[sift this] Last week, the Digest chatted about the virtues of version control as demonstrated by Microsoft's SourceSafe. This week, I'll take a minute to explain why SourceSafe's centralized file management system is your way out of Web site maintenance nightmares.

Managing a Web site where content is coming from a dizzying array of individuals is liable to drive the Web master goofy. The usual strategy is to have individuals edit content on their local machines and then copy those files to a network staging area where pieces are linked together. The final product is then copied to the web server. The whole process is not only laborious, but tricky - especially in the case of larger sites.

While SourceSafe was originally designed to manage the files for the software development process, Microsoft has put Web specific features into the program as part of their "If it isn't Web-enabled, who cares?" mentality. Specifically, SourceSafe projects can be tagged as Web sites.

With Web projects, two new options become available to users: deploy and check hyperlinks. With a little configuration by the administrator, the deploy feature will copy all the files in a project to the web server. If the server isn't in-house, the deploy feature can easily be set-up to push sites to external web servers via FTP. The other slick Web feature is a check hyperlink command that wanders through the site looking for broken links or invalid links.

The new Web additions to SourceSafe allow Microsoft to market the product as Web enabled. However, the clever site administrator was already using SourceSafe before the new features arrived because it centralized files in an easy to manage database. Whether the site is 10 pages or 10,000, the task of updating the site was as trivial as checking in changes to a database.

Other Web site management tools go further by maintaining links as you move them from location to location, but SourceSafe is all the power site administrator needs to alleviate Web headaches.

[rant] In their continuing celebration to finally be free of their children, the Parents spent roughly 1/3 of the year abroad. As the Dad teaches semi-conductor physics, the Mom wanders the countryside, camera in hand, making sure to compile sufficient photographic evidence of their escapades.

As part of the Dad's continuing quest for coolness, he's automated the electrical system of the house through the use of X-10 units. This means that when they're away, lights will go on and off throughout the house to give the impression that someone is there. During the summer, even the pool stays filled and clean thanks to a complex program the Dad has written to monitor water levels and handle cleaning cycles. The system would be perfect ONLY if the house knew when my parents were there.

My workday has a similar problem. Like the Parents, I'm always on the go, but the computers I work on have no idea where I am, let alone who I am. I'm not greedy. I don't need the desktop to magically reorganize itself to my preference when I move from my work computer to my home work station, I mostly just want my essential bits. Namely, my list of e-mail addresses as well as my bookmarks -- we're talking about roughly 30k of information.

Both Netscape and Internet Explorer do an extremely poor job of recognizing that many geeks migrate from one computer to another during the course of the day. While Netscape at least stores e-mail and bookmark information in HTML files, Explorer tucks the information away somewhere in the bowels of Windows, make it difficult to export and transfer to other computers.

The beginnings of a solution have appeared in the preview version of Netscape Communicator. Bundled in the tool set is a revamped mail component that allows users to address e-mail via the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP). Unsure of the e-mail address? Just type all or part of a name and Communicator queries the Four11 white pages for relevant e-mail addresses for instant usage in your mail.

LDAP servers or directory servers like Four11 must see the opportunity this opens to them. Rather than being a central location for e-mail address, why not be the Grand Central Station of bits for personal address books and bookmarks? LDAP was designed as a powerful means of organizing vital information in a searchable, structured directory. Hell, go ahead and stick some advertisements in and they won't even have to charge users for the service.

If browsers are to be the desktop of the future, they're going to need to embrace the distributed nature of the net simply because their owners are just as distributed.