Maintaining Your Own Website

Using Adobe Contribute, Web Site Builders or Blogs to Update and Maintain Your Website

Over the years, I've had numerous clients ask me about the possibility of updating their own websites. I've typically steered them away from this for several reasons, the first being that most people don't have the training necessary to be able to maintain their own website. If they did, they probably wouldn't need me in the first place, which many people seem to forget. Maintaining websites is not as simple as it may look and involves the knowledge of HTML code, CSS, SEO and graphics editing software, to name just a few.

The second reason is that, as a designer, I was very reluctant to turn an unknowledgeable client loose on my designs. Design integrity is very important to me. While a web site represents the owner and their business, that web site also represents me, and I'm not so quick to just hand it over when my reputation may be at stake.

Lastly, and let's just be honest here, this is my livelihood, my bread and butter, how I pay my bills! Maintaining web sites is a large part of my business so naturally, giving it up isn't something I'm all that thrilled about.

What I've discovered however, is that recent software developments have made it much simpler for clients to maintain their site, without the site losing it's design integrity, through pre-defined "editable regions". One problem solved. Additionally, this software is designed for the end-user, so the client doesn't have to be so knowledgeable about HTML and CSS in order to perform the updates, and anyone with moderate computer skills can master these programs. Another problem solved.

There are three main methods of maintaining your own web site, that I'm familiar with. The first, and probably the easiest, is Adobe Contribute. Contribute is purchased by the client and installed on their own personal computer. It works with Dreamweaver, a popular software used by designers to build web sites The designer creates editable regions within the pages, and these regions can then be accessed with Contribute and edited as needed. The software retails for approximately $200 and it is helpful if the client receives some training from either their web site designer or another trained individual, so they don't spend countless hours trying to figure it out. If you've never worked on any web sites before, figuring out Contribute all on your own might prove a little challenging, but in the long run, you will probably save money over paying your designer for updates.

The second method is using a blog to build a web site There are many different blog platforms available to choose from, one of the most common being Wordpress. Wordpress has hundreds of different free themes that can be used, so most people will find one to their liking. The admin section of most blogs is fairly easy to navigate and with a little time, users will figure out how to get all their bells and whistles working properly. While you could use a blog for static, informational sites, their layouts are typically much more suited to articles and galleries, as the heading show posting titles and dates. Frequently updated blogs, once found by web spiders, are heavily crawled, which helps improve your rankings and get your site found.

Free blog themes have their limitations however, primarily with the design. Most are only moderately customizable, allowing for pre-selected color choices, header images, etc. If you have knowledge of CSS however, you can customize them more than the typical user. There are themes available for purchase that are completely customizable

The third method that I'm familiar with is to use one of the many web-based site builder applications that are out there such as Homestead or GoDaddy's Web site Tonight. While I find them limiting, simply because I'm used to doing whatever I want with the web sites that I build, many people find them to be sufficient for their needs. Additionally most services charge a monthly subscription fee so, in essence, you're still paying to update your web site, and you're having to take the precious time to do it yourself as well.

The bottom line is this: while there are ways of maintaining your own web site, the only thing that is completely without any additional cost is learning the ins and outs of web site development yourself, which has taken me a decade, and I'm still learning! Technology changes rapidly and I find I'm constantly trying to keep up. Wouldn't your time be better spent doing what you do best.......earning money with your web site instead of working on it?

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CSS Layouts vs. Table Layouts (and some other stuff, too)

"What?", you're probably asking yourself. "Sounds like greek to me."

And there's no reason you should have a clue what I'm talking about. That's why I design websites and you do whatever it is that you do.

For quite some time now I have been studying how to layout websites with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). To simplify, this is a document in the background of your website that defines how the different elements, such as text and boxes, etc., will appear. CSS can also define where these elements will be on the page.

Up until recent years, tables were used to layout websites. While these work great in theory, all the code created to construct the table, creates a bulkier page, which makes the page take longer to load, and makes it more difficult for search engines to read all that code and find what they're looking for.

Voila, CSS!

CSS has been around for awhile, but being a part time freelancer I didn't spend much time trying to learn it. With recent events, now that I am trying to be a full time freelancer, I decided it was time to finally learn. Since I don't work in an office with more experienced people around to help me, I have to figure these things out on my own. Countless surfing hours later (more like months and months, really), my last 6 sites have been built with primarily CSS layout as opposed to tables.

The result is a cleaner, more efficient site, that will load faster and be crawled more efficiently by search engines. CSS layout also makes layering individual graphic images possible (such as the sticky notes on the home page of my website), for a more interesting design. In the past with tables, collages or composite images would have to be one large graphic file, which would take longer to load because of the size.

So, WHY am I telling you all this? Well, not only do I want you to know that I do my best to stay on top of new trends and technology, but I will also be converting all of my current* client's websites to CSS layout, at no charge to you, of course! While you may not notice much of a difference in the look of your site, since it's not a redesign, you can at least know that the code is cleaner, less bulky, your site will probably load a bit quicker and it will be more search engine friendly. Updates will also take a bit less time, which will save you money as well.

Additionally, I have been studying Search Engine Optimization (SEO) quite a bit, and I have learned an incredible amount over the past 6 months. There is so much to successful SEO, that I won't go in to all of it at this time, but some of the more important elements to it are -

Frequent and consistent website updates.
Keyword rich text (without overdoing it).
Sitemaps (which can be submitted to Google essentially tell Google to crawl your website regularly).
Backlinks to your site from other reputable sites.
Links within your site to different areas.

Recently I logged onto Google and submitted sitemaps of all of my current client's sites to Google. Google provides numerous different tools that can be used to optimize keywords used in your site, and it will even provide suggestions for new keywords and phrases. In the near future, I will be using Google Analytics to further monitor my client's sites, as part of the excellent service I wish to provide to you.

If you would like more information about SEO, and how to best optimize your site, please don't hesitate to call or email me!

*Current client is defined as any client who is regularly updating their site. If you have not updated your site within the past 6 months, I will not be performing this upgrade until such time when you contact me for updates.

Recently Completed Projects........

Broken Road Ranch Morgans Website Design	Hindsight Farm Logo Design, Web Design, Business Cards	Enchantment Driving Society Website Design
Projects under construction.......
Website for Trini Couture, creating and selling custom fashions with lots of bling, including rodeo queen attire, handbags, t-shirts, caps and more. Stay tuned!
Recent Blog Posts.......
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