Fine Tuning my Website’s
So…I started in website building and marketing about 3 years ago. I wanted a clean site for my business that gave my customers information that was relevant to them and thier pets.
Initially I wrote all the html myself having grand ideas about what I could make of the site…the result?
Failure!. Raw HTML design is slow,frustrating and incredibly time consuming DONT DO IT!
My first piece of advice use a GUI interface if you are going to build in HTML. Some software I trialled but due to the fact I was just starting off I could not afford to use or purchase at the time.
My favourite had to be Dreamweaver from Macromedia .. now owned by Adobe. You can still download a trial of the latest edition from the Adobe website. Purchasing it can be expensive 399.00 US$ standalone or US$1699.00 in the suite, this product is top end, but I find adobe’s support is good. If you have loose cash, go get it!
So….once my trial expired I had accomplished 2 things – I had a basic website and now no way of updating it! I went looking for an open source alternative. Let me make things clear, I love the open source concept. I use a large number of open source software solutions published under the GNU licensing standards.
Nothing really worked for me as comprehensively as Dreamweaver had….but I did manage to find some handy programs to help out. The first was Notepad++. If you arent using this program already your crazy. It is an upgrade of the microsoft supplied Notepad, I should say revolution. Firstly you can download it here from sourceforge. The makers describe it as
Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence.
Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendlyness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.
Get it and install it – you wont regret it…..for editing text files it is so much better than Microsofts Notepad. The GUI is friendly and it is regularly updated.
The problem is that Notepad++ can’t intuitively display your HTML as you work, and it was also at this point that I realized designing a new page for each content item I wished to add was slow and I was never going to get a big site. I needed something new I just didnt know what it was.
Enter Joomla…
Content Managment Systems are one of the best inventions the website maintainers could have asked for. They ease content management to the point where the end user can maintain and update a site easily. Secondly they come with Templates… Templates mean you can make your site look however you like and they are completely customizable. Thirdly many of them are free….completely free…you dont need to register, provide credit card details or any of that rubbish. There are lots of them too. Heres a list of the ones I have come accross.
These are the two I ended up focusing on however this link provides a list of all of them. Be aware some of these are not free…the ones above definitely are, the link that follows should show the free and the not so free. But before we go further….if money is burning a hole in your pocket my advice? Start with a open source cms and then pay for support from a reputable support provider (most of the Open Source CMS sites clearly show recommended profressional support providers) and donate to the development. The money is better spent this way.
OpenSourceCMS – My advice would be to sort them but “Votes Cast – Most to least” to get an idea of the most active projects. Activity or development of the CMS you choose is the most important thing. You want new features – if the project is dead you want to have the source and be a great programmer or have people working on the source…I prefer the later…I am lazy.
So I had my CMS system – I had the content…but I didnt have artistic talent. I felt that it wasnt that important I was delivering good content so as long as the site was clear and concise I could move forward. To that end I modified some existing templates to colours more suitable for my business and away I went.
Next time I will discuss SEO – what it “was” , is and will never be….
What people think!