As a website specialist at LRS Web Solutions it is a privilege to be part of a team that creates awesome websites everyday. During the course of development, a lot of hard work and expertise goes into delivering a quality-finished product. However, a website is never really finished, is it? A good and effective website requires regular ongoing maintenance.
<analogy> I like to think website maintenance is a lot like car maintenance. Some owners take good care of their car and some not so much. Some people choose to take their car into the shop for an oil change and some people just do it themselves. If you'd rather take your website into the proverbial shop for routine maintenance, that’s great, it should keep running for a long time! However, this post is geared more towards the folks that would prefer to get under the hood and do it themselves. </analogy>I believe there are three categories of individuals who find themselves responsible for the maintenance of their website; content managers, content contributors, and content creators. Have a look and see which one best describes you or your situation to find the right solution for your website maintenance needs.
Are you a content manager?
A content manager is someone who may or may not have direct web development experience, but plays a vital role in managing ALL the content on a website. This person or persons may need the ability to add/remove pages, sections or navigation, as well as images and other media. This person could be responsible for making daily text entries (blogging) or even managing portal web users. What I am saying is, clearly there is a lot going on here and flexibility and efficiency is a must. If you are as busy as the person described in this section, and you need the flexibility of doing everything web-based using an administration area, then you will likely need a content management system.
Content management systems are great because you can apply a pre-built theme or custom skin to maintain visual consistency when creating new pages. Not to mention all the menus and content can be edited in the admin and are dynamically driven from a database file, which can be backed up and restored if necessary.
There are many content management systems to choose from and some are definitely better than others. You may want to talk to someone before deciding on the right CMS. Not convinced you are a content manager? Keep reading we have more to cover.
Maybe you're a content contributor?
A content contributor is someone who may or may not be directly involved in marketing efforts, yet still plays a vital role in the company’s online presence. This individual is someone whose regular tasks might include updating a list of future events, maintaining specifications of product information and/or updating featured information on the company’s homepage. This person is highly proficient in office productivity software, but may not have formal training in website development. Web maintenance duties fall to this person because they are awesome at everything else, so why not.
For this person, a software application called Adobe Contribute works great (makes sense, doesn’t it?). Adobe Contribute retails for $199 and is a very powerful web-publishing tool for those with little to no HTML knowledge. Contribute allows you to connect to your website (using FTP) and edit content in a browser-like interface, taking advantage of familiar formatting tools common to other software applications. Adobe Contribute is great for inserting images, videos and links, as well as performing basic text edits. Contribute can also be used to update page titles, keywords and META descriptions for SEO purposes. Actually, come to think of it, Contribute can do a lot. To read more about Adobe Contribute click here…
Contribute may not be a good choice for updating main website navigation, adding multiple pages or creating new sections for your website. If you are anticipating a lot of growth and plan to do it yourself, keep reading.
How about a content creator?
A content creator is someone who is actively involved in marketing efforts and has some sort of background or experience with web design and HTML. This person could be a web developer, a graphic designer or even a marketing guru. One thing is for sure; this person has vision for the direction of the website and anticipates future growth. This individual may need to add, move or change graphical elements, as well as add or update primary website navigation. A content creator does not want to be limited to what he or she can update, but rather needs full access to make any necessary changes within the website. A content creator may know their limitations or they may not. Either way they are not afraid to get in there and mix it up. Probably because they know we have a backup copy of their site ; )
For this individual Adobe Dreamweaver, which retails for $399, is the industry standard. Actually, Adobe is now offering subscriptions month-to-month for $29 per mo, or one-year subscriptions for $19.00 per mo. Either one of those might be a pretty good option to ensure you’re always using the latest software release. For more information about Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5 click here…
For the super advanced user or programmer we might recommend Microsoft’s Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server for application development, but we're talking super advanced.
For more information about any of the products or solutions mentioned in this post, please do not hesitate to contact one (or all) of our fabulous sales representatives at web@LRSWebSolutions.com.
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Eddie Ebeling is a Site Construction Specialist at LRS Web Solutions. He's extremely motivated and inquisitive... especially when it comes to the new coffee machine.
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