Grand Rapids Creative Web Design Services

When you hire a group or a person to create you a new website, please consider these helpful tips:

1. What is your goal? Selling your product or service, getting the word out about your association or sharing information, an online gathering place for your family, club or church. Whatever your goal is, define it clearly, before you talk to someone about creating a new website. This will get you a better result.

Political discussions are part of the American life, Freedom of speech is as important to our future as it has been in our past, by shaping our country's direction. Become part of the process by having your own blog or community and expressing your opinion. No matter what your concerns are; (taxes, healthcare, immigration) regardless what your political views are, you can get your opinion the attention it deserves. It's easy to do and, if you're really good, it can be profitable too.

Here's a summary of some of the steps to create a successful blog.

A word about choosing a domain name

Picking a domain name is very important. You will hear me use the word "relevant" a lot. Search engines use words and phrases to create relationships between websites, domain names and content. When the content matches the domain name it only helps reinforce those relationships and gives your website more relevance. Increasing your search position, the holy grail of web traffic. Also, be sure to keep your domain short and easy to spell.

Hosting your Blog

Once you have a domain, next you need a place to put your website. There are several good web hosts out there. Be sure that you pick one that will deliver the web content fast. Some hosting companies are better than others. Beware of so called web host reviews. Sometimes they are just websites setup to promote a particular web host and not accurate information. We can refer you to a good web host if needed.

With the advent of CMS or (content management systems) for websites, creating and managing content is now much easier than ever before. Over the last few years CMS's have advanced significantly in usability and functionality and the cost has come down too. The earliest CMS's cost $500,000 in 1999*, that's a whole lot more expensive that WordPress.org or Joomla!, which are free, or commercial CMS's like SiteFinity or ExpressionEngine. This means that and a single person can own and operate a website for very little cost, that has as much or more functionality than those large expensive corporate websites had just ten years ago.

What are some of the benefits of CMS?

• Edit the content from your web browser. Even if you're on vacation and you forgot to add or remove something, you can logon and make the changes.
• By making it easy to add new content, you will attract more return visitors by keeping information fresh.
• Typical CMS uses a template or theme to give the website a certain look. When you make changes, the look stays the same.
• The web content is stored in a database. This way you can display the information for a variety of devices. For instance, you can have a light version of your content for mobile devices. 
• CMS is designed for the non-technical user. You don't have to know HTML (web language) to modify the website. If you can use a word processor you can learn CMS.
• Modules, extensions, plug-in's allow you to gather information from users. Blog comments, user polls and contact forms are a few examples of how information can be gathered.
• Most CMS software's have an easy way to add meta-data. These are keywords, text and phrases that search engines pick up on. They will help you improve your search position and get you more relevant traffic.
• Syndicate your content! RSS (really simple syndication) is a great way to gain return visitors. Once enabled, users simply save the news feed. When they see something that interests them, they can click on it and return to your website. Great for top-of-mind-awareness.
• Reduce your costs by saving time updating web content.
• Create content to be released at a later date or stop it when it's no longer needed. Just assign a start and stop date and time.

The typical CMS website has a management console that allows you to post articles, create links, manage users (guests) and upload media (photos, video or documents). Features vary, Joomla! comes with an article manager, poll manager, link manager, syndication and news feed manager, just to name a few. WordPress has a fully developed blog, blog comments, spam protection, links, and hundreds of free themes to give your site a look you like. Each of the popular CMS's have additional components that can add more functionality to your website. 

Most CMS's offer plug-ins, extension or modules. Basically they are add-ons to give your site more functionality. There are hundreds and even thousands of free (open source) or low cost features that match what you want your website to do. The most popular are event calendars, enhanced web forms and photo gallery's. These can be added when setting up your website or at a later date.

Choosing a CMS really depends on what you plan to do with your website. Contact us and we can show you the options and help you through the process.

* SD Times March 15, 2004

When is a WordPress Website best for you?

So you have a website you want to update or want a new website? You've started checking out the options available and one of them is WordPress. There are two ways you can get WordPress, first is Wordpress.com, the .com version is simple to setup and very low cost. It works great for a blog, but has some limitations. WordPress.org is an open-source software, freely available. It is primarily blogging software for your own website, but it's not just a blog, it's a true CRM (content management system). This discussion uses the WordPress.com CRM software.

Most non-technical people have never heard of Joomla!. So why should you consider using it for your new website and how will it help you? Joomla! is an excellent CMS (content management system). CMS allows information on your website to be easily added, edited or removed via a management console. You simply login, change whatever you want and log out. Also, it's open-source, that means that there are no licensing fees keeping the cost of your new website down. How can it be any good if it's free? I thought that too when I first heard about it. After trying it out for a test, I'm sold, it's a well designed, complete system, with a huge following of developers contributing to improve functionality and security features.