What's the best way to take a formatted Word doc and make it a pretty web page?

[Tim Dempsey]

Hi,

I'm not sure what newsgroup to pose this question in, so I'll start here. If
it belongs or would fit better in another newsgroup, can someone please let
me know?

The situation I face is this:

My church's office prepares a 2-page bulletin every week. Each section of
the bulletin is in its own text box. The name/title of the section is in
bold text at the start of the text box.

Now I need to publish the same information on our new web site. On the web
page the format of the section name/titles and the format of the section
contents should look natural there and not be (necessarily) the same format
as will be printed in the hard-copy bulletin. Some of the sections are
multicolumn tables, some are long pieces of text, and some are short
announcements.

I don't want the office staff to have to type the information twice. Can
anyone suggest a way for me to do this. I don't mind changing the way the
office staff produces the bulletin. If it's better for them to produce the
web page and convert it to the bulletin format, that would be fine with me.

Is XML the answer? Can I make an XML schema that defines the structure of
the bulletin and then a couple of separate transforms that prepare the web
page on the one hand and the printable bulletin on the other?

I hope someone can help (or at least point me to the right place to ask the
question).

Thanks very much,
-- Tim Dempsey

 

[BusStop]

Just curious...

Have you tried saving the document in HTML format and simply posting
the modified document? That may not retain the look you want, but it
would be the easiest and fastest way of managing the situation.

Or, if you have someone in the office who is able to create PDF
documents, it's pretty standard practice on the web to simply use the
PDF to create and print out the original newsletter, and then post the
document to the web as a downloadable form.

Do any of these methods work for you, or are you trying to accomplish
something else?

BusStop
http://phillybusstop.blogspot.com