It’s all in the content

Last issue, I wrote about InteractiveTools.com’s htmlArea – a free JavaScript-based replacement for fields in forms that provides full WYSIWYG editing control.

Last issue, I wrote about InteractiveTools.com’s htmlArea – a free JavaScript-based replacement for fields in forms that provides full WYSIWYG editing control.

InteractiveTools has “productized” this code into several content editing and management systems including:

* DocBuilder: A document creation and management system ($99 per server).

* Article Manager: A similar system to DocBuilder but designed for publishing news. It includes a Webfeed generator so that third parties can automatically copy all or selected articles from your site as easily as possible ($299 per server).

* News Manager: Related conceptually to Article Manager, News Manager is targeted on creating and editing press releases ($99 per server).

These are all server-side Perl scripts that use the htmlArea code for client-side editing – this means that you need to have CGI access and FTP access for uploading files on your server.

Installation for all products is said to be fast (a user quoted on InteractiveTools’ site claimed a four-minute install for DocBuilder!).

Interestingly, if you can allow InteractiveTools access to your Web server the company will install the product free of charge. Upgrades are also free of charge and all licenses are permanent – no renewals or expirations.

While these products are less comprehensive than full-blown content management systems (CMS) I suspect that their focus and elegance make them far popular and more cost-effective than the “enterprise” solutions. Let me know what you use and what you think about CMS solutions …