On most Web sites there is a barrier between the people who want to update and publish content to the site and the Web site itself. Content eventually becomes out of date, improvements remain undone, and new information languishes unpublished - waiting for precious design time or development budget before going live. For corporate Web sites, large budgets are required to fund the work; for intranets or smaller sites, this often means doing the work when there's time - which means not doing it at all.
The Macromedia Web Publishing System (WPS) solves this intractable problem by offering a scalable approach that works for large and small organizations alike - a solution that provides everything an organization needs to build, manage, and publish to Web sites. The WPS meets the needs of Web developers, IT managers, and business professionals, empowering users to easily publish to the Web within a centrally controlled, standards-based environment.
The WPS includes three key elements: Macromedia Studio MX 2004 with Flash Professional for Web developers; the new Macromedia Contribute 3 with FlashPaper 2 for nontechnical Web site publishing; and the new, server-based Contribute Publishing Services for central administration by Web and IT managers. Perhaps most importantly, with a starting price of less than $2,500 to empower 10 users plus one developer, the WPS provides this at an affordable price, allowing IT purchasers to buy only what they need and begin using it immediately.
Eliminated Bottlenecks
Organizations have been challenged by the Web content management problem since the first Web site was published. Many still rely on Webmasters and Web teams to maintain the site, creating a bottleneck that frustrates and delays business managers and bothers the Web team with never-ending maintenance duties.
Some organizations attempt to teach nontechnical managers how to use Web site-building products like Microsoft FrontPage, but those tools require significant technical training to be used effectively and do not offer critical administrative and HTML code controls needed to manage users and protect the design and functionality of the Web site.
Web content management systems often promise the nirvana of central control and broad-based empowerment, but the majority of those systems fail to deliver because of their technical complexity, expensive up-front licensing costs, and daunting implementation. Even successful, custom-built, dynamic systems suffer from two major shortcomings: they usually do a poor job of flexibly handling unstructured content and they do not give content contributors the intuitive, true visual editing and rich content creation experience they expect.
The WPS is a radical alternative to traditional solutions: it's easy to use, it's affordable, and it works. This new solution distributes Web publishing capabilities throughout an organization and across enterprises so that business managers can make changes themselves or delegate updates to others.
