Choosing A Web Site Content Management System

Written by Michael Park


Asrepparttar saying goes onrepparttar 132031 web "Content is King." There is no argument that if you are going to have an effective Internet presence you must have current, dynamic content that gives your visitors reasons to come back time and again. While content may be king there seems to be little discussion aboutrepparttar 132032 optimal way to manage this content for small to medium sized businesses. Have you ever noticed that when your buildingrepparttar 132033 web site you have plenty of helping hands but oncerepparttar 132034 site is launched andrepparttar 132035 daily grind of support kicks in it becomes harder and harder to find that help. This is why it is so important to evaluate your Content Management System (CMS) for you web site inrepparttar 132036 development stages. Every web site has some form of content management system in place, except for those that never change. The CMS can be as informal as an email torepparttar 132037 web developer or a multi-million dollar computer program that warehouses data from several different databases. In focusing on small to medium sized businesses I have decided to eliminaterepparttar 132038 big dollar systems and concentrate onrepparttar 132039 three major types of CMS's available.

The first type of CMS isrepparttar 132040 default traditional and most widely used method I callrepparttar 132041 manual update system. This usually requires sendingrepparttar 132042 information torepparttar 132043 web developer. The web developer then utilizes their FTP program and HTML coding skills to makerepparttar 132044 requested changes. The changes are then reviewed and approved byrepparttar 132045 requester. The problem with this model is thatrepparttar 132046 web developer is usually a high priced contractor and not an in-house resource. This means that you end paying a hefty price for web site changes. The cost of web site changes becomes a budget issue so you end up reducingrepparttar 132047 number of changes you make to your site in turn reducing its overall value.

The second type of CMS isrepparttar 132048 WYSIWYG system. This model allowsrepparttar 132049 web site owner to use one ofrepparttar 132050 graphical web development tools onrepparttar 132051 market today such as FrontPage or Net Objects Fusion. These are great programs that allow you to make changes torepparttar 132052 web site in a graphical look. The changes are simple and if you configurerepparttar 132053 software correctly you can update your web site with a few clicks ofrepparttar 132054 mouse. The problem with this model is that you become dependent onrepparttar 132055 WYSIWYG tool. If you can't get to FrontPage then you can't make your change unless you resort back to our first model. But now it gets a little trickier. These WYSIWYG tools create very convoluted HTML code so manual changes can become very time consuming. Another draw-back ofrepparttar 132056 model is that if your company utilizes a tool like this to create their site they may limit themselves torepparttar 132057 graphical templates that come withrepparttar 132058 software. You end up getting a site that looks pretty much like everybody else's. Furthermore, I think it is important for any company planning on building or revamping their web site to meet with a web development company to at least reviewrepparttar 132059 best practices for web development.

Take Off Your Blindfold! Discovering your visitors' thinking using your log files

Written by Milana Nastetskaya


After 2 years of designing Web Sites, I decided to take a peek at one of my customer's log files. My fear disappeared after about 10 seconds of looking at it. Inrepparttar midst of some weird symbols and long lines of funny characters, was able to see something familiar. It wasrepparttar 132028 site's web address! Of course! That is what people see when they come to this site and that is whatrepparttar 132029 web server writes in repparttar 132030 log file!

I got very excited because all this time that I have read about log files, I kept ignoring it. I thought "they are not for me - they are forrepparttar 132031 real geeky web professionals who spend their time decoding this stuff". Wrong! They WERE for me. They were meant to help me track my customers' success and I never bothered to look.

Byrepparttar 132032 way, if you have never seen a log file, here is one line from my customer's web site's log file:

200.29.64.28 - - [06/Sep/2000:23:20:38 -0400] "GET / HTTP/ 1.0" 200 1074 "www.mamma.com/Mamma?p1=1&timeout=4&query=phot os+seniors&qtype=0&x=1&y=11" "Mozilla/2.0(compatible; MSIE 3.02; AK; Windows 95)"

The most important piece of information to you, as a web designer, in this line is

www.mamma.com/Mamma?p1=1&timeout=4& query=photos+seniors&qtype=0&x=1&y=11

because it tells you howrepparttar 132033 user found you. Did he find you throughrepparttar 132034 link from another web site where you advertise? Did he just type your web address inrepparttar 132035 location bar because he already knew it? Or did he find it through a Search Engine query?

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
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