Access as a Client-Side CMS

By Deane Barker • June 24, 2003 • 1 min read •

AI Summary

This post explores the concept of using Access as a client-side content management system (CMS). The author discusses its capabilities, benefits, and practical applications, highlighting how it can effectively manage content while demonstrating its integration potential with web technologies.

How about Microsoft Access as a client-side content management tool? After playing around with Radio UserLand and CityDesk, I’m finding more and more utility in a client-side apps. They’re responsive, they don’t need to be connected (great for laptops or dial-up), and you can do a lot more with a client-side user interface than a browser-based interface.

So, I got to thinking the other day, how about hot-rodding Microsoft Access into a client-based CMS? Microsoft VBA is a very competent language, and it essentially gives you a fully-functional Windows interface inside of an Access file.

You could easily develop a set of VBA forms that allowed WYSIWYG entry, category assignment, publishing management, etc. These forms would just modify underlying Access tables in that same file. Everything would be self-contained and it could generate and FTP files to a remote server (or file-copy, if you were on the same network as your server).

For all its faults, Access is an extremely mature data storage app, so you get all the functionality of a true, relational database backend with the full functionality of a Visual Basic application interface.

I’m not going to write this, but I wish someone would.