their website.

Deployment tasks

The following table describes the tasks you need to perform to successfully deploy Contribute.

Web developer Develops web-based applications, such as for absence reporting and

financial reporting, distributed to users over the web.

Contribute user Contribute users range widely in their job tasks and computer experience.

What they have is common is the need to update web page content

quickly and easily. Using Contribute, they can easily connect to a website

and safely update its content without inadvertently introducing

malfunctions.

Task Description

Gather website

information

Gather information about your website’s infrastructure. You’ll need this

information to properly install and configure Contribute.

For more information, see “Information about your website” on page 8.

Configure network and

server permissions

Ensure that the network and server permissions allow read, write, and

modify access so that Contribute users can connect to the site and

update pages.

For more information, see “Understanding network and server

permissions” on page 9.

Install Contribute Install Contribute on the computer from which you’ll administer the site,

create a connection to the website using Contribute, and establish

yourself as the Contribute administrator for the site.

To learn more about creating an administrative connection, see

“Contribute administrative connections” on page 9.

Install Contribute

Publishing Services

(optional)

Contribute Publishing Services (CPS) is a suite of Java server

applications that lets you integrate Contribute with Lightweight Directory

Access Protocol (LDAP) or Active Directory services, and implement e-

mail notifications to keep Contribute users informed about the status of

their drafts in progress.

If you want to use the CPS, you must install and configure the Publishing

Service server on a Java application server.

For more information, see “Contribute Publishing Services” on page 29.

Configure Contribute to

work with your website

After you establish yourself as an administrator of a site, you can

configure the administrative settings so that Contribute works more

efficiently with your website.

For more information, see “About Contribute administrative settings”

on page 10.

Role Function

8 Deploying Contribute to Departments and Enterprises

In addition to the basic tasks described in the preceding table, you might want to further enhance

your website by designing it to be more easily maintainable or by adding additional functionality

by using CPS.

Deployment issues

The following sections describe issues you should be aware of when deploying Contribute in your

organization. As with all client software that provides access to centralized servers on a network,

Contribute requires that certain network and server file permissions be appropriately configured

for users. Before installing Contribute and deploying it to users, ensure that you have considered

the following issues and have appropriately configured your website environment for use with

Contribute.

This section contains the following topics:

“Understanding network and server permissions” on page 9

“Contribute administrative connections” on page 9

“About Contribute administrative settings” on page 10

“Contribute site structure” on page 11

“Network paths and web addresses (URLs)” on page 11

“Contribute network connection types” on page 12

Information about your website

Before you install Contribute, you must gather information about your organization’s website

infrastructure. You need to find the answers to the following questions:

•Where is the server on the network?

•Who can access the server?

•Do new users and permissions need to be created on the server?

•What type of network connection will you use to connect to the website?

•If you are using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Secure FTP (SFTP) to connect to the website,

what FTP software is being used?

•What web server software is in use, and where is the website’s root folder?

•What is the URL of the website?

Create Contribute roles Create Contribute roles based on the privileges and restrictions you want

to place on a user’s ability to access and edit pages within the site.

For more information, see “Contribute user roles” on page 17.

Deploy Contribute to

your user base

Deploy Contribute to your users, and send them connection key files so

they can access the website.

To learn more about distributing website connections, see “Website

connection distribution” on page 21.

Task Description

Deployment issues 9

Although these questions may seem obvious, it’s good to think about them before you create a

connection to your website with Contribute. The sections below will help to provide you with

background information on these questions, and how they relate to installing and configuring

Contribute.

Understanding network and server permissions

Contribute is unique in that it allows editing of web pages directly on the server hosting your

website. This level of server access makes network permissions and access control especially

important. There are at least three levels of permissions for every Contribute site: the permissions

defined by the network operating system (for instance, Windows or UNIX server software), the

permissions defined by the web server software, and the roles you define within Contribute.

Network permissions can be set in several ways through a variety of systems. Contribute always

adheres to the network permissions for read and write access to folders. It also obeys permissions

set through LDAP and similar systems. Contribute can never overwrite any server- or network-

level permissions.

Note: The server’s network and operating system permissions, and the web server software’s

permissions, always take precedence over Contribute permissions.

Whenever you provide access to a web server, you should take precautions to ensure that the

operating system of the server hosting the site, as well as the web server software itself (and the

FTP server, if you are using FTP), are secure. For the best practices related to securing your

website from accidental and malicious tampering, see the documentation provided with your

server’s operating system, FTP, and web server software.

Note: You can set folder permissions to allow a user or group of users to modify a folder and later

define more restrictive folder- or file-editing options when you define the Contribute user roles.

Related topics:

•“Contribute user roles” on page 17

•“Contribute and website security” on page 18

Contribute administrative connections

After you gather information about your website infrastructure and configure the network and

server permissions for appropriate read, write, and modify permissions, you must install a copy of

Contribute and create a Contribute administrator connection to the website.

As an administrator, you are responsible for configuring Contribute administrative settings,

identifying users, defining user roles, installing Contribute on each user’s computer, and

distributing connection information so that users can connect to the website.

When you set up the Contribute administrator user role, consider whether you will be the only

administrator of the website. If more than one person will be administering the site, you may

need to create a group e-mail account that notifies all administrators when a user encounters a

problem.

To learn more about creating a connection, see “Creating and Managing Website Connections” in

Macromedia Contribute Help.

10 Deploying Contribute to Departments and Enterprises

About Contribute administrative settings

Contribute administrative settings are a collection of settings that apply to all users of your

website. These settings let you fine-tune Contribute to provide a better user experience. The

Contribute administrative settings are as follows:

Users and Roles lets you add users to the site, and create, edit, and delete roles.

Administration lets you specify a primary administrator for the site, set an administrator

password, and remove administration.

Tip: Contribute does not require that you set an administrator password; however, you should create

a password to protect access to the administrative functions. If you fail to assign an administrator or

an administrative password, anyone with a Contribute connection to the site can make themselves an

administrator of that site.

Publishing Services lets you enable CPS. Publishing Services is a suite of applications running

on their own server that let you extend the capabilities of Contribute as well as providing

additional functionary for users of Contribute.

Note: If you will be using the Publishing Services User Directory service, you should enable

Publishing Services and the User Directory service before adding users to the site. When you start

the User Directory service, any users who have connected to the site are removed, and any

connection keys you might have sent to users become disabled. To learn more about Publishing

Services, see “User management models” on page 16 and “Contribute Publishing Services”

on page 29.

Web Server lets you configure Contribute to work with your website’s specific web server

configuration. Because all websites vary somewhat in how they are set up, the configuration

options in the Web Server dialog box let you specify settings specific to your website, which

Contribute might not be able to determine automatically.

To learn more about the web server configuration settings you can specify, see “Web server index

pages” and “Alternate website addresses” in Macromedia Contribute Help.

Rollbacks lets you enable rollback files and specify the number of rollback files to maintain on

the server.

To learn more about rollbacks, see “Enabling and disabling rollbacks” in Macromedia Contribute

Help.

New pages lets you specify the encoding used for characters in web pages and the default page

extension (.htm, .html, and so on) to use when creating new pages.

By default, the character encoding for new pages is set to Western, which applies to all English

and Western European languages. The default encoding is set from your computer operating

system’s default encoding. Additional options include Central European, Cyrillic, Greek,

Icelandic, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean. If you want to create

pages that display characters for multiple languages, select UTF-8.

To learn more about preference settings for new pages, see “Specifying new page preferences” in

Macromedia Contribute Help.

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