Connecting to a website with Macromedia Contribute

This is another in an occasional series of instructional entries.

Most people who edit pages on the WOU website use Macromedia Contribute. (Well, OK, technically it's adobe now, since they bought out Macromedia.) Before you can get started editing, though, you need to connect to your site. Here's how to do that:

You now have access to edit the Writing Center website at "http://www.wou.edu/las/humanities/writingctr/". Katherine asked me to get you set up to use Macromedia Contribute for editing that site; here's how to do that.

1. First, you need to know your website folder. For example, if your website is http://www.wou.edu/test/example/index.php, then your website folder is test/example.
2. Open Macromedia Contribute. You probably don't have it installed on your machine, so you will need to use Remote Desktop to log into ts9.wou.edu. Once there, look in the Start Menu, All Programs, Macromedia folder for Contribute 3.
3. In Contribute's address bar, enter "X:\(your web folder)\_mm\publisher". Continuing the example above, you would enter "X:\test\example\_mm\publisher". Be sure to use backslashes (above the enter key on most keyboards) rather than normal slashes. Take a moment to thank Bill Gates for making this more complicated than it needs to be.
4. After hitting Enter on that address, you should see a purple and grey icon in the main window of Contribute. Double-click it. If you are warned about an unsafe system action, click Yes to continue. A dialog box should pop up, asking for your name, email address, and a connection password.
5. If your personal info is not automatically entered, put it in. For the password, use "publisher" instead of your own password. Don't worry about this password being insecure; the real security on the website works at a deeper level.
6. The dialog box should disappear, and you should be taken to your site's home page. From there, you can navigate to any page within your site and use the Edit button to begin editing. That's all! Next time you start Contribute, it should remember your connection, but if you ever start up Contribute and it doesn't show your connection, just go through these steps again.

One more thing: After clicking Edit and making changes on a page, make sure you either publish it, cancel it, or save it for later. If you quit the program without doing any of these things, the page will be locked and you will get an error the next time you try to edit the page; Contribute will think that you are already editing it on another machine and not let you in. Call or email me to get that lock cleared.

If you want training with Contribute or about Web design, contact Scott Carter in the Technology Resource Center, at carters@wou.edu or extension 88848. I can answer basic questions and help if anything seems to be wrong, but Scott handles any training beyond that.