Need to manage your website's contents ?

• Do you need to manage your website's contents, but you wouldn't like to install and support some contents management system (CMS) ?
• Do you want to develop your website's design separately from its contents ?
• Do you prefer to use open standards and technologies like XML and XSLT ?

OffSite Builder may help you in this case.

Download OffSite Builder

What is OffSite Builder ?

OffSite Builder is a off-line contents management system. The term "Off-line" means that all contents changes will have the effect only after you upload the new content on the website. You manage the site's model that defines the contents, the structure and the relations, you change the site's design on your local computer and after building the site's new contents you publish it.

OffSite Builder uses only XML to store all of your site's model information (structure, relations, attachments and so on) so this information is always open for you and you don't risk to lose it even if you will decide to change the contents management system in the future.

Why OffSite Builder ?

There are two main reasons:

• existing website development tools (like HomeSite, FrontPage, DreamWeaver...) don't manage the contents but only help you design and publish it
• existing contents management systems (CMS) are complex, they should be installed, set up and launched on your web server and they should be permanently supported

We should have what skills for start the working with OffSite Builder ?

OffSite Builder is not such simple like FrontPage. It give you the visual tool to manage the website structure and parameters, to attach different contents sources (like XML or HTML documents). So you need to know the basics of XML to understand clearly the major principles of functioning and the basics of XSLT technology to develop the website design.

What are the system requirements for OffSite Builder ?

Client:

• MS Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP
• MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 1 or higher installed
• volume of RAM as recommended for your operational system
• 10 Mb of HDD space (the website required space is not included)

Server:

• your web hosting should support the files upload by FTP
• no other requirements

Basic principles

For OffSite Builder the website is the system of three main components:

• The Model defines the hierarchical structure of the pages, the pages contents and the links between the model elements and the links to the external contents sources
• The Contents elements define the information sources which will be published on the pages
• The Design defines how the content will be rendered on the pages

The contents and the design can be developed independently: OffSite Builder using the model will join them to produce the website. Here is a main difference from the online CMS: the changes of at least one of these three components don't produce the corresponding changes on the website immediately. To do it, you need to build the site and publish it. As a whole, the website building process can be represented as shown on the following picture:

OffSite Builder works in two modes:

• Dialog-based mode. You manage the process using graphical interface of application. This mode is usable when the changes are made seldom (i.e. once a day or less often)
• Batch mode. OffSite Builder is started from the command line or as the COM server from some script or other application. That mode is a good way to automate the often updating of your websites

1. Create new site model

2. Define the contents items

3. Include the external resources (i.e. HTML documents), the navigators and other elements to the contents and setup the parameters

4. Create the pages hierarchy and include the contents items to the pages

5. Attach one or more stylesheets to produce the pages output

6. Build site

7. Publish site on the web

8. Use OffSite Builder as COM server to automate the site rebuilding

VB script sample:

Copy this code to file generate.vbs and run it

(c)2003-2007, Serguei Tarassov

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