Tools for a simple staff directory on PBwiki

November 12, 2008 1:53 PM

I need to transform a big HTML table into something easier to update and maintain. Bonus: I'd like to put it (or its display widget) onto our staff wiki page.

I've got a staff wiki and would like to put our staff directory up on the wiki. We're using free PBwiki hosting, since that's our best option for web space right now. Unfortunately, any sort of database-driven solutions requiring actual web coding are beyond us -- I fiddled with style sheets years ago and understand some things in a conceptual sense, but am not a web developer. So think easy, painless web tools that would be easy for a small, non-technical shop to maintain, and easy for staff without HTML knowledge to update.

The staff directory is currently a gigantic (over 175 entries) HTML table. Yay. Simply pasting the HTML into the wiki doesn't work because editing those giant tables is notoriously difficult, and I'd like to make this as easy for staff as possible. I'm not entirely a fan of wiki table formatting, either, because I feel like you're still sticking your data into a hard-to-update, un-transformable format.

So I decided that a spreadsheet would be easiest, based largely on Google Docs' ability to embed in web pages and export to .xls, .cvs, .html, .pdf, and so on. Plus everyone's familiar with Excel, and you can change rows and columns all you want. However, some don't want to use Google Docs because that requires setting up yet another account and password -- a legitimate concern.

Is there something I'm missing? Have you heard of any other web tools, shortcuts, simpler ways to do this? I guess what I'm trying to do is create a PBwiki table without being stuck in table formatting, if that even makes sense.

posted by lillygog to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Before getting past the first paragraph, GDocs was the first and simplest thing that comes to mind. But... I can see how making everybody create a login for one document could be a pain in the ass. If you are not using any other Google apps, then what is the point.

Think about this though.

In Google Docs... In the Share option, you have the option to "Share with the World" and then "Let people edit without signing in." This sounds a little scary, but they end up giving you a link like to the effect of http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pnHQCqttUSV2A2V-pdsfYcypdeg. If you can keep that link in a password protected area of your wiki, there should be no reason why you should ever have a problem with somebody editing the document that you don't want editing it.

Problem solved. Everybody with the link can edit without logging in.

You can go a little further with this and use a service like http://urlsnub.com/. You can then password protect the URL (making it something that people in the company would know??) and never give out the http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pnHQCqttUSV2A2V-pdsfYcypdeg URL.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 2:18 PM on November 12, 2008

Above suggestion is great, assuming you don't have issues with giving your data to those third party companies.


One of my clients has a similar situation. In his solution he maintains the data in excel, and uses the "export comma deliminated text" feature, he then loads that file onto the webserver. I wrote a php script to parse that text file and show as html page. You mention wanting to avoid "actual web coding" but the script is incredibly simple, I could send you the source if you 're interested, PM if so.
posted by oblio_one at 2:49 PM on November 12, 2008

When they get around to finishing spreadsheet support (or if their documents editor's table support is good enough), you could consider a private copy of OpenGoo on your internal network. It claims to be "easy to install".
posted by Freaky at 5:24 PM on November 12, 2008

Have you considered PBwiki's official spreadsheets plugin feature (example)? It doesn't sound like PBwiki allows dynamic content that reading from a CSV, XLS, or a Google Docs file requires, i.e. those would require copy & pasting at some point.

The only downside is that it seems to stick you with the toolbars and scrollbars all the time.
posted by shadytrees at 8:55 PM on November 12, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks so much, everyone! I'll definitely file oblio_one's idea away for later, but for right now we don't really have our own web space. That's a nice way to get out of the building-a-database piece, though.

And, shadytrees, I did try the PBwiki plugin, which seems good for small jobs, but doesn't allow easy import of large amounts of data, or export back out. So I feel like we'd go through all the work of putting the info in, and then be stuck without an easy way to get it back out. Like the HTML table. There were some other limitations with the plug-in, too, which I don't want to bore people with but can follow-up via comment/MeMail if anyone's really curious. It's a great (free!) plugin, but doesn't quite have full spreadsheet functionality.

I'll look into the other suggestions -- if anyone has others, I'm happy to hear.
posted by lillygog at 6:06 AM on November 13, 2008

Response by poster: As a quick follow-up (for the millions reading), we stuck with PBwiki, but weren't able to find a way to do exactly what I wanted. (No slag on PBwiki -- it's a wonderful and free product.) I'd say in most cases that B(oYo)BIES' solution is wonderful, but our group didn't want to go with Google Docs for a few reasons.

Thanks, everyone, for the answers. I think this is a "the thing you are asking for does not exist" question, so I'll call this one resolved.
posted by lillygog at 1:31 PM on April 18, 2009