If you have a website you are building for a client and they need to edit one or two pieces of information and you don’t want to go to a full blown CMS solution consider using Google’s *free Google Docs account to manage it. The process is a little tricky, so just read through these steps and apply it to your own situation. I will let you refer to Google on how to set up the account and save your content. You will need to create the following files:
- A Google Docs file - Your client will edit this
- This PHP file - Save it as google.php and upload to your server
From the Google Docs website, open your client content file you created and at the top-right of the page there will be a blue drop-down button “Share”. Select “Publish as Web Page”. On the following page, click “Publish Document”, then click “Automatically re-publish when changes are made”.
Now on your website, replace the formerly static content with
<iframe src =”paste_PHP_file_URL_here” width=”100%” height=”200″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”>
<p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p>
</iframe>
Adjust the <iframe> height and width parameters to fit your site. Also, you can change the text inside the <p> tag above to include more relevant information in case the user’s browser doesn’t support it (universal access, text only browsers).
Your Google Docs page should now show up on the client’s site. Any time they edit the document from Google Docs it will automatically be changed on their website as well!
To summarize, you have created a Google Docs document with full rich text and image capabilities that a client can edit quickly and easily which will be visible on their website and updated automatically. This is done by using a PHP page that makes some minor changes to the Google Docs document so it looks nice in a web page. This modified page is then included in their site inside the <iframe> tag which makes a web page within a web page.