Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
I’ve recently updated some existing web sites to use WordPress for a couple different clients. They just wanted me to make some changes to their site.
They had no idea that WordPress would allow them to update their own site themselves. They thought that a web site is just a web site. Only web developers could make changes to them. They had no control of their own site.
The old school way of building a web site, the way I did it since 1994, is to manually write out static HTML files and put them on a web server. Each page lived on it’s own, like having a bunch of pieces of paper laid out on the living room floor. You have to change each one individually.
Smart people got the idea to develop a “Content Management System”, CMS, to take care of the hard, repetitive stuff. There are now many of them. Drupal and Joomla are the primary competitors to WordPress these days.
The idea of a CMS is that some of the elements on a web page are the same from page to page. Generally there’s a header, a sidebar, and a footer, with the content in the middle somewhere. The content changes, but the template stays the same.
If you had an automated system that would just add the same header to every page, then you only have to update the header in one place, one time. If you can have a system that manages the static stuff and lets you play with the changing stuff, life would be easier.
Using WordPress allows me to build that template, all the hard stuff, the common stuff, as a web developer, then allows my clients to manage all the stuff in the middle, the content.
I haven’t built a web site without using WordPress in years.
Why WordPress? Control.
In any CMS, there are “admin” pages, a section of the site that is password protected. Those pages control the images, the posts, the pages, the content of the site to be updated easily.
Want a new page? Log into the admin and add a new page. Want to write a blog post? Log in and write a new post. Find a typo that someone else did? Log in and fix it. Add an image and put it in your blog post.
WordPress puts the control of the content back in your hands. You don’t need a web developer to write HTML every time you want to change something. You don’t need to know how an internal combustion engine works to drive a car. You just drive.
WordPress takes all of the technical, hard stuff and handles it for you. You just create the web site. Type some stuff. Click a button. It’s a piece of pie.
You do need to know how to move the shift lever and turn on the engine. You need to know how to turn the steering wheel. The level of technical knowledge required is like driving a car.
If you are still paying someone else to update your web site, or if you don’t have a web site yet, now is the time to use WordPress. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s available.
Take control. The road is waiting.
If you use WordPress, what do you think about it? If you don’t, why not? Leave a comment.
Posted in Wordpress |
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Wow. Things got busy and my WordPress blog gets forgotten. I think I’m back. I’ll try to make up for lost time. The weather has been in the 80s for the last week or so, so I may have been a bit distracted.
Knocked Off The Horse
In the last week, I’ve also been busy with, and learned a lot from, clients and would be clients, about what people want, what they know, what they don’t know, and what they need. I’ll go into depth on some of these later, but I’m shocked, SHOCKED! I say, that there are actually people in the world who don’t have the same knowledge and beliefs and understanding that I do.
People don’t seem to understand that WordPress is free and powerful. I am an old school, hand coder, who would rather do it all myself, so I can have total control, but I cranked out a complete web site, including a custom design, including an image gallery, and including all the fixin’s, in two hours. That’s two hours folks, to build a site that would have taken me two weeks in the old days.
WordPress rocks. No way around it. WordPress just freakin’ rocks.
It also seems that SEO is the buzz of the day. Either people want it or they don’t know yet that they want it. I’m finding that the common thread, with everyone that I talk to, is that they just don’t know much about how to effectively do SEO, even though it’s relatively easy.
A client told me this morning, after I gave them an outline of what to do, that it’s not hard to do, they just didn’t know what needed to be done. It’s like I gave them the map and now they are driving the car across the country.
I’ll be talking more about WordPress SEO and SEO in general. It is really not difficult, once you get a few ideas figured out. I’m surprised that people charge so much for it, but it does give results and most people are not doing anything, so it’s easy to beat most other sites out there.
Posted in web site build |
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
My wife went through the draft with her pen and marked it all up. Anything that she didn’t understand is being rewritten. Some of my organization wasn’t clear, so I’m making that a little clearer. We want to make Web Site Starter Kit the best it can be, which means clear, concise communication.
They haven’t quite released WordPress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.
Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.
Posted in web site build |
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
One reason that I want the primary focus of my business to be helping people build their own web sites instead of building sites for them is that everyone needs to embrace their own web site. We should know what is the content and update it regularly.
Embrace your site!
I can’t stress enough that you should be personally involved in your web site. You would always keep a copy of the keys to your front door. You would always have access to your bank account. You should always be involved with, control, and manage your own web site.
Don’t pay people like me to build you a site so that you can forget it and get on with the important parts of your business. The web site IS an important part of your business and you need to treat it that way if you are going to be successful.
Web wise: Startup company’s website- Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times
So whether it is a small-time business setup or a larger brick and mortar entity you are launching, a website is like the screwdriver in a toolbox that you really can’t do without. Says Rajeev Karwal, CEO and founder of Milagrow Business and Knowledge Solutions, “Internet domains are the most cost-effective method of getting your message across to a huge audience.
In fact, it is a very personal way of connecting with them. Unfortunately, only one or two percent of small companies use their websites effectively today.” There are quite a few reasons: low connectivity, low awareness and a tendency to “outsource and forget” what is treated as a necessary evil. Also, a website is not just a one-time investment of time or money—it demands constant attention and upgradation. But as these entrepreneurs prove, an attractive and well-tended website can be a key pillar of success and growth.
Read the entire article at Web wise: Startup company’s website- Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times
Posted in web site build |
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
I use WordPresss for all of the sites I build, except the very specialized ones. Here’s an article that backs me up. I’ve used all of the editors and other CMSs and I think WordPress is the most versatile and easy to use. If you want to keep your site updated regularly, and who doesn’t?, then you should be using WordPress. I’m not sure you should ever pay for a theme, since they can all be customized, but it might work best for you.
WordPress – It’s Not Just for Bloggers Anymore – Premium WordPress Themes | How to Start, Build and Promote Your Online Business
Wordpress is the most versatile and easy to use.
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Premium WordPress Themes
I’ve been a webmaster for over 12 years. And in that time I’ve used just about every HTML editor, CMS and page generator that was ever released.
Today, I use WordPress to develop 99.5 percent of the website projects I work on. The SEO, Web 2.0 and content management features make it so easy to deploy and market websites there’s really no need to use anything else. Almost anything you could want from a website can be easily plugged into WordPress.
With WordPress you can edit your website from any computer with an Internet connection. Change and add content, navigation, interactive features or even modify the design of the entire site in a matter of minutes. You can do it on a Mac, a PC or even a Linux box. It doesn’t matter because it’s all done over the web.
No more hassling with expensive software and updates. Everything you need is built in.
You’ll notice I’m using the word “websites” and not “blogs”.
“But I thought WordPress was blogging software?” you ask.
It is blogging software. Arguably the best blogging platform in the known universe. But, it can also be used as a robust content management system with or without blogging features enabled.
Imagine being able to give your secretary or assistant the login to your WordPress site and him being able to update content, add pages and upload photos in less time than it takes you to go to Starbucks and back.
Do you know how many hours I’ve spent training administrative assistants and church secretaries on how to use Dream Weaver or Front Page to update their websites? More than I care to remember. The sad fact is that most of those sites were never really kept up-to-date and therefore never really lived up to their full potential.
Read the entire article at WordPress – It’s Not Just for Bloggers Anymore – Premium WordPress Themes | How to Start, Build and Promote Your Online Business
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
WordPress is a system that allows you to manage your content. You might call it a content management system, or CMS, but only if you cared about this stuff. It’s a system built on a bunch of files that talk to a database. Sorry if that’s too technical for you. There are a bunch of people working on it, making it better. Because you, or someone who cares, can see what those files have in them, it’s called “open source”, where the “source” of the system, the files, is “open”.
Wordpress is a system that allows you to manage your content.
It’s possible to go to http://www.wordpress.org and download the whole bucket of files and install them on your own web server. If you were a programmer or a developer, you could change them and do whatever you wanted to with them.
So, if you spent all of your time to build this really cool new CMS thing, but you just give it away to everyone for free, how would you ever make any money from it? If you’re smart, you create a hosting company that lets people use it for themselves and then charges those people for add on special features. This means that you can get a free web site using WordPress for your very own small business. You’ve heard the phrase “The first one’s free”? It’s like that.
Posted in web site build |
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
What else do people want to know when they come to your site? Prices? I don’t want to hear your sales pitch. I want to know what it costs. Then maybe I’ll check your features and benefits. I know you want to tell everyone how great you are, but no one cares what you want. We only care what we want, so give it to us and we’ll be happy. Prices, products, descriptions, features, locations, sizes, colors, styles, services, recommendations, photos, support, downloads, a way to yell at you. Just give us what we want.
Now, do you have the list of buckets written out? (This is different than that movie, the Bucket List. This is a list of buckets.) On to getting that information into the CMS. (Did you remember what that stands for? Good. I’m proud of you.)
WordPress started out as a blogging platform, so it was built around “posts”. Things that you wrote every day, that were displayed in chronological order and disappeared off the front page as you wrote newer posts. You don’t want that (for now anyway. I’ll talk to you into a blog later.) What you want are static pages that stay where they are and are always in the same place. No chrono-nothing to do with these. Well, WordPress calls these, (wait for it), “pages”. A “page” is different than a “post” in WordPress in how and where they are displayed. Similar, but different.
Posted in web site build |
