Tag Archives ⇒ HTML

Site Creation – Content Management System (CMS)

· Brandon Hann

Making a website can be a tedious project that incorporates many different facets of design and implementation. It may require that you learn the different web software and programming languages outlined previously. There are also just as many books on the subject as there are websites online.

This is why web design firms charge so much money to build a website. However, it doesn’t have to be expensive to start (or re-design) your website. You can now use a “cookie-cutter” backend structure to manage and maintain your content. Welcome to the world of CMS–or more specifically in this case, webCMS.

What is CMS?

Simply put, it’s a set of tools and/or software that is used to organize content for projects, presentations and reports while allowing multiple people to have access to these tools, add their own ideas, content and essentially just collaborate. For a website, think of it as a container or base structure for the content of your site. It’s wrapped with a theme of some sort and it allows you to focus on your content rather than your design.

There are a few types of systems you can get, but the most common is blogging software. A lot of people don’t consider a blog system part of the CMS group of software, but I do. The reason for this is because to me, it manages content–and pretty well I might add.

How does it work?

After your chosen software is installed, you’ll have access to an admin interface that allows you to configure and customize your new site. You can change the design, add themes, format text, setup categories, create static pages, manage uploads and downloads and create users. Here’s the basic breakdown of what a CMS is:

  • Templates – The base structure to your site is accomplished through the use of templates. These files (XML or HTML) are stored in a central location and they apply design traits to all content pages on your site. This allows you to edit or change your “theme” instantly and across all pages at once.
  • Editable Content – Because the content is not being stored in the design templates, it is easily edited using built-in content editors known as WYSIWYG editors. They contain basic formatting tools to make your content look nice and stand out.
  • Scalable Features – Most CMS software packages are compatible with plugins that add or enhance features of the system to allow your site to grow as needed. These plugins are often designed by the user community and are usually free.
  • Standards Upgrades – To keep up with web standards, popular CMS software programs are consistently updated and supported.
  • Workflow – If there are multiple contributors on one site, content can be written, but not published until it’s been reviewed by the appropriate person.
  • User Delegation – Users in the system can be delegated to specific roles that pertain to the various sections of the site. These users have only the access they need to get their work done.
  • Document Management – As content and documents change, the entire revision history is available at all times to ensure that any changes are properly recorded and can even be restored back if needed.
  • Virtualization – Some CMS software programs have options that allow users to work in a virtualized environment so they can edit and create pages and see how they will look online before actually publishing them online.
  • Syndication – All CMS programs offer the ability to syndicate your content. This is done through channels like RSS, email subscriptions or Atom data feeds.

Blogging

If you have ever seen a website hosted or designed on WordPress, you’ve seen a blog. Essentially, you install a small out of software (a few PHP files and folders) on your webserver, follow a simple install process and start blogging. It’s really that easy and that’s exactly why it was created.

You can use a blog for any type of web content, so don’t think that just because you installed a blog that you have to post things everyday or talk about your personal life! You’ll find blogs that sell products, offer downloads or just have nothing but galleries of pictures.

Putting it all together

Get yourself a content management system. You will save yourself some major headaches in the future if you start on the right foot now. Using WordPress as an example, here’s what you’ll need:

  1. Web hosting plan – Your web hosting plan needs to offer you the ability to have at least one SQL database and the ability to run PHP. Check out GoDaddy or MediaTemple for great pricing and service.
  2. WordPress software – WordPress is free and can be downloaded from wordpress.org.
  3. FTP client – You need to be able to upload your WordPress files to your server. Using an FTP client for this will make life much easier. You can get away without one, but you’ll need to learn how to use your online file manager.
  4. Website theme – Unless you want to spend your time making your own design, I’d suggest you look into getting a theme or two to spice up your website’s look. I’ve gotten themes from both Woothemes.com and TemplateMonster.com (search only for WordPress themes).
  5. Content – This is where your creativity comes in! Write your own stuff about things you care about. Make it original and make it interesting.
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How to write perfect web page titles

· Brandon Hann

Ok, so perfect might be too strong of a word, but the point is that most people mistake the title of a particular web page to be the same as the main title of their site. Unless ALL of your web pages have exactly the same content on them, this is not the case.

I like to think of it like this. Let’s say you’re a book publisher called Ledfrog Publishing. You want to publish three books with these subjects: ‘making money online’, ‘how to play the game of soccer’ and ‘how to make a website’. Now you want to title them, so naturally you come up with “The Ultimate Guide to Making Money Online”, “Playing The Game of Fútbol” and “Create a Website in 10 Minutes”. These are all great titles because people would know exactly what they’re getting into just by looking at the cover. What you wouldn’t do is name them all “Ledfrog Publishing”, right?

If that came so naturally to you, then why are you making simple mistakes when naming your webpages?! I’m not yelling at you, but I am here to help! For the record, the reason people make these mistakes is because they think of their website as being one giant book and therefore, as long as they name the site correctly, every “page” within should follow a natural order.

Well this is true if everybody who came to your site stopped off at your homepage and then navigated through it page by page from there. However, I can almost bet that most of your traffic comes from a search engine and visitors likely found it by clicking on a keyword they searched for. What this means is that they landed at your site on some random “page in your book” and unless they click on something else, they are completely unaware of your site!

So instead of your site being a giant book, think of it as being the publisher and all the books are the web pages within. This will help you think of creative (and valuable) titles for each page.

I found a great guide online for creating titles and I wanted to summarize the process here. Remember that search engine optimization is extremely important to your site and it will dictate how much traffic you get.

What is a title?

Go to Google, do a search on anything you want and when you look at the results, you’ll see the blue titles that provide the text that’s closely related to your search. Try a few searches and even switch the keywords around a bit. You’ll notice that the results drastically change based on a few changes. This is because one site or another has written a title that better matches your search query. A title rests within the HTML code and is often overlooked by a web designer.

How do I write an effective title?

Read your page before you post it online. Read it twice if you have to. Start extracting keywords that summarize that page and write them down. You can even write down the most commonly used keywords. Once you have a nice list, start creating 60 character titles that match those keywords. Don’t just list them. As a helpful tool, search for high-ranking sites that have similar content and see how they’re naming their pages. You don’t want to copy them, but get an idea of the format.

Remember that you will be ranked for the words you use in your titles. If you start adding words like: about us, contact me, home, etc. you’re going to be ranked for those words first and not for the content of your site. This is another reason not to name every page the same as your site’s title.

Why do some sites consistantly rank high?

As with all other SEO tips, no one trick works alone. You need a combination of great titles, original content, good keywords, backlinks and regular updates to keep your site ranking high. As a result, some sites hit the nail on the head for more than one SEO category and that usually explains why they’re always at the top.

There’s really not much to it once you change your thought process on what a title’s function is and how it relates to your page. The goal is to show the usefulness of the page to Google and your visitors. The last tip I can give you is take a look at your titles and ask yourself if you would click on your own site if you saw it pop up on Google.