Time to say Bye-Bye to the Web Guy (or Gal) - re-posted for correction

Not using CMS for your website?

Time to say Bye-Bye to the Web Guy (or Gal).

It’s way past time to say a Bye-Bye to the Web Guy and use a Content Management System (CMS) on your website, and here’s why:

(1) The best CMS software is free and open source.

(2) Your site(s) will immediately be very easy to update and edit, even for a non-technical person.

(3) You’ll save a mountain of money that would ordinarily go to web designers for tasks that you can now do yourself, for free.

(4) You can change the look and feel of your site with easy-to-apply templates

(5) Your site’s software can be automatically updated with the latest security updates and patches.

(6) You will be able to add functionality quickly and cheaply (read: free).

(7) You’ll have large on-line support groups available.

(8) All of your website data will be stored in a database, adding backups and migration efficient and on the easy-to-do list.

So many small and large businesses’ websites rely upon standard HTML pages from editors like Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s FrontPage. Changing text, pictures and styles requires having access to a knowledgeable web designer and therefore will cost money every time you need to add, change or delete anything. Or, perhaps you’d rather spend a heap of time learning to program in HTML? I doubt it.

So, what if you could just log on to your website, add, delete or change anything there, and do it for no cost, whatsoever? Makes sense, yes?

Content Management Systems make all this possible without so much as glancing into your wallet. Well, that’s not 100% true. You will need a professional web designer to make the switch, or set up a site from scratch, but after that it’s Bye-Bye to the Web Guy (or Gal).

There are several open-source content managements systems available. Popular ones include Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. Like the operating system known as Linux, these are all free, open-source programs that are community supported. Don’t let ‘community supported” scare you at all. In fact, those who know would rather go with community supported software instead of having to phone someone in India to get support. Answers to your questions usually come the same day and in more detail than anything you can expect from phone support. In fact, there are so many programmers supporting open-source software that there are even annual international conventions where they go to share and learn.

Features? Well, EVERYTHING!

Video support, Flash support, site indexing, menus, slideshows, blogs, forums, shopping carts, Google Maps, Analytics and Ad Words, meta tags, chat, spreadsheets, games, dictionaries, aggregation, RSS feeds, comments, video and graphics uploading and manipulation, webmail, and on and on and on.

Give your website a New Year gift. Go CMS.

Want to know more? Email WebSites@flashback.tv, or call me at 303-545-9955.

Norm Strassner

Flashback Media Productions

www.flashback.tv

Time to say Bye-Bye to the Web Guy (or Gal)

Not using CMS for your website?

Time to say Bye-Bye to the Web Guy (or Gal).

It’s way past time to say a Bye-Bye to the Web Guy and use a Contact Management System (CMS) on your website, and here’s why:

(1) The best CMS software is free and open source.

(2) Your site(s) will immediately be very easy to update and edit, even for a non-technical person.

(3) You’ll save a mountain of money that would ordinarily go to web designers for tasks that you can now do yourself, for free.

(4) You can change the look and feel of your site with easy-to-apply templates

(5) Your site’s software can be automatically updated with the latest security updates and patches.

(6) You will be able to add functionality quickly and cheaply (read: free).

(7) You’ll have large on-line support groups available.

(8) All of your website data will be stored in a database, adding backups and migration efficient and on the easy-to-do list.

So many small and large businesses’ websites rely upon standard HTML pages from editors like Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s FrontPage. Changing text, pictures and styles requires having access to a knowledgeable web designer and therefore will cost money every time you need to add, change or delete anything. Or, perhaps you’d rather spend a heap of time learning to program in HTML? I doubt it.

So, what if you could just log on to your website, add, delete or change anything there, and do it for no cost, whatsoever? Makes sense, yes?

Content Management Systems make all this possible without so much as glancing into your wallet. Well, that’s not 100% true. You will need a professional web designer to make the switch, or set up a site from scratch, but after that it’s Bye-Bye to the Web Guy (or Gal).

There are several open-source content managements systems available. Popular ones include Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. Like the operating system known as Linux, these are all free, open-source programs that are community supported. Don’t let ‘community supported” scare you at all. In fact, those who know would rather go with community supported software instead of having to phone someone in India to get support. Answers to your questions usually come the same day and in more detail than anything you can expect from phone support. In fact, there are so many programmers supporting open-source software that there are even annual international conventions where they go to share and learn.

Features? Well, EVERYTHING!

Video support, Flash support, site indexing, menus, slideshows, blogs, forums, shopping carts, Google Maps, Analytics and Ad Words, meta tags, chat, spreadsheets, games, dictionaries, aggregation, RSS feeds, comments, video and graphics uploading and manipulation, webmail, and on and on and on.

Give your website a New Year gift. Go CMS.

Want to know more? Email WebSites@flashback.tv, or call me at 303-545-9955.

Norm Strassner

Flashback Media Productions

www.flashback.tv

Weekend? What weekend?

This must be the fifth or sixth year that Labor Day as come and I am in the middle of a project with a short deadline.  Will I ever get a long weekend?

To make matters worse, the client threw out a perfectly good script, that included location and studio shoots, and instead wants all stock footage and graphics.  So much for getting out of the edit bay.

If you're like me, you do a considerable amount of pacing around trying to figure out how to fill two minutes with made-from-whole-cloth graphics.  Thank God for the Mac Pro with 8 cores and 8 gigabytes of RAM.  I could not imagine doing this on my older dual 1.24Ghz G4.  I used to have time to go for coffee during a render.  Now, I trapped in the seat watching a progress bar actually move.

How do you other editors spend their time waiting for a long render?  We should take a poll.

Ok, short notes today.  Gotta edit!

-Videoman

Time to blog!

This blog is about life in the media production business.

Already running a small media production company?  Thinking of starting or taking over one?  Then I think you will enjoy and appreciate this blog, which is dedicated to and, hopefully, entertaining and informative for, our kind of business.

After 18 years in the Hollywood production community, editing and/or directing hundreds of hours of broadcast TV, I, my wife and my son, packed up and moved out to Boulder, Colorado in 1995.  It was supposed to be the "end of struggle" for the Strassners.  I had sold my company, Strassner Editing Systems, to an outfit called Videomedia which gave us the cash we needed to uproot and leave Los Angeles (it is very expensive to move!).

I had used Videomedia's machine control hardware to develop my line of linear editing systems, based on the CMX and Grass Valley styles of keyboard editing, but on a PC instead of customized mainframes, so they thought we should team up.  Part of the deal was that I got to live anywhere I chose and using the Internet for day-to-day communication.  All went quite nicely, until decisions were made by the powers that were that made the company implode.  So here we were, two years after the move with no employment (my wife was also employed by Videomedia for public relations) and absolutely no opportunites -- save one.

A dear old friend of mine from college days at the University of Colorado at Boulder had developed a company called Flashback Video.  She even bought one of my editing systems a few years earlier.  She and her family wanted to move to Hawaii and sell their company.  It seemed like the perfect thing to do!  Back in production!  We'll make millions! Yeah.

At the time, Flashback was a small event-driven video company; weddings, etc., although they did manage to land a few large jobs here and there.  They  had a nice little office space with a linear edit bay, a non-linear Media100 system cramped in a backroom, Beta/SP decks and VHS duplication services.  We bought the company, tripled the number of VHS duplication decks - it used to be a great business - and built up a nice non-linear bay for the Media100.

We also had a partner, a dear old friend from college days who worked for CU in their media department.  In fact, he was the reason I got into the production field, being the first person I ever watched direct a small production.  Screw my honors degree in Psychology.  This looked like a lot more fun!

So armed with a business plan that seemed guaranteed to make us millionaires in a short few years, we got ourselves an SBA loan and bought the company.

Pretty straightforward up to here.  But wait!  There's a lot more to come.  Consider this a "forward" and stop back.