Results tagged “Movable Type” from David Kamerer's Spoonful
My favorite store is having a sale this week, but you wouldn't know it by looking at its web site.
That's because the site just sits there. It's little more than a business card with some pretty pictures.
The site isn't updated because it's a hassle to do it. If the job requires a web designer, complex software and an arcane process called FTP to send information to a server, it's too complicated to do regularly.
But it doesn't have to be that way. A new kind of web site - a content management system, or CMS - makes it easy to administer from a secure dashboard. And when it's easy, you'll update it when you're having a sale.
A CMS can be expensive, as a custom-designed and programmed site might be. Or it can be free, if you use an off-the-shelf or open source tool. Many companies use blogging platforms such as WordPress or Movable Type as their CMS. If you need more power or control, there are open-source tools like Joomla or Drupal. When you choose one of these, you gain support from communities of experts who provide free programming modules or visual themes.
Continue reading Free tools for managing your store's web site.
As a college professor, I work with mostly junior and senior communication students who are interested in public relations, marketing and media production. Many are in the process of migrating their work online, whether it's for a portfolio or a client-based project.
I see a clear trend among the students. Even a year ago, there was intense interest in learning to hard-code web sites using Dreamweaver or a similar tool. Today, that doesn't happen. The students have learned and seen the value of using a content management system, or CMS. Most use WordPress, but there is a smattering on Blogger, Tumblr, TypePad or Movable Type. Some have skills with Drupal or Joomla.
All of these platforms have robust third-party support, whether its themes, plug-ins, widgets or community sites that answer technical questions. Most are free, and most allow you to host the content yourself if you want to.
It seems like WordPress is dominant, but a recent study of top blogs shows a plurality of leaders.
The key point - find a CMS that you can live with, one that does 90 percent of what you want and need to do. Apply a theme, and then focus on what you do best: the content. Later on, when you want to re-skin the site, or reformat it for delivery to iPhones, or push it to your Facebook or LinkedIn account, you'll be glad you did.
There will always be a place for hard-coded sites, but once you've seen the advantages of a good CMS, you'll never go back.
What good is a web site if it just sits there? I'm hearing from more and more small businesses and non-profits who are ready to start taking measurement of their web traffic seriously. For these smaller websites, Google Analytics is a powerful and easy solution. Here's a treasure trove of support information from grokdotcom.com if you're just getting started with Google Analytics.
Here's a quick overview: start by creating an account with Google. Your analytics account can be created from your Gmail login. Google Analytics will then provide some code that you'll place on your website. Depending on how your site is configured, you'll put it on every page, or in one place that's served up with every page. When visitors hit your site, the code will "phone home" to Google. You'll view the results a day later on a very nice dashboard viewable from your Google Analytics account page.
If you're a Movable Type user like me, a good place to install the code is in your Footer template file, just before the </body> tag. You just need to put it on your site once, since the footer is served with every call to your site. And, since it's in the footer, disruption to the user is minimal, since it's served last. Note that this code is "off the page" text; it's not visible to your site visitors.
There's really no excuse to not measure your web traffic. It's not hard to get started, and the service is free. Do this today!
