<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>
WebMake: Documentation: The Blurb
</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<meta name="generator" content="WebMake/2.3" />
<style type="text/css">
body {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
line-height: 110%;
margin-left: 10px;
margin-right: 10px;
}
p, table, td, th {
font-family: verdana,lucida,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size: 11px;
line-height: 110%;
}
pre {
margin-left: 3%;
white-space: pre;
}
code, samp, pre, p pre {
font-family: "lucida console", "Courier New", courier, "fixed-width", monospace;
font-weight: bold;
}
H1 {
font-size: 150%; font-family: Garamond, "Book Antiqua",Times,serif;
background: #FFCC66; text-align: center;
padding: 0.5em 1em 0.5em 1em; border-width: 1px;
border-color: black; border-style: solid; line-height: 120%;
}
H2 {
font-size: 125%; font-family: Garamond, "Book Antiqua",Times,serif;
background: #FFDD77; text-align: center;
padding: 0.5em 1em 0.5em 1em; border-width: 1px;
border-color: black; border-style: solid; line-height: 100%;
}
H3 {
font-size: 100%; font-family: Garamond, "Book Antiqua",Times,serif;
background: #FFEE88; text-align: center;
padding: 0.5em 1em 0.5em 1em; border-width: 1px;
border-color: black; border-style: solid;
}
H4 { font-size: 75%; font-family: Garamond, "Book Antiqua",Times,serif; }
H5 { font-size: 50%; font-family: Garamond, "Book Antiqua",Times,serif; }
H6 { font-size: 25%; font-family: Garamond, "Book Antiqua",Times,serif; }
A:link {
font-weight: bold;
color: #004000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
A:visited {
font-weight: bold;
color: #008000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
A:active {
font-weight: bold;
color: #800000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
dt {
font-size: medium;
font-weight: bold;
padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 8px;
}
dd {
padding-top: 8px; padding-bottom: 8px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#3300cc" vlink="#660066">
<!-- font tag for compat with non-CSS browsers -->
<font face="lucida,verdana,sans-serif">
<div align="center">
<img src="images/WebMakeTitle.png" alt="WebMake" width="500" height="122" />
</div>
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<strong><a href="http://webmake.taint.org/">WebMake</a>
Documentation</strong> (version 2.3)
</td>
<td valign="top">
<div align="right">
[ <a href="index_01-intro.html">Back</a> | <a href="concepts.html">Forward</a> | <a href="index.html">Index</a>
| <a href="allinone.html">All In One</a> ]
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- yes, it's that Mozilla black-border code again ;) -->
<!-- stolen from www.mozilla.org via rc3.org -->
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#aaaaaa">
<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4" width="100%">
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#ffffff">
<table border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<h1>The Blurb</h1><p>
WebMake is a simple content management system, based around a templating
system for HTML documents, with lots of built-in smarts about what a
"typical" informational website needs in the way of functionality; metadata,
sitemapping, navigational aids, and (of course) embedded perl code. ;)
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong>Creates portable sites</strong>: It requires no dynamic scripting capabilities
on the server; WebMake sites can be deployed to a plain old FTP site
without any problems.
</li>
<li>
<strong>No need to edit lots of files:</strong> A multi-level website can be generated
entirely from 1 WebMake file containing content, links to content files,
perl code (if needed), and output instructions.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Useful for team work:</strong> Since the file-to-page mapping is no longer
required, WebMake allows the separation of responsibilities between the
content editors, the HTML page designers, and the site architect. Only the
site architect needs to edit the WebMake file itself, or know perl or
WebMake code. Standard file access permissions can be used to restrict
editing by role.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Efficient:</strong> WebMake supports dependency checking, so a one-line change
to one source file will not regenerate your entire site -- unless it's
supposed to. Only the files that refer to that chunk of content, however
indirectly, will be modified.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Supports content conversion, on the fly:</strong> Text can be edited as
standard HTML, converted from plain text (see below), or converted from
any other format by adding a conversion method to the
WebMake::FormatConvert module.
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Edit text as text, not as HTML:</strong> One of the built-in content conversion
modules is <a href="ettext.html">Text::EtText</a>, which provides an easy-to-edit,
easy-to-read and intuitive way to write HTML, based on the plain-text
markup conventions we've been using for years.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<strong>Rearrange your site in 30 seconds:</strong> Since URLs can be referred to
symbolically, pages can be moved around and URLs changed by changing just
one line. All references to that URL will then change automatically. This
is vaguely <a href="http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html">Xanalogical</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<strong>Scriptable:</strong> Content items and output URLs can be generated, altered,
or read in dynamically using perl code. Perl code can even be used to
generate other perl code to generate content/output URLs/etc.,
recursively. New tags can be defined and interpreted in perl.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Extensible:</strong> New tags (for use in content items or in the WebMake file
itself) can be added from perl code, providing what amounts to a
dynamically-loaded plugin API.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Inclusion of text:</strong> Content can incorporate other content items, simply
by referring to it's name. This is a form of <a href="http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html">Xanadu-style transclusion</a>.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Edit content in your web browser:</strong> WebMake now includes webmake.cgi,
which provides a CGI front-end to editing and managing a WebMake site.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Site replication:</strong> with webmake.cgi's CVS integration, multiple copies
of the same site can be replicated, and changes made on any of the sites
will be automatically replicated to all the others.
</li>
<li>
<strong>Version control:</strong> changes made to sites using webmake.cgi will be kept
under CVS version control, so older versions of the site can be "rolled
back" if necessary.
</li>
</ul>
<p>
But enough of the bulleted lists. Here's where you should start:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
First of all, read <a href="concepts.html">WebMake Concepts</a> for a quick
intro to the assumptions and concepts that are used in WebMake.
</li>
<li>
Next, read <a href="making.html">WebMake Operation</a> for an overview
of how WebMake operates.
</li>
<li>
Then, read <a href="firsttime.html">How To Migrate to WebMake</a> for a guide
to bringing an existing, simple web site into WebMake.
</li>
<li>
After that, you just need to read the rest of the manual, which is mostly
reference text. Good luck!
</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="top">
<strong><a href="http://webmake.taint.org/">WebMake</a>
Documentation</strong> (version 2.3)
</td>
<td valign="top">
<div align="right">
[ <a href="index_01-intro.html">Back</a> | <a href="concepts.html">Forward</a> | <a href="index.html">Index</a>
| <a href="allinone.html">All In One</a> ]
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div align="right">
<a href="http://webmake.taint.org/"> <img src="images/BuiltWithWebMake.png" alt="Built With WebMake" border="0" width="88" height="31" /></a>
</div>
</font>
</body>
</html>
