Monthly Archives: October 2009

Do I need a Content Management System (CMS)?

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The short answer is YES.

A Content Management System or CMS is a piece of software running on a hosting account on a web server that allows the administrator of a site to log in to and edit the site through a web browser interface, without having to delve into the mystifying depths of HTML and CSS code trying to work out how to FTP the files over to the hosting account etc.

Generally a CMS is made up of standard HTML and CSS elements, a MySQL database (or other database technology), a Javascript word processor/text editor and some server side scripts (PHP, ASP, JSP etc.) to execute database operations such as saving and retrieving content and to allow upload and management of files on the server.

Most design companies will give a customer the choice of installing a third party CMS such as WordPress or their own bespoke CMS. However, design companies generally prefer to offer bespoke CMS to their customers because they can be tied into a specific design more easily, and the user interface can be made exceptionally foolproof. With third party CMS applications design can often be very restricted unless the company specialises specifically in that technology.

You should expect to pay a bit less for a WordPress or Joomla website as there is practically no coding involved in the set up of these sites, rather developers will find a suitable template on the web and will then customise it to suit a particular customers needs. If a company has to develop a theme from scratch, Joomla and WordPress sites can become even more expensive then their own bespoke CMS sometimes prohibitively so.

Regardless of the technology chosen, the major advantage of a CMS is that you will no longer need to call your web design company every time you need to make a small change to your website, with a CMS you can update the site whenever you have a bit of news, want to add a new link, need to upload a new picture, press release etc. etc. You just simply log in through to the CMS via a specific URL or Web Address and edit your website pages on the fly.

However, with this power there are also caveats. Often designers have a keen eye regarding making content on a site look professional. By transferring this power to administrators, the design of the site can often suffer over time from a design perspective as a result, so if you do go for a CMS try and keep the content true to the design of the site and avoid using your own colour schemes, font sizes etc.

Search Engine Optimisation is also generally supported by good CMS systems. They allow the user to modify the title of the page, the content of the page (encouraging the use of h1 tags) and they also allow the admin to add meta description information. Often with static web sites, design companies do not change the title and description on the various pages on the site which can lead to devastating penalties from Search Engines.

So, if you have an existing site without a CMS, don’t worry, all is not lost. If your site is standard HTML / CSS it should be relatively easy to add a CMS to.

UTD Web Design Ireland can add a lightweight, bespoke SEO optimised CMS to your existing site for as little as €400 depending on your specific requirements, so what are you waiting for, get in to the 21st century and manage your own website content today!

Do not use HTML Frames???

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Recently, I wrote a response to a tender, which stipulated that the web site being developed had to adhere to the design standards set out by the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design.

This is a very good website that all web developers and clients purchasing websites should read to consider all aspects of design and accessibility.

One rule I found very strange was a blanket ban on Frames… these days many technologies use iframes to embed content on other sites. For example, if you want to embed a google map on a site (without resorting to utilising the API) the use of frames is practically unavoidable and actively encouraged by Google. There are also other reasons to use frames, for example if a site has a flash header / menu that you do not wish to reload on each page an iframe could be used to display the content.

Frames by themselves are not evil, though I accept the point that they should no longer be used to maintain common header/footer/navigation sections of sites as at this stage there are plenty of technologies accessible to web designers to make segments of code accessible to all pages of the site (php, ssi, javascript, ajax etc.). However, to just blanket ban them is also wrong.

Finally, I just wanted to address the additional problems mentioned on the site, which, for me, do not seem objective.

  • Not all browsers are frames capable
    • this is true, but you’d be hard pushed to find one that isn’t.
  • People generally do not like them
    • What a statement to make, I don’t think most end users would even know if a site used them so maybe by people the author meant web developers don’t like them because of the other problems mentioned in the document.
  • Search engines can have problems
    • This is true, but this is something that a sitemap can address for any web technology that search engines have problems with, the major problem search engines have is that they can return inner pages, so users that find the site may end up visiting a page without the navigation bar or header or whatever.
  • They are more difficult to update
    • This point doesn’t make any sense to me, I would suggest frames are easier to update as they break code into more discrete, modular parts, making a website more manageable and easier to maintain, however, these days you can get these advantages through back end technologies such as server side includes, php, and client side technologies such as javascript.
  • They can cause issues when trying to link to them
    • I presume that the author is talking about setting the target frame when adding links to the site. Most web developers would not see this as an issue though as it is how the technology operates.

All in all, the site is great but I think in this instance they simply fluffed out the document with points that don’t make much sense.

I’ve heard many developers over the years suggesting that frames and tables are an evil part of html, but, in truth, they have their uses.

Making Money from Google Ads

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I know it is easier said than done but there are some steps you can take to make significant earnings from the Google Ads system known as Google Adsense.

Advertisers who pay money for click throughs Google adwords are happy to pay you (via Google Adsense) if your site directs relevant traffic to theirs. So why not take advantage of this.

Firstly, what you need to do is create a site that will receive heavy visitor traffic for a given niche.  You can do this by identifying search topics for which there are relatively few websites returned by the search engine.

This alone isn’t enough however, as the search topic has to be one that advertisers are interested in advertising on e.g. a website about shoe lace ends (otherwise known as aglets, did you know that?) might not have as much advertising potential as hotels for example.

So, with that in mind open up the google keyword tool to find out what people are searching for now (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).

Enter in a search term in the box and take a look at the results. The green bar on the left shows you what the advertiser competition is like for related search terms.  This is important to show you how many people are paying for ads. The greener the better from your perspective.

The next thing you need to look at is the monthly search volumes for the search terms… the higher the better!

Finally you need to do a standard search on google for those search terms to see if there are huge numbers of websites with that exact key phrase.

If the number is relatively low (in the thousands) and the results back don’t show an exact match in the heading and description you could be on to a winner.

To convert this new knowledge into money, you need to create a site to cater for this niche.

Try and get a domain name with this keyphrase in it… also think about whether or not someone might buy this domain off you at a  later date as you may be able to sell it on later even if you don’t make a success out of it with google ads.

Once the site is created and up and running use our SEO article to make sure the content is right.  Once that’s done you must get the site indexed by search engines. Again follow the instructions in the SEO article and submit the site to directories, blogs, boards and other social media sites and install analytics on the site so you can track your traffic.

Finally, add google adsense code to your site and if you’ve done everything right the cheques should start rolling in.

Repeat this process indefinitely!

OK, the above is a little over simplistic but it does work.

Your earnings are a function of your site traffic, the number of click throughs of your ads and how much an advertiser is willing to pay for these clicks (as shown by the keyword tool).

Get these parameters right and you will make money from Google Ads.

Creating a Blog with WordPress

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There’s loads of free websites out there for creating blogss such as blogger and wordpress, but if you have your own hosting you might as well set it up on that.

I would 100% recommend setting up a wordpress blog for a full blown website as well as a personal blog. For me it is one of the most complete pieces of internet technologies out there and the great news is that it is 100% FREEEEEEEEEE YAY!

So to set it up is simple.

  1. Download the latest release from the wordpress site (just do a search for download wordpress http://wordpress.org/download/)
  2. Unzip the file to your hard drive
  3. Log on to your hosting using an FTP program such as Filezilla (http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client)
  4. Upload the wordpress files that you extracted to your server in the root directory or a specific subdirectory
  5. Once uploaded you should go to your website (to whatever folder you uploaded it to) and a page will be displayed asking you to create a config file
  6. At this point you need to log in to your hosting control panel and create a database for wordpress and an associated user, once you’ve done this go back to the blogs web address
  7. Enter in the database name, username, password, mysql server address (on both blacknight and hosting365 the databases are not located on the local host so you need to set this up, the web address for both can be found on the same page where the database was set up)
  8. Once you click create the file should be created unless you have not got proper permissions set on your wordpress installation folder (if not go to your ftp client again and set the access level of your installation folder to 777, this is often called chmod 777 as that is the way of doing it via the command line)
  9. And that’s it, the wordpress application has been set up, at this point you are given a temporary password that you should immediately change.
  10. Then login and configure to your heart’s content.

Some of the really nice things you can do via the administration interface are set up a google sitemap, download and install new themes, add anti-spam plugins, and of course write blog entries, upload photos etc. through a very nifty and intuitive interface.

Happy blogging.

Website technologies explained and terminology decoded.

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Ever since I’ve started putting websites together I’ve had the same basic questions posed to me from clients, here is an overview of the basics put in plain English.

Hosting: The very first thing you need to put a site live on the internet is hosting.  In Ireland there are a good number of reputable hosting companies but blacknight and hosting365 are probably the most popular of these.  Hosting is basically disk space on a server that is shared by many customers (though you can purchase a dedicated server if necessary). A reasonably decent hosting package can be purchased for around 50 euro, which will include several gigabytes of data transfer a month, several gigabytes of disk space. Most hosting packages include PHP, MySql and Email, which I will explain below.

Domain Name: Hosting is not much good if you do not have a domain name that directs users to your site.  Generally Irish businesses should purchase a .ie domain if their target market is Irish, however .com versions of domains are generally the most sought after.  Irish domain names are more expensive than others because there is a body called the IEDR (IE domain registrar), which administers domain names on an application process.  For most .ie domains the domain must be approved before a hosting company can put it live.  Once a domain is purchased it must then be configured to point at your hosting.  This is generally done by changing the name servers that the domain points to.

HTML + CSS: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are internet software languages that describe how a web page looks.  HTML deals with individual elements on a web page such as headings, paragraphs, images etc. whereas CSS specifically detail how these elements look. For example, a heading’s font size, colour, typeface etc. can be set via CSS.

HTTP: This is the means by which pages are requested over the web and delivered to browsers.  HTTP stands for Hypertext Transport Protocol and whenever you type in http://www.whatever… and click go you are starting a HTTP request, which finishes when the entire page is downloaded and displayed by your browser.

PHP: PHP is a common programming language used to process web requests. Every time you type a HTTP web address (URL) into a browser and sometimes when you click a button on a web site, a web request is made to a web server.  Sometimes this web request does more than just return a web page. Sometimes the request activates a program on the server to perform some activity. For example, we’ve all signed up to newsletters on websites. When you click a button to sign up, the web server will activate a program on the server to process the email address and sign them up to a newsletter database, it may then send out an email to the user to confirm that they have been subscribed.  All this can be done via a programming language called PHP. There are many software languages that can be used besides PHP such as C# and ASP.Net, Java and JSP etc.

MySQL: This is a common database technology available on ALL decent server hosting packages. Often databases full of content and users are stored on the server.  PHP and MySql often work together as PHP performs the processing functionality and MySQL provides the storage facility.

CMS: A CMS or Content Management System is a web based software application that you can log into to edit the content on your website, be it simply the text on the site, images or other media files. WordPress and Joomla are two very popular open source CMSs

Blogs: A blog is short for a web log.  Many people out there have decided to write and talk about whatever subject tickles their fancy on the web via blog services such as blogger and wordpress. Blogs are simply content management systems that focus on managing posts by time and date.  So effectively blogs are online diaries, where the diary entries are web pages managed by the blogging software.

RSS: RSS is a technology used to transfer snippets of a page to subscribed users so that they might come back to a website. RSS is often used with blogs to let people and other websites know that an update has been made. RSS is also used with pod-casts.

Podcasts: Pod-casts are snippets of audio, video that are sent out to subscribers via RSS.  Users subscribed receive a short note on the content and can then download the content via link supplied.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation is the process by which a websites Search Engine Results Page performance is monitored and improved over time. This is generally a two step process of ensuring the content on a site is readable by the search engine and that the content best matches what potential customers are searching for, followed by a link strategy whereby inward links to the site are actively sought out. Google utilises a ranking system which gives a site a measure of importance between 0 and 10 which is called Page Rank. In general if two sites match a search query exactly, then page rank will decide which page comes back first on the search results page.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing is a combination of SEO and Internet Advertising. To back up an SEO strategy a company may also purchase ads from companies such as Google. With Google users can set up Adwords campaigns, which allow the customer to bid on key words and phrases that they think people might used to find their products or services. Once a Adwords campaign is set up and running, ads will appear on the google search pages and on other websites that have chosen to show ads via the AdSense programme.  Ads are paid for whenever a potential customer clicks on an ad and is brought to the web page.

So that’s the major bread and butter technologies tackled, please let me know via comments if I have omitted something major.

Should I use Flash on my Website?

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When developing a site, there has to be a balance between design and functionality.  Often there are sites that should be dynamic that are flat and stale and other times there are sites that should be subtle that have animations and sounds going when there should be no distractions from the content the user wishes to read.

As a general rule of thumb it is a good idea to use Flash on a site sparingly for various reasons

  1. Often they are content rich and of high quality which means download times can be longer than they should which can frustrate end users
  2. By default, they are not searchable by Google and other search engines which means that even though the site might look fab, nobody will ever find it through a search engine
  3. The end user’s browser has to have flash installed on it (and the correct version of it)
  4. Often similar effects can be achieved through CSS, Javascript and HTML

As a result I would suggest that flash be used for dynamic areas of the site e.g. a slideshow on the home page, a dynamic menu, a snazzy gallery component and so on and so forth.  There are some great websites out there such as www.FlashDen.net, which have thousands of flash components that can be installed on any website.

A recent website we built at UTD Web Design was www.harveys.ie,  which has a flash slideshow component on the homepage and a flash gallery component in the photos sections also.