You’re fine with both QEA and Webyep for that. I know what you concerned about, will a republish reset everything? No it won’t do that. The content for both of these systems use a unique id, so if you republish that unique id will be retained. The only way you would lose everything would be if you deleted the folder on the server that these stacks have generated to keep all the post data in. Republishing won’t delete or overide this. If you wanted to delete the actual posts generated then you either need to delete the file individually on the server or delete the whole folder they are in on the server. Likewise you can back up and restore that folder also and everything will work again.
From what you are saying it sounds more like 1LDs Quick Editor Admin would suit you needs the best as it is a page by page basis the way it works.
You place the stack on your page after that you set the password in the stack. Once published it is all ready to go. To access the login on that page you just add an extra character to weblink in the browser, forgotten what it is off the top of my head, but when added the login box appears and you can change any text or images on that page, when finished just log out and everything is normal to view. If you use it on multiple pages just copy the stack to each page and use the same password, it would then just appear to the user that it is a sitewide feature even though it is only working on an individual page by page basis.
I found sometimes it can throw a bit of a wobbler with multiple changes to a page where it didn’t seem to update, if that happens just go in to your FTP server and delete the last Markdown file created if that happens.
In addition to everything @Tophat has already explained, 1LD’s QEA works as follows:
when building a page, you drop a specific QEA stack onto it. Inside that stack is a dropzone.
you drop other stacks into that dropzone
After you publish, and log in using QEA, the contents of those text and image stacks lights up when you mouse over them. This means you’re in a editable zone. Click it, modify the content and save.
In the background, a JSON file inside /rw_common/plugings/stacks/quick-edit is modified: your alterations are stored in it. There’s a JSON file for every page that you’ve implemented QEA on.
The JSON file points to a specific stack ID (for example: #stacks_in_984_98-wrapper_>_blockquote:nth-child(2)). As long as a stack with that stack ID is present on that page, its contents will be replaced by QEA.
So, if you DELETE an image stack and drag new image stack into its place, you will break things. The new image stack will have a different stack Id, so QEA won’t know it has to alter its contents upon loading the site.
As, for you in RapidWeaver, the QEA handled stacks are clearly identifiable (because they’re stuck inside a QEA stack), you won’t make that mistake easily.
Worst case scenario, you manually edit the JSON file to reflect the new stack’s stack ID. Or simply restore a backup of course.
Yes that’s the one, sorry not a Markdown file, as Erwin says it’s a JSON file, I’m going from memory got the file type lost in translation as I’ve been using Alloy a lot recently and that’s MD files. Still the same principle though of keeping the folder of JSONs safe. And thinking back, when it threw a wobbler as I called it, that was because I think again from memory, it’s a coming back to me now… it was because I changed, deleted, modified or replaced the stack in RW/Stacks so I broke the link to the JSON file as the ID would no longer be valid. Quickly fixed though, the content was still there I just had to link it back up. Thanks @Erwin-Leerentveld for the more thorough explanation. In summary though, it is a really excellent stack and bridges the divide between static site and CMS. Really handy for a site where a customer can easily and quickly modify their own content.
I wouldn’t worry so much about the size of the json files, but rather which stack would slow down the site more. I would imagine that Quick Editor Admin has a smaller footprint. But that’s just a guess.
Another couple of notes on 1LD’s QEA. I’ve had the stack for quite a while but just had occasion to use it, and I’m definitely impressed. To build on what others have said:
There is a “master” Admin stack that is required. But interestingly – you have the option to add only the Admin stack and QEA will identify all editable text and images on that page. Or, you can use the Content Wrapper stack to define only the specific content you want to be editable. Very flexible.
Although QEA doesn’t include branding in the sense of adding logos/etc., it does let you define colors for the login page and buttons, and some of the UI text & messages.
The only small hiccups I encountered were getting the login page links right, but once I got the syntax and verified my page extensions, it was easy and consistent.
So while it’s not intended to be as robust as a full-fledged CMS, it is versatile, customizable in a number of ways, and straightforward to use. For something like a client needing to change text or prices or even replace an image, it’s terrific.
While QEA doesn’t include setting for branding, there are two things you can do.
the login page has two drop zones where pretty much any stack can be dropped. You could do minimal branding there.
the wrapper stack includes a mode that makes content appear to admins when they go into edit mode. I’ve built a complete toolbar using that, which appears when admins log in. I repositioned the standard QEA buttons (using CSS) so they “go” into that toolbar and added buttons of my own (file uploader-soon-to-be-replaced-by-Jannis’-Repository-when-I-find-the-time, links to my own customer support docs and of course…branding!). I also removed the QEA tag bar as it really confuses some of my customers.
This is saved as a template which I use when I start a new project.
As for having QEA assessing the contents of the page automatically: in my experience, it’s really best to manually do that using the wrapper stack. This way, a “delete” action is always limited to the content of the stack that the user is modifying, so they don’t accidentally delete something crucial to the site.