What I'd like to see in the next version
First off, I should just say sorry for the formatting on this page (or total lack of it). The NeilDuffin.com site will be undergoing a CSS make-over in the next few months and as a result I've moved the site over from GoLive to Dreamweaver. The result of this is a total loss of all the template files, etc. So you'll be seeing this with no CSS formatting what-so-ever.
Update
There's now a temporary 'base' template which at least returns the basic navigation to this page.
I've recently moved over to using the new version of Adobe's tools - version CS3. I purchased the Web Premium Creative Suite 3 because this includes all the tools I need - Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop - and also a number of other tools I didn't use before - Dreamweaver, Fireworks & Contribute. This article is going to cover Contribute CS3.
I'm fairly new to Contribute and I'm using it for single user blogging on a Mac using OSX 10.4. So this article is from that point of view and not from the point of view of authoring content for a web site or running under Windows. This is perhaps a little unfair as the package's target audience has classically been multi-person content authoring and not lone bloggers. However, Adobe are now touting it as being an all-in-one tool for both web site and blog authoring.
My time with Contribute started with a brief look at version 4 while waiting for the CS3 packages to be released. I compared it to the programme I was using at that time, Ecto v2. I can't say the comparison was very good and when WordPress was updated it pretty much killed my time with Contribute 4 because it failed to work with the new version.
Fortunately, CS3 does work with the newer versions of WordPress (at least version 2.1x) and so I've continued looking at it. The main reason for returning to it, despite all the issues I had with version 4, was the extremely useful WYSIWYG presentation of the pages you are editing. Ecto does have a preview but it doesn't automatically match the target blog's template and it's doesn't preview the page you are editing as such - you have to call up a separate window to see it.
Contribute tries hard to impress, it has a long list of features and should be a high quality package for writing your posts in. Unfortunately, while it tries hard it also falls a long, long way short of the expectations.
Contribute (if I'd purchased is separately) would have cost over £100 in the UK. That's a lot of money for a blogging package, Ecto costs about £10. I have to say that after my experiences with it I would probably not have purchased if it had not been included in my CS3 package.
So what's so bad about it? Well, it has a large number of bugs and many of them are really, really annoying. It's just that WYSIWYG editing which keeps me coming back for more and continuing to rant at the package when it does something annoying. It's very much a love-hate relationship that we share.
Version CS3 is very similar to version 4 and retains may of the bugs. In fact the only 'fixes' and additions I've noticed are...
Other than these fixes, it's pretty much the same as version 4 and retains a large number of bugs. Probably the most annoying is it's connection reliability - something it shares with Dreamweaver.
It's connection to remote servers (at least on my somewhat less than blazingly fast broadband) is extremely unreliable. It often drops the connection, fails to edit a post, fails to upload posts, losses pictures in edited posts, randomly drops the connection to the blog and then seems to ignore you when you press the 'connect' or 'post' buttons.
This is bad enough but it also seems to be unable to tell if it's actually worked. Almost every time I upload a large posting with images in, it actually manages to make the posting but then tells me it's failed!
Then there's the issue with the error dialogs. Frequently these result in an unclickable 'okay' button and cannot be directly dismissed. This is particularly true on their second appearance. Try to post, get a failure, click okay, try to post again, get a second error dialog but this one cannot be dismissed directly (see the fixes section for a work-around).
Another annoyance is the 'super accurate HTML rendering' that just isn't. For a set of packages which tout their vastly improved CSS abilities they really are very bad at rendering any pages with half-way complex CSS on them. You end up with a page which looks completely different from that rendered by the browser. I have to ask why Adobe don't just use the Safari web-kit and something similar on the PC? Adobe's core competency is not web-browsers, so why spend time trying to write something which renders the same as a web-browser when there are already companies out there offering their rendering code for use by other developers?
Then there's the lack of proper support for blogging - there's seeming no support for <!--more-> tags in the posts. This is used to separate a short version of the entry from the whole entry, meaning you can put an introduction on the blog's posting list instead of the whole (potentially huge) entry.
There's also the stupid stuff. This package costs £100, 10x what Ecto costs and yet Ecto has a real-time spell checker and support for the standard Mac key-combinations for text editing. Contribute forces you to click a button to spell check and it uses the PC Window's standard editing keys (another pair of 'features' shared with Dreamweaver).
Finally, there's the bugs, missing features & daft defaults - Contribute has a lot of these...
There are probably some other issues I've forgotten about too. This wouldn't be quite so bad but a lot of these issues existed in version 4 and nothing seems to have been done about them in the 'upgrade'.
So, dear reader, you're probably asking yourself why I still use Contribute?
Well, it's simple. There is currently no choice. If you want a WYSIWYG editor on the Mac then the choices are very limited. Ecto 3 (when it finally comes out) is supposed to support better, WYSIWYG editing using Safari's web-kit. This should allow both a very accurate preview and good support for CSS. When this product is released I'll be downloading it and comparing it to Contribute.
The other thing is that a number of the most annoying usability issue with Contribute can either be fixed or you get used to them. The only things still driving me nuts are the unreliable connections and the daft lack of a real-time spell checker (English never was my strong point).
The 'getting used to it' attitude is re-enforced by the fact that I now use Dreamweaver - I could (and probably will) write a long article on how not-up-to-par this package is too. However, it and Contribute have a lot of the same 'issues' and so you kind of get more used to them. When / if I change over to Ecto 3 (and it's as good as I hope it will be) my time with Dreamweaver will probably get an awful lot more annoying.
A quick disclaimer - you do all of these changes at your own risk, I accept no responsibility for any losses or damages that occur and in no way warranty you in any way.
Okay, if you've found this article as the result of a search for problems with Contribute this is the section you probably just jumped straight to. So I'll just get down to it. The stuff which I've found out how to fix is listed below...
This solution is similar to a lot of other ones.
The first step is to find the BlogHub.csi file. On the Mac this is located under the user's library/application support/adobe/contribute cs3/configuration/blogpreferences/ folder.
First off, back this up! Don't just edit it and save it because if you do it's going to potentially break Contribute. See the disclaimer.
You are looking for the line that says...
<style_use_css value='false' />
...change this to true...
<style_use_css value='true' />
...and restart Contribute. You should now have all the styles from your connected blog style sheet. However, make sure you get Contribute to download the correct blog template. It should do this automatically but if you change the blog's theme you'll need update it.
Note that you cannot do this if there are drafts for the blog - I have no idea why this limitation exists though and it seems a bit daft.
Anyway, to update the template go into the main Contribute page, connect to the blog in question, click the '+ New...' button. Make sure the correct blog is selected and click the 'Refresh templates' button in the bottom-left. With luck it will work - this is better than it was in Contribute 4 but it's still a long way short of bullet-proof.
This requires a change to the BlogHub.csi file but a different value is changed this time (remember to make a back-up, see disclaimer). Find the line which reads...
<image_restrict_dimensions value='true' />
...change it to read...
<image_restrict_dimensions value='false' />
In fact, you may (I've not tried this) be able to remove all image processing by changing...
<image_enable_img_processing value='true' />
...to...
<image_enable_img_processing value='false' />
Again, back-up the BlogHub.csi file, make changes and finally restart Contribute.
Simply turn off the 'adjust time & date' options. This is the clock button to the right of the time & date in the toolbar of the blog editing dialog.
First, see the disclaimer.
In this case (which happens a lot and is very annoying) Contribute says that the posting has failed. The problem is that you can't believe it because often it's actually worked and if you re-post you'll end up with two copies of the entry on the blog!
The solution is to check that the posting has actually failed and if it really succeeded - that is you can read it an see all the images, text, etc - you need to remove the copy that Contribute is holding on to. You can do this by selecting it in Contribute and choosing 'Discard draft'. This will only remove the local copy (unlike Ecto which can also remove the server copy) - however, be very sure it's actually been posted because the draft cannot be retrieved.
First, see the disclaimer.
I found that when I wanted to change the external editor (there's an option to allow / disallow this in the BlogHub.csi file) I could not change the current value. This is found in Contribute's preferences, File Editors section. Look at the bottom of the list for 'Web Page Source'. On my machine this appears 3 times and I had to edit all of them. To change the editor (if you can't delete the current value or change it) simply add a second entry and then, with it selected, click the 'Make Primary' button.
Sometimes you get error dialogs (failed to post, failed to connect, etc) that cannot be dismissed. That is there is a button on the dialog but clicking it (or trying to) doesn't do anything. This is a major bug and very annoying. When I first came across it my only solution was to 'force quit' the application (Mac OSX) but it is not necessary to do this.
The simpler and less dangerous / data losing method is to simply click on another application / the desktop and then click back into Contribute. This appears to re-connect the application to the mouse and allows you to click the button to dismiss the dialog.
It's not possible to make Contribute understand these so you just have to work around it. The best solution is to change the directory names in the path to not include spaces or slashes. If the file has spaces it in then you're okay, it just works. However, you shouldn't be using spaces in filenames for the web so don't do this (use dashes or underscores instead).
If you can't change the directory names in the path, the just make a temporary copy of the file to a path that doesn't have space or slashes and include it from there. Once you've included the file into the posting you can get rid of the temporary copy.
There are a lot of problems you can't solve. The BlogHub.csi file does contain a few other options and you might like to try changing these to solve any issues you may have - see the disclaimer.
All-in-all I find it hard to either recommend or condemn Contribute CS3. Many of the issues for lone bloggers can be understood - Contribute is designed for large companies, allowing their employees to update the web sites in a controlled manner. This is why the image are auto-resized to specific sizes and styles are limited. It also explains why there are options in the BlogHub.csi file to limit use of external editors, etc, etc.
However, Adobe say this package can be used for personal blogging too and this is where I have a whole lot less sympathy for the way the system is set up. Yes, you should have these restrictions for use by companies and corporate bodies but why oh why are they pretty much all disabled in the configuration file for lone bloggers?
It also seems that the connection issue can be traced to the 'corporate' heritage of this package. If you have a really fast connection (like to a local server in the next room) it works fine. However, the Internet cannot be relied upon to be fast all the time. At busy times - mornings, lunchtime, just after work - it can be very slow and these are exactly the times when Contribute's unreliable network connection code rears it ugly head.
There's also the missing features. This package cost a lot of money and not having proper Mac editing keys, a real-time spell checker, etc is simply not on. These are standard on packages costing one tenth the price. There's also the pretence at being CSS friendly - given that the HTML / CSS render is still not very good and the inability to directly add multiple classes or div tags into the blog entry do make the CSS friendliness somewhat limited. Combine this with stupid bugs, like the inability to include any file from a path with spaces in it and it becomes almost impossible to recommend this package as a stand-alone purchase.
I had the package for 'free' - it was just included in the Creative Suite package I bought and it was cheaper to buy this than the stand-along packages. If you were going to buy a blogging package and you do not absolutely requiring WYSIWYG, then Contribute is unlikely to be a good choice. Something like Ecto (on the Mac) is a cheaper and in may ways better choice - yes it does have it's own issues (the editor is a little buggy with lists and some other items) but it's ten times cheaper.
If, on the other hand you (absolutely) must have WYSIWYG then your choices, at least on the Mac, are very limited. In this case and if you have a lot of spare cash / just have a 'free' copy like me - then Contribute is worth using but be prepared for a few rants at the screen.
I like the concept of Contribute, be able to edit blog entries and web pages in one package is a good idea. I even like the idea of being able to control how the pages are set out. Is just that the current system is too crude and seemingly only works well on a site that has the Contribute Server installed on it. An even more expensive piece of software.
For me to actually buy Contribute in a future version it would need a lot of work - so much in fact that I'd think a fairly large scale rewrite would be needed. The issues which I'd like to see addressed are...
I've recently had a problem with data loss in the WordPress database. It's unclear how it happened but the text from a post was almost completely lost - ever tried to recreate a posting from memory? It's not easy.
Fixing this issue and updating security brought up another couple of problems with Contribute...
I really do wish that Adobe would fix this program or that Ecto 3 could be finished...
I've recently bought a MacBook which is running Leopard. When I run Contribute and Dreamweaver on this I find that the templates downloaded from the blog are used if you edit the entry in Dreamweaver. The template is pretty good, as good as it is in Contribute. It still doesn't embed or allow editing of the posting's title but that's a minor point.
Why this works on the MacBook and doesn't on my Power Mac is unknown. Is it Leopard? The Power Mac still runs Tiger (OS 10.4). Is there something wrong with my Power Mac's software? It could be, the machine has been installed for a long time and things do tend to break over time due to software incompatibilities, etc.