WebsiteMAX

A STRANGE and somewhat mythical beast, WebsiteMAX, from Australian company Whitewolf, weighs in at a whopping AU$4500.

Designed as an enterprise-wide Web publishing system to help people with no HTML skills maintain Web content, WebsiteMAX is a Java program and should run on any platform.

But it requires a few third-party software components such as Java VM and an SQL database to function.

There is not much in the way of documentation. Once the demo disk is installed you get access to a readme file.

The only help available is from an online Helpbase at the Whitewolf Web site. It's a good idea, but short on detail. The Helpbase is not searchable and has nothing like an index to help you pinpoint what you are looking for.

You also need a password and have to be online to access it. WebsiteMAX allows you to update textual content on a Web site through your browser interface.

Previous versions of documents are retained through Version Control, which ensures information is not lost or overwritten.

WebsiteMAX works on the principle of templates, which contain all the information including areas designed to receive content.

Those with the technical skills (HTML, graphic design and so on) set up the site with WebsiteMAX. How these templates are created is unclear.

WebsiteMAX has no design or editing tools. The site would be created in the HTML or WYSIWYG editor of choice with WebsiteMAX components inserted into the HTML to create the templates.

Online help only briefly describes the concept of these WebsiteMAX components and gives no indication of how many there are.

It may be possible to incorporate WebsiteMAX by altering the HTML of an existing site to include WebsiteMAX components.

But the user would need to know exactly what they were doing. Updating text is easy. You use WebsiteMAX to navigate to the page that needs changing. But as WebsiteMAX has no editing tools of its own, the page is opened in your browser's editor. Using Netscape's built-in editor tools, I was able to add new text and publish the changes.

But then, I have never had a problem using Netscape to change Web content before.

It is difficult to see who WebsiteMAX is aimed at. On the one hand, it is designed to enable staff with no HTML skills to easily maintain content, yet it presumes they are proficient with existing wysiwyg Web tools.

On the other hand, lack of any comprehensive documentation means your existing Web team would have to be extremely competent to implement WebsiteMAX, or try to integrate it into an existing intranet/Internet solution.

From what I can figure out, Whitewolf works in partnership with companies to create and build a Web presence.

WebsiteMAX is part of the bag of tricks they leave behind, enabling company staff to update content.

Considering most companies rarely use their existing software to its full potential, I would be hesitant to recommend a AU$4500 add-on that may or may not make life easier.

www.whitewolf.com.au
Price AU$4500

By Richard Price, Editor EnergyME.com

For information on getting a product reviewed email richard@energyme.com