We ran a review on Contribute 3 when it was still in its beta stage. The software has now been released for some time and we have been using it on and off. Time for an overview of what there is to like about and dislike about Contribute 3.

First of all: Contribute has become faster. It still slows you down but only to an acceptable pace ---a pace your doctor will agree to be excellent for the heart. After using Contribute 3 on a sister site of IT-Enquirer, we can safely say Macromedia has a winner on its hands with Contribute. But it’s not all sunshine with Contribute.

First the good. The application respects your styling. This means it will not stubbornly add CSS-styles of its own anymore. Only new pages based on a Contribute template that you add to a site will come with their own stylesheet link—which is logical.

An odd thing that’s new for this version is the guard page. It’s called “guard.html” and it serves a security purpose. Contribute makes folders on the server that contain files used in the editing process: files like temp files, rollbacks or server settings. In some instances, if a folder does not have an index page, a list of all the files within the folder will be displayed when navigating to that folder with a browser. This would allow viewers of the web site to perhaps see files they should not view. A guard page is essentially an index page that will show by default, preventing the listing of the directory. They are set by default in Contribute 3.

Publishing Services --a new category and feature for Contribute 3-- enables draft tracking and establishes a publishing flow. Using publishing services, administrators can force writers to submit their drafts for approval before publishing. Editors can publish these drafts themselves, send back for changes or pass the drafts on to someone else for review. This tracking is done by Contribute Publishing Services, which is installed to a web server.  Once this package is installed, the services are enabled in this category of the dialog box.

The Publishing Services category of the Administer Websites dialog box also allows administrators to Enable User Directory.  This setting allows users to be defined with an existing Active Directory or LDAP list, or by means of a built-in file based directory. Administrators can quickly define users, adding and removing them from a site and user group.  Users defined with User Directory can access the site using Contribute without needing a connection key. We will test Publishing Services when the package becones available for review, so keep an eye on this site in the coming weeks.

Administrators now also have a choice of page extensions, instead of automatically assuming the htm extension is the right one.

Now the less good. Contribute is a Content Management System that is really optimised for static sites. For example, when a site contains articles like a web magazine, Contribute will not automatically update index pages with a list of headlines. It is left to you, the user to add headlines and links to the page you’re about to write. After some weeks of usage, this is my main criticism of Contribute as a CMS. It focuses heavily on the editing side, but it offers little on the organisation and propagation side of the equation.

This makes Contribute especially suitable for corporate web sites, and much less attractive for content-driven sites.