Need an Elegant Solution

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Summitt Dweller's picture

This discussion may prompt another brain dump...if so, this noob would like to apologize in advance and thank any dumpers who care to enlighten me.

I have quite a few users who generate school-related newsletters (mostly in print) and I'm finding that many use MS Publisher to do so. They would like to be able to post their creations into the district web site and have the content appear with included graphics, active links, etc. I guess the basic question I'm asking here... Is there a right way to elegantly accomodate something like MS Publisher content in Drupal 6?

The approach I've taken thus far (just as proof-of-concept) can be seen at http://stc09.tamatoledo.net/?q=node/460 and works something like this:

1) The user creates his/her web content in MS Publisher and opts to Save As "Web Page, Filtered", then elects "Publish to Web" using an FTP profile that deposits the index page as a .htm file along with the bulk of the content which is stored in a folder named to correspond with the HTM file. In the example posted above the web page is stc_test.htm and the folder is stc_test_files.

2) I created a content page and the body of the node is simply an iframe tag coded with src="./ftp_path/stc_test.htm".

3) That's it. Short and sweet but not very elegant.

The end result appears to be exactly what I wanted but the drawback is obvious... the page has to be coded with the name of the uploaded .htm file. Is there already a better solution in Drupal or am I looking at creating a content type and module to do this properly?

If a custom module is the solution then I'm imagining something that would prompt the user for their .htm file and folder, upload them both and subsequently build a node to display the page(s) inline. Am I way off the mark here?

Comments

Information Architecture

cattlecall's picture

The process you created is straightforward and probably easy for your 'editors' to follow. But I think the process you're considering could lead to lots of information architectural issues. Creating content outside of Drupal may allow your editors to create links and navigational structures you just don't want on the site - and it may introduce the need for governance policies that can otherwise be built in to a Drupal publishing workflow.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I can tell the solution you designed doesn't tie in with Drupal's taxonomy, search, and other modules that contribute to a robust website. I suggest you revisit your Info Arch plans and see how this technical implementation meshes with user needs and content/navigational scheme.

I'm curious, have you tried importing (or copy/paste) content from MS Publisher directly into TinyMCE or FCK Editor?

Thanks for the comments

Summitt Dweller's picture

Thanks for the comments cattlecall.

You're right about the lack of structure and control this provides; the MS Publisher content is not tied into the site taxonomy or other features. In fact, there are one or two groups in the organization with leaders who don't seem to like uniformity...they want to be able to establish an identity that's apart from the rest of the organization.

I don't know how the district will rule on this but I expect some feedback on the whole "identity vs. uniformity" issue soon.

No, I haven't tried any import or copy/paste of MS Pub material directly into FCK yet (don't have TinyMCE installed) but I have tried that from MS Word documents and the result is NOT pretty. That's actually one of the advantages I hope to realize from this approach....

Both MS Word and Publisher appear to share the same "Save As... Web Page, Filtered" capability. So, if I can make this work nicely for MS Publisher I'm hoping the organization can establish standards and policy for doing the same with MS Word documents....and there are a lot of those to deal with.

Now, what I'd really LOVE to do is "borrow" the styling of the MS Publisher documents that my clients have created and just give them the ability to provide content for the system displayed in their "newsletter" format. However, I've looked at the inline style that the generated .htm documents contain and I'm just not up to the task of trying to duplicate it...yet. In fact, up to now I've not even dabbled in any of the templates and only been tweaking CSS in my own custom development module.

Mark

Mark

I agree

newz2000's picture

I can understand that some groups want to have their own newsletter identity. I think that's important. What I'd do is I'd get them to help you out by adopting a process that makes it easy to simultaneously publish to the web and in print.

I use the module "taxonomy theme" to provide a "choose a theme for this page" type of drop down list. You could use this or something comparable (maybe a separate content type for each different organization's newsletter) and then convert their layout to a drupal theme. Some things should probably differ slightly between the print version and the online version. For example the online version should have prominant links to the site/department homepage.

Furthermore, people don't read on the web the way they do a printed newsletter so a single page with multiple columns and large chunks of content will not provide a usable experience. Instead each article in the newsletter should probably be a separate node and the newsletter homepage will have headlines and teasers to each of the content pieces.

So somehow the separate pieces should link together so that if you come to the site and land on an article you should easily be able to find the other articles that were published in the same newsletter.

--
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode

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Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode

Taxonomy Theme module is good but ...

Michael Hofmockel's picture

Taxonomy Theme module is good but make sure you patch it.

SA-CONTRIB-2009-008 - Taxonomy Theme - Cross site scripting
http://drupal.org/node/386940

Regards,
Michael Hofmockel
iMed Studios

Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind

Regards,
Michael Hofmockel

Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind

PDFs

cattlecall's picture

Glad to read about 'taxonomy theme' - @newz2000, can you share an example of where you're using it? Great points about process and user need, btw.

Another approach is to make available for download PDFs of their print publications. There are lots of reasons I don't like this tactic (especially because you don't get to utilize cool search and recommendation features), but it can be advantageous for resource-strapped organizations and for first-time users of a CMS who may be struggling with the complexities of organizing and updating content. This can also allow you to maintain a level of consistency that can improve the overall user experience of the site (if that's more important than individual group identity), and can give you more time to train and develop a 'phase 2' implementation plan that enhances the web site with a better offline/online publishing strategy.

Swish can bring document search to Drupal

Michael Hofmockel's picture

Swish can index documents!
http://www.swish-e.org/

Swish module
http://drupal.org/project/swish

Regards,
Michael Hofmockel
iMed Studios

Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind

Regards,
Michael Hofmockel

Open Source || Open Access || Open Mind

Sweet!

cattlecall's picture

I'll have use for this, thanks!

Here are examples:

newz2000's picture

Here are examples:

Normal site's theme:
http://www.canonical.com/

A "microsite" using taxonomy theme:
http://www.canonical.com/campaign/serversurvey/survey

I'm going to utilize this feature more in the future. We're doing email newsletters and right now they only exist in emails. I think I'll use it to create a template so that there is a website version of the newsletter that looks just like our emails.

--
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode

--
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode

Similar Problem

stieglitz's picture

Is there a way to upload the required publisher files (zipped) using filefield and then have a php script encode the direction to the file?

Or perhaps use a node reference. I have a secretary that creates a publisher newsletter which I would like to incorporate into the site (less concerned about the negative issues listed above) in an easy fashion for her. This would then be themed as a simplenews newsletter. Have there been any advancements in this? I would like to have everything done from the drupal site without having to use ftp.

Central Iowa Drupal Users Group

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