Since the growth of the World Wide Web as a medium for communication, information delivery, and entertainment, web page creation has been predominantly done remotely. Web pages are created on local machines using page editors. The pages are then uploaded using file transfer procedures. The figure below illustrates the key difference between offline and online content generation. In the traditional model of offline content generation, the web administrator, or web technical department is responsible for posting content to the web site. All content are routed through the web administrator individual or group. Online web page generation, on the other hand, sets up locations and permissions for different classes and groups of content generators and empowers them to create their own content directly.

However, the future of web page creation and maintenance is in online page generation. The technical barriers to online page generation have been solved in the past few years. This has happened so gradually that the web community has not realized that some of the encumbrances of offline page generation no longer need to be embraced. The arguments sustaining off-line content generation are as follows:

1. Security. The website resides remotely and access to it should be completely isolated with the web administrator. This argument has now been overcome by advances in security and encryption. Even banking is now completed online. Organized and restricted access can be provided to any number of users that need to generate content on the site bypassing the bottleneck and cost of sending all content through the administrator(s).
2. Disaster Friendly Process. Generating web content offline assures that there is always an accurate back up of remote website content. However, most web content is now dynamic, data-based or XML-based. Disaster recovery processes to ensure preservation and archiving of such content have had to mature. Generating content in-place will not be significantly more risky. The same backup procedures extended to data-based content will simply be used for online static content. These procedures have been automated and are considerably cheaper than generating content online simply to assure the existence of a back up.
3. High Technical Requirement for Web Publishing. If access to directly post content was allocated to content generators, the site may be compromised because they may inadvertently damage the site or delete some important resource. Current technology enables clear but hard limits be placed on where visitors and contributors may go and what they may do.
4. Lack of Tools. This has been the last barrier to be removed. While off-line html editors have kept improving, online content editors have been slow to take off. And when they have become available, they have been disguised with lofty labels such as content managers, etc, such that the small web owner has not recognized that creating content in-place is actually the natural thing to do.

Online content generation is already here. The collaborative and interactive applications of the web have increased so much that it is impractical to now generate content the old way for a site to be successful. This is the reason for the consolidation that is now being observed. By June 2000, 30% of Internet traffic was concentrated on the sites of the top ten web sites. This is compared to about 200 top sites in early 1995. Consider content such as those generated on message boards, etc. There is almost no off-line alternative to this kind of interactive content. Save for data that is collected and processed offline, we believe that in future, all content will be generated in-place:

• With online content generation, content can be generated from anywhere. The required client tool is simply a browser since the content generation application or software will be offline. Content authors may generate content from any location as long as there is client with a browser. This reduces the technical requirement and cost of content generation.
• Content generation can be done at any time (and internationally) since content authors post their content directly. The more expensive offline alternative to this instant content generation is to keep a technical web administrator 24 x 7 to anticipate content from sources and post them as they are generated.
• Most content sources are already online. This includes content from other sites in XML or HTML form. Generating content offline that will include some of these online resources already require offline generators to be semi-online generators.
• Much dynamic content need to be online to render accurately. This is true of many script or dynamic pages. As a result, the content developer has to go through several iteration of posting, viewing online and adjusting pages with scripts.
• The online generation of content fits in more with the trends in organization structure and management. Content generators online, reviewed, can create content online and included in the front pages in conformance with most organizations’ structure. This is in contrast to the routing of all content through a web administrator individual or group.
• There are sites today that include articles published by professionals such as doctors, lawyers, psychotherapists, news and press releases published by correspondents and designated organization representatives, products and descriptions published by a different department etc. The plain fact is that content resides with diverse sources. Empowering the sources with simple technical tools to directly publish their content fits more with the natural working of the larger society. This has been achieved in the personal computer environment in which almost everyone is able to create their documents in word processors, etc.
• For a web site to succeed, it is almost imperative that it involves several content generators. Sites that include content that is always fresh naturally have more return visits. Increased traffic is almost always favorable to a site irrespective of the site's objectives. Sites in which members contribute content tend to be more embraced and championed by the site visitors even for a site whose objective is to sell a product. Single web administrator/content generator sites have mainly proved to be an unsuccessful model. The offline method makes it difficult to operate a collaborative site with many content authors.

There are several kinds of content –

• Dynamic, collaborative content such as message boards, chats, instant messenger
• Dynamic content which is content processed or aggregated from data sources
• Pages containing static content
• Pages combining or organizing other pages and data sources

The tools for handling and generating these different types of data are different. For the first two types of data, the challenge is for application developers to deliver the necessary tools or software in the hands of the web generation community. Today, there are message board applications, chat, and IM applications with varying degrees of functionality, integration and ease-of-use.

To create pages with static content online, similar tools as are used to create web pages offline need to be made available online. In addition, a web system to handle access rights, permissions, and approval of content needs to be in place to coordinate the process.

Pages composed of other pages and sources do not directly involve creation of any content. An example is portal pages and pages in frames. With many offline content creators, tools to create framed pages are usually combined with pages to create content.

The NetVIOS online content management suite provides all these tools needed to generate content online easily and cheaply and includes system to ensure the required amount of access and authority to successfully create and manage content online. Microsoft's® Sharepoint also provides a collaborative environment for document creation taking advantage of the Office suite.

There are several approaches that can be adopted in a multi-author site to ensure that the site presents information consistent with the site strategy. Content may be generated as physical files or as a database field data. For data in a database, the content may be set up so that it is presented only after indication by an approval flag tied to the record. In the case of physically generated files, authors may be set up to generate files in secure folders that are not accessible to site visitors. Approved content or files are simply moved to the open area folders and linked to the front-page areas.

There are more issues that will be raised and solved in the evolution of online content generation just as with offline generation. However, the ratio of content that will be generated in-place will only continue to increase at the expense of traditional methods of generating content. This is definitely the future and direction of web content creation.

Go to NetVIOS to view a presentation of an application that incorporates the features contained in this article.