Why we decided to develop ManyPage

Let first talk about the reason why we decided to develop ManyPage. It is mainly from our experience of managing tens of large web site since 1994.

From HTML 1.0 to HTML 2.0 and...

The first time we think about it, it is when they release HTML 2. Or perhaps should I precise, it was quite after Netscape introduced the possibility to add nice background wallpapers to the HTML pages. Actually, those backgrounds were sometime so intricate that the text was no more readable!
But anyway we needed to use that function cause there weren't so many tricks to add fun in web pages at that time...

So we cut and past all our pages to add an attribute to each BODY tag page and decided that it would be the last time we would do such a job (we already had a lot of pages to managed and we began using Perl).

From one director or president to another.

Moreover, not only the HTML version number, but the institute directors were changing. And of course, each time a new director popped out, he has to prove he was the one who invented internet and wanted us to rebuild everything. Of course the information don't really change with a new director arrival. But anyway, we had to change the way it was presented and organised.

From HTML editing with vi to Dreamweaver use

I must confess that I used vi only to access apache configuration files. In fact we used 'jot' (the SGI simple text editor) to allow us to use a mouse to cut and paste and edit HTML pages. Happily, today, anybody should be able to create a simple HTML page thanks to modern word processing editors. And it is important that any of those easy created page should be easily incorporated in our web sites without much work than to press on a button.

From 1 Webmaster to 10 editorial correspondents

This is all the more important because with the progression of the site, more and more people needed to be able to add information to the site. And the more independent they were, the less work technical and web management team has to do by itself.

From 1 web site to 10 web sites

At the beginning we developed a first script that add some menus to simple pages but the description of these menus were inside the script. So, each time we wanted to create a new web site with a different design, we had to write a new script or at least to modify the old one. So it was quite difficult to manage some different web site at the same time.

From 1 language to 2, 3 4... languages

Our web site had to be at least bilingual : we need of course French. And as we wanted to make an international web site, we needed at least English, and even some more languages when the translation was available. We pointed at two characteristics here :

First the different versions of the same information had to be close enough in term of information management. If you put the French and English pages in somewhat different places (here we talk about directories) with different names, you can be sure that the editorial team will forget to keep up to date one or the other.

Second, at the time we designed ManyPage, search engines were not yet able to distinguish the language used in a web page. When an English reading surfer came in our web site through a French page, we wanted him to be able to switch to the English page easily, without the need to go through the site home page or splash screen.

Of course, it is possible to do it automatically, but from my point of view, I'd rather be able to chose when I want to switch to a local version of a web site, especially when I think that the international one is more up to date and/or vice versa.

From 1 simple design to one graphical plus one light textual look (to print the page or surf more quickly)

This last point has something to do with the growing complexity of web pages. The more you add pictures and graphical gimmick to a web page, the less legible is this webpage for a printer, people with low bandwidth connection or, last but not the least of course, blind people. From a same plain page, our tool allows us to get at the same time a graphical menu and a textual menu.

 

Copyright 1994-2009
Pascal Vuylsteker

Last modified:
11/1/2001

Send your comments at :
<pvk@vuylsteker.net>