Hi all, I’m a very basic user of classic. I’m hoping somebody can point me to a stack or plug-in solution for an idea for a live advertising site for local community restaurants and bars. It would need customers uploads to be posted on a page and sorted for latest offers. A large amount of automation would be great but I realise I’d have to do vetting of the uploads at least so easy input from me once or twice per day would be fine.
Unfortunately, Rapidweaver does not participate in Apple’s automation ecosystem. To be fair, I don’t know of any website-building applications that do. It would be terrific if it did. However, you might be able to pursue automation of the reception and approval process. Something like:
- AppleScript to pull submitted material into an application or folder for further processing.
- Build a Shortcuts app to review the material.
- If you have the ChatGPT+ subscription, use it to review the material (image, copy, verify the sender is legitimate, etc.). Sort the submissions into no issues found and potential issues found folders.
- Shortcut to resize images to whatever is needed.
- Manually pull the images and copy and place them into your RapidWeaver web project…Publish.
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That could be done with “Total CMS” (and maybe additional “Sitelok” by Vibralogix).
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Cool, thanks for the tips, I was just looking at Total CMS to get my blogging a little more frequent so I’ll definitely get the trail now and play around. Vibralogix, hope it’s a cool as the name 
Cheers for the workflow tips, I’m not sure if my old brain could handle as many steps as that 
You’ve spurred my interest in Chat GPT more though, it really is a game changer for dumb asses like me
ChatGPT along with Claude and their ilk are general use tools. They are good at a lot of things (provided you have the skill to use them effectively…like a hammer). There are Generative AI tools that are better at specific tasks but are usually targeted at very specific things.
If you have ChatGPT+ and the application on your Mac, you can use Shortcuts to string together a workflow to do a lot of automated processing. Eventually (as in maybe this century) Apple will expand its built-in generative AI offerings to be something more than a Grammarly replacement and I expect it will be a more secure and private offering than the remote server GenAI offerings and useful for many things.
I what shape or form would these adversitements come?
Simple text?
Just an image?
PDF?
If it’s simple text, I agree that sitelok (from Vibralogix) combined with Total CMS would be ideal.
- Set up a blog using Total CMS and put the editor behind a login like Vibralogix’ Sitelok
- Give paying restaurants and bars access through Sitelok.
- They could then log into your system using Sitelok, after which the editor would appear, and add a new advertisement.
If it’s just images, you could go for a combination of a gallery stack that can load content from a folder (so-called “warehousing”, which in this case means the opposite of you manually filling the gallery with images), You’d also need a way to allow external customers to post images to that folder.
Something like inStacks UserAccess ($50, inStacks Software) and Repository ($50, inStacks Software) could manage the last bit of that workflow.
There are quite a few gallery stacks that allow displaying images from a folder. Both Total CMS and Poster CMS come with one, and if you don’t need a full CMS, there are a few stand-alone stacks that will do this too.
If it’s PDF, rethink your strategy. There really is no good way to process PDFs automatically*, or to display PDFs on websites in a nice looking and user friendly manner. The PDF standard was not designed for this.
Cheers,
Erwin
*unless you’re willing to dive deep into Adobe’s ecosystem and pay though the nose, and still have to build and code your workflow from scratch that is.
On the PDF front, it would be easy to convert it to an image and even automate the process using Shortcuts.
Shortcuts (I assume you’re referring to the macOS function by that name) only work when their Mac is part of the automated workflow and is switched on 24/7.
Ideally, one’d take their local machine out of the loop and run everything on the server. This way they’ll minimise downtime and stress when their Mac is out of the running for some reason.
Adobe does offer automatic PDF handlers, either running on a server or in the cloud, but they’re very costly and a real chore to maintain. The cloud version only comes with the most expensive Acrobat subscription, the installable requires you to run a Windows server as part of your workflow.
Cheers,
Erwin
You are correct. I am referring to the more localized solution. If you want a more automated web-based solution, take a look at Make.com and Zapier. You can build out very intelligent solution, especially if you blend in a GenAI solution (ChatGPT or Claude connection).
I prefer to run my own servers when feasible, but I understand your use case and it sounds like remote services would be best. Give Make and Zapier a look.