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Cut Your Website Costs With New Point and Click Web Design Technology

Guest post by: Brian O'Connell

Article Overview: More and more website owners are shaking off expensive website design and maintenance costs using a new technology called "CMS" or "Content Management System".

Cut Your Website Costs With New Point and Click Web Design Technology

A lot of small business owners are still spending a lot of money every year to have a highly paid designer deal with their web sites. Many web sites are all worn out and full of obsolete features and facts because the owner doesn´t want to grapple with the cost and frustration involved in working with a designer.

It´s time to stop being hooked on professionals to manage your site.

Fast changes have come to the character of web site design. A enormous amount of education was needed to be a web designer a decade ago. Website designers needed to be masters of HTML generators like Dreamweaver, and they had to be familiar with exotic programming languages like ASP and PHP.

Currently things are very different.

Don't misinterpret what I'm saying, these capable people are still major elements of the web site design industry. There is a revolutionary new instrument, however, called a "CMS", or "Content Management System that makes them much less vital in the development and care of just about all straight forward websites. Any passably computer adept individual can probably use techniques like this to become their own webmaster. All a CMS is, actually, is a "point and click web site editor". You can use it to add and remove pages. You can also change pages. All content management systems have what is oftentimes referred to as a "WYSIWYG" editor, really just a very elementary word processor. Don't let the slang scare you! WYSIWYG is just a nickname for "What You See is What You Get". It enables you to plan a page, create tables and upload images. It also permits you to arrange pages by changing the site's Navigation Menu. This will change the overall architecture of the web site

In brief, a CMS allows practically anybody to speedily and effortlessly do all the duties that took a professional code-monkey hours to do just a few years ago.

A free or discounted CMS is available from practically any major website hosting provider. For most small businesses this is more than adequate. One of my favorite website Hosts, GoDaddy.com, has a first rate content management system for hosting small business websites. Constructing "shopping carts" on web sites is made simple for retail site owners by services like Paypal that connect smoothly into retail websites. A company that offers computer programs for businesses, accounting, and CPA firms, Intuit, has only lately branched into this radical new mainstream market and their site templates already contain a shopping cart feature.

The difference, of course, is expense. Despite making make $25 or more an hour, most designers are typically not as motivated as you are to get your tasks finished in a prompt manner. A month or more is not an unusual turn around on professional website design jobs.

It can often take 200 hours or more to design a website from scratch. That means thousands of dollars spent and months of lost time. this expense are averted by Content Management System providers by building websites in advance and offering menus of "ready-to-use" website styles.

A lot of website owners balk at using "templates" or already have custom websites that they have spent piles of money on and are very happy with, so more and more Content Management System providers are able to tweak their pre-existing templates to best reflect your brand (if not outright copy your current site) quite inexpensively. This may be a recent technology but it's disseminating very fast.

Of course the problem with websites built in this manner is that, while low-priced and straight forward to manage, they ordinarily lack imperative content. The necessity for industry specific content has given rise to a whole side industry around the need for industry focused content, so before ducking off to GoDaddy, do a Yahoo search for website providers that focus on your specific industry.

For example, let's pretend you´re an accountant. I used this instance because this happens to be my expertise. Google the keyword "CPA Websites" and you will discover an assortment of businesses that furnish sites especially for accountants complete with CMS.

CPA Site Solutions is the best of these, IMHO. We've been devising fantastic websites for CPA firms for more than 10 years. We're also one of those content system companies on the cutting-edge that can "fine-tune" their styles or re-create pre-existing websites. Check out a demonstration accounting site and you'll find out what we are suggesting when we talk about "industry specific content". You'll see tools chosen principally for website owners in the CPA industry: free reports, tax due dates, links to tax forms and publications, a portal for transferring accounting files, interactive financial calculators, email... A website like this possibly could be moderately helpful for an exceedingly limited number of concerns outside their intended market, perhaps a head-hunter or business consultant could use most of the features on this site, but it would be worthless to a business like a retail store.

Many industries; retailers, contractors, education, non-profit, restaurant and hotel, legal, medical; have like providers.

In these grueling economic times it´s past time to investigate new solutions for almost all small and medium sized companies. Finding a CMS that matches your business will reduce your costs and at the same time improve your handle over your website.

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Article Tags: accountant, accounting, accounting websites, cpa, cpa website, cpa websites, design, designer, website, websites



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