The smart people at www.studio77.com have created a PHP module called "Empower 2001" which allows you, the web site owner, to reliquish control of all or part of some HTML pages on your web site. You can allow others to update the designated portions of specified files.
You can find the package on phpbuilder.net.
You may take it for a "test drive" here. You may edit empower/demo.html.
How Empower 2001 Works
The "admin" page reads a configuration file and then looks for any HTML files that contain some special comment tags:<!-- EMPOWER -->
<!-- END_EMPOWER -->
These HTML files are presented for selection by the admin tool. The person viewing the admin tool selects the file they want to edit, edits it and viola! The HTML file has been changed.
Now you, as the owner of the web site can allow someone else to modify part of your web site without giving them the keys to the kingdom. All you have to do is control access to the admin tool.
Empower 2001 Limitations
Colaboration on a web site is not as easy as it first seems. To set up a truly colaborative system you need to address issues of
- security
- scope
- communication
- responsibility
Concerning security, Empower 2001 allows you to assign login/password pairs that are allowed to use the admin tool. All such pairs are allowed to update all files that have been marked for update. If you want to give update privileges to different people for different files you need to set up different directories and install Empower 2001 in each. Note that this login/password system is independent of the Yahoo! WebHosting Access Control system so it's possible to set up a file that can be edited by a person who does not have the rights to view that file. (Try editing "private/fromanywhere.html" using the Empower 2001 admin tool then try viewing
I assure you that the edits you make actually worked but you won't be able to view the file because you don't have a valid login/password to access the "private" sub-directory.)
Empower 2001 limits the scope of a collaborator's ability. The collaborator can only edit the files you set up. They cannot create new files.
Empower 2001 addresses only one aspect of communication - the ability of the collaborator to update a file that is immediately accessible via the web. It does not address the problem of dualing collaborators. (The last one wins.) Or other aspects of communication like notifications and feedback.
Empower 2001 allows you, the site owner, to control which part of which files you will allow others to modify but there is no way to assign responsibility for a particular file to a particular contributor without installing multiple instances of the package.
Even with these limitations, this is an interesting tool.
