Comments on: Flash Content Management Systems: Which Ones, if Any?

Question: Flash Content Management Systems: Which Ones, if Any?

dvjtj — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:19:06 -0800

What are some good content management system that work with Flash, and are there any sites out there that use them?

I'm working on a site for a client that they will have to update regularly, and they aren't really tech-savvy. They like super-Flash stuff, and I was researching Flash content management systems, and found things like: fCMS and FlashBlocks, but don't have any experience with these.

Does anybody have any recommendations or experiences that could help inform my decision?

By: anildash

anildash — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 21:52:17 -0800

I've seen lots of people use Flash movies that are sourced from a text file and publish the text file from Movable Type. There are folks at Adobe (ex-Macromedia folks) who demoed the idea for me, and it seemed straightforward enough.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 22:20:50 -0800

What anil said, only maybe XML instead of text.

By: a.

a. — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 23:51:36 -0800

But keep in mind that content delivered in flash movies will be invisible to search engines, so unless its a high profile client this is a sure way to online suicide.

By: gomichild

gomichild — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:01:11 -0800

I've used a couple like Zope and am trying one out now with Expression Engine. Mainly to bring in text or xml files and then have Flash grab them.

Also there are a few tricks you can do so that the content won't be invisible to search engines.

By: a.

a. — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:46:46 -0800

Once I posted that I had a feeling there was a trick I was unaware of. Back in the Macromedia days their website was mostly flash(?) and their not the type of people to do a full arsed job.

*scratches chin in thought*

By: gomichild

gomichild — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 06:42:21 -0800

The easiest thing to do is place the basic text into the html page: this article is pretty interesting.

On the other hand if you are just relying on search engines to make your site known then you probably need to revise your marketing strategy a bit.

By: anildash

anildash — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:09:11 -0800

"But keep in mind that content delivered in flash movies will be invisible to search engines, so unless its a high profile client this is a sure way to online suicide."

This is not necessarily correct. Both Google and Yahoo have been indexing text content of Flash files for years.