Tuesday, December 29, 2009

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

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