Contribute and intranets

Question

Hi,
Contribute exhibits some very stupid "clever behaviour" when
used on a typical corporate network.
Specifically, it is not possible to link to documents stored
on a shared network drive without Contribute uploading the file to
the intranet server.
This means that:
1. There needs to be as much storage on the intranet server
as there is storage for documents on the network drive (in this
case terabytes!)
2. Any changes made to documents on the network drive are not
reflected in the documents on the intranet.
This makes it impossible to sensibly deploy Contribute for
maintaining a typical corporate intranet where large volumes of
documents on shared drives are managed by many different users.
I suggest that a simple checkbox is provided to the Insert
Link dialog that prevents Contribute from being too clever, and
simply inserts the URL specified.
Or is there another solution available that avoids either
users or site editors from having to go through gymnastics to
simply link to a local file?
Thanks,
Damian

Answer 1

I have just come up against the same thing. We only have a
small intranet written by me in Dreamweaver 2004 mx then 8 and I
have wanted to get the users more involved in editing and sharing
ther work for a while. We are only a small Housing Association and
I thought that Contribute sounded perfect.
However, what a fiasco, why does it give you the option to
link to a file on your computer when it doesn't mean that. What it
means is that it will take a copy of the one on your computer (In
our case a network drive e.g. I:\documents\example.xls) copy it to
a folder that it doesn't tell you about (even rename the file) and
then make you think that all is well and when people click on the
link on the intranet they think they are looking at the file on the
network share when infact they are looking at a copy sitting on
your intranet.
Dreamweaver doesn't do this you can link them relative to
document or root so why on earth have they done it this way in
Contribute without the ability to over ride the so called feature.
I was excited when I read your post because I thought Ah Ha
it is a common problem and therefore if I read further all will be
revealed but it seems like Adobe are ignoring you.
My sympathies, I hope someone that knows this software reads
this because I'm sure someone worth their salt could provide an
answer quite easily. It can't be as badly written as it looks at
first sight.
Good Luck to us both. Lets hope a Guru is watching out there.
PS I think Tom was a bit harsh, your solution did sound quite
sound if it weren't for this FEATURE. Afterall not everyone wants
to make everything dynamic these days.