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Sitespring is a server product intended to simplify the process of building and managing websites. It is best suited to teams of around five to 20 professionals, and provides tools for file management, collaboration, and communicating with clients.
Sitespring runs on the Jrun Java application server, with browser-based clients that make use of embedded Flash movies. Sybase Adaptive Server is used for the database. Jrun and Flash are also Macromedia products, and it's worth installing the trial version, if only to see how the company has used key technologies to create a feature-rich web application.
The server runs only on Windows 2000 (Professional or Server) or NT Server, with support for another platform, probably Linux, promised soon. Installation is simplicity itself, although Sitespring is a demanding application that likes to have lots of Ram and disk space, and a server to itself, if possible.
Security conscious organisations that want to access Sitespring through Secure Socket Layer have more work to do and, although this should be possible through Jrun connectors, Macromedia has "hit some roadblocks", in the words of a support engineer, with this configuration at the time of writing.
Despite the browser-based interface, Macromedia specifies Windows or Macintosh for the clients, with Flash-equipped Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator required. The main reason seems to be a small native application called Sitespring Helper, which is used to automate the process of opening document editors and the file manager on the client.
Once Sitespring is set up, you can lock the server in a cupboard or co-locate it at your internet service provider, since all administration is done through the browser. The first step is to define some users, who can then log in and get to work setting up projects. A project is a website, where the content is stored in shared folders on the Sitespring server.
It is important to be clear about what Sitespring does and does not provide. Web authoring tools often have site management modules that offer diagrammatic views, check links, and automatically upload changed content to the live website. Sitespring does none of these things.
Instead, it has three core features. First, it maintains a revision history for all the files in a project. If John has been working on a web page, and Jane then overwrites his work with an old version that she had been using on her laptop, John's work can be recovered from Sitespring's Revisions directory.
Second, Sitespring has collaboration features such as task assignment and discussions. Third, each project can maintain a secondary area called a project site. This is aimed at clients who can log in, view prototype web pages or other material, leave feedback, and check tasks assigned to them by the web design team.
The project site is one of Sitespring's best features, offering an easy and sensible way for clients to review progress.
Sitespring achieves seamless file management by working alongside the file system. When you link a directory to a Sitespring project, a service watches for any changes to files in that directory. Whenever a change occurs, the revision system kicks in.
What this means is that you don't need any special client to access files in Sitespring projects. It is just another network share. Nor does it require the use of any particular authoring tool. Whether you edit the files with Notepad, Frontpage or Dreamweaver is immaterial. Revisions are also stored directly in the file system, so you don't have to go through Sitespring to access old versions.
Most web design teams will want to enforce a clear distinction between their own work in progress and team communication, and work that is made available to clients. To do this, Sitespring uses two instances of Jrun, each acting as its own web server on different ports. It is only when files or tasks are published to the Project Site that they become visible to clients.
The Project Site is simpler than the main project area, allowing client users to view files, see their tasks and change their status, upload files and participate in discussions. There are several supplied templates for the Project Site so that you can choose a look and feel appropriate for the particular customer.
However, there is a flaw to this whole process, as it does not cope well with dynamic websites. The worst case is where your site makes use of Active Server Pages (ASPs). So you create a virtual web directory on the IIS/Sitespring server and set it to run ASP scripts. Next, you set up a project in Sitespring and link it to the physical directory that contains the new website.
So far, so good. You can access the pages through IIS as ASP scripts, through the file system as plain text, or through Sitespring's Javaserver Pages server. The problem comes when you attempt to publish it to a Project Site for clients to view. Sitespring's Project Site treats all pages as Javaserver Pages, so the ASP scripts do not run.
A similar problem arises when you want to use more sophisticated version control than that offered by Sitespring. You can use features such as Dreamweaver's check-in, check-out control without any problem, working independently of Sitespring itself, but it gets more complex if you want to use another source code management system with features like branching and merging.
There is no way to set Sitespring to use a system other than its own, or to have check-in and check-out integrated with the Sitespring interface. On the plus side, Sitespring understands the concept of milestone versions, so you can delete intermediate files while keeping key revisions.
Another useful feature is the Snapshot, which lets you save the current state of a project to a Snapshots folder.
Collaboration features
The essence of Sitespring's collaboration feature is tasks, discussions and notifications. You can assign both internal team members and client users to a project, and assign tasks to team members. Each task can be given a deadline, a priority (such as 'high') and a status (such as 'not started'), and tasks can be linked to one or more related files.
Everything is cross-referenced so that team members can easily view all their tasks, or you can view all the tasks for a particular project. There is a report feature that lets you run precise queries against outstanding tasks.
Discussions are simple but effective, allowing users to create new topics or comment on existing ones. They are single-threaded, which makes them unwieldy if you have a lot of messages on a particular topic, but they are fine for small teams.
Notifications let you specify events that trigger an email alert. Users can choose events such as new discussion topics, or new tasks assigned to them. For this to work, you have to configure Sitespring to use an available SMTP server.
There is no deep integration between Sitespring and Dreamweaver, Macromedia's market leading web authoring tool. Macromedia does provide a Dreamweaver extension that lets you view current Sitespring tasks. Presumably other extensions may come in the future. Since Sitespring works with any editing tool, it wouldn't be appropriate to build in Dreamweaver dependencies.
Sitespring's user interface is impressive, although performance is on the slow side. The Flash applets work well, but we're not convinced that using Flash in this context is desirable. It is unlikely to be a major issue, since the majority of browsers already have Flash installed.
The company says that the Sitespring interface is the beginning of a new Macromedia browser-based standard, so parts of it may pop up in other Macromedia products, or in tools such as Dreamweaver for developers building their own web applications.
Assessing Sitespring
It isn't cheap, but one thing that Macromedia has got right is usability. You can be up and running quickly and, because Sitespring uses an ordinary network share, team members will not have to change their working practices much in order to get at Sitespring's benefits.
Many otherwise good collaboration and source code management systems fail because users don't accept them, finding them too rigid or too complex. This is unlikely to happen with Sitespring.
Limitations do make it most suitable for small to medium sized teams, and it works best with sites that are mostly composed of static pages.
PRICES: Sitespring server plus three user licences: £1,784.83 (£1,519 ex VAT); add-on licences £562.82 (£479 ex VAT) or £2,231.32 (£1,899 ex VAT) for five users.
CONTACT: Macromedia: 0131 458 6766 www.macromedia.co.uk
See also:
A powerful web design tool that can give Dreamweaver a run for its money. 17 Apr 2002
The pretender to Dreamweaver's throne offers some appealing web design features. 27 Mar 2002All Browsers & Browser Companions
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