Blogging Made Easier with Adobe Contribute

Like most tech folks, we at CMSWire are fans of Macromedia’s all-encompassing software offerings, but Adobe Contribute especially tickles our fancy.

Adobe Contribute 4 simplifies content management by bridging the gap between word processing and Web publishing several times over. One such trestle is the support of popular blog servers like WordPress.com and Blogger.com.

Change the WWWorld…One Page at a Time

Like any worthwhile solution these days, Contribute is designed to cater to both seasoned Web geeks and total newbies. The simple program allows users to collaboratively author, review and publish Web content—a relatively heavy load of tasks—regardless of the software originally used to create it or the level of HTML knowledge at hand.

For the experienced website manager, a significant amount of editing-related weight is lifted thanks to Contribute’s integration of Microsoft Word. Once installed, a Contribute toolbar appears in Word and enables users to publish content directly to a webpage. No more cut and paste, and no more of that pesky straggler markup. Additionally, in-browser editing shakes things up by cutting out third party applications completely. Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are among those compatible.

Of course, Contribute is particularly helpful to those intimidated by the idea of maintaining a blog or website. The often daunting transition from creating documents in word processing software to creating Web posts or pages is eased when HTML gets thrown out the window and WYSIWYG style editing take its place.

Web Log? Weblog? We Blog? Yes, Yes, Yes!

In order to keep up with the times, many software companies are going the extra mile for the zillions of bloggers out there. Following suit, Macromedia recently flavored Contribute with support for popular blog servers and custom installations. Those that use or hold accounts with Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad (among others) can create connections with Contribute and streamline the posting process. View, Edit, Delete, Create, Browse, Save, edit offline and sleep well knowing change is not forever thanks to a history of drafts available.

Some additional tasty functionality:

Real WYSIWYG Editing

Wave farewell to more than just copy and paste. With Real WYSIWYG editing, blog templates can be downloaded and shown before a post is even published. No "preview" required.

Rich Media Support

Drag and drop JPEG, GIF, PNG, MOV, WMF, SWF, and FLV into your blog entries and they're properly inserted and automatically uploaded.

Tagging

Full support for generating and placing Technorati-style tags in your entries

Easy Enclosures

Full support for adding multimedia file enclosures to facilitate podcasting, screencasting and videocasting.

Easy-er?

Macromedia’s offerings paint a pretty picture, don’t they? Unfortunately, the one problem with beauty is that it's often short-lived. Having said that, even though streamlining content management is an endeavor we can’t get enough of, we also can’t help but consider the number of services that already offer similar functionality.

Macromedia Contribute is certainly useful when it comes to page building, but as far blogging goes, most writers with varying levels of HTML experience could survive just fine on a platform-only diet. Not to mention the fact that Adobe’s website says nothing about Contribute being compatible with Drupal. And really, if you’re not compatible with the fastest rising star in the bunch, how relevant could you possibly be?

As always, we encourage you to test it out yourself and let us know what you think. If  you're so inclined, click on over to Adobe's website and give their trial version a whirl.

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Tags: adobe, contribute, drupal, macromedia, typepad, web cms, web publishing, wordpress

Like most tech folks, we at CMSWire are fans of Macromedia’s all-encompassing software offerings, but Adobe Contribute especially tickles our fancy.

Adobe Contribute 4 simplifies content management by bridging the gap between word processing and Web publishing several times over. One such trestle is the support of popular blog servers like WordPress.com and Blogger.com.