Most CMS systems use a database to store content, images, and other data assets that might be needed by the system. The website displays the content to website visitors based on a theme design. These “theme designs” are also often referred to “skins” or “templates”. The administration can usually be accomplished via any web browser. Meaning, the content can be managed from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection.

The really cool thing is that at any later time, the “design” can be changed giving your website a brand new look without affecting the content.

Using a Content Management System

A  good CMS allows non-technical users to make changes to a website with very little training. A CMS may require a web developer to set up and add additional features, but it is primarily a website maintenance tool for non-technical users.

There is certainly a wide variety of content management systems but at Web Considerations, we have selected WordPress as our preferred solution. WordPress is an open-source blog and publishing platform that is used by over 14% of the world’s biggest websites.

WordPress is often used for a blog only but it is also a very popular content management tool due to its expandability and customization flexibility. By using WordPress, you can turn a normal website into a shopping cart, a members only site, sell digital downloads and many other functions that will grab and hold your website visitors attention.

Contact Us Today and we can help you start managing your own website.

URL Structure

For example, if a search engine discovers the URL http://www.webconsiderations.com, the engine will be able to tell a lot about the site just from the top level domain name (a.k.a. TLD) even before the engine spider comes along to grab document content.

If a spider does grab document content and discovered a link to http://www.webconsiderations.com/website-design, the it will know there is more content and indeed a specific sub-directory dedicated to “website design”. URLs certainly aid and have significant value in effective ranking.

URL Usability

There are some common rules of usability that also apply to SEO best practices. A URL that is meaningful and properly structured for your website visitors will also apply to search engines. In addition, just as shorter URLs are normally preferred for your visitors (mainly because it is easier to remember and type), a shorter URL is generally preferred for a search engine.

When possible, the simplest URL should be used. For example, it would be better to link to http://yourdomain.com/products rather than http://yourdomain.com/products/index.html (or index.php). I would certainly recommend linking to the first.

With WordPress, you can easily accomplish this by logging into your WordPress admin panel and clicking Settings > Permalinks. Under common settings, select the “custom structure” option. Add /%postname%/ in the space provided and save your changes.

But what do you do if you don’t have a WordPress site and you want to apply the same type of URL structure to your standard website?

The simplest method is to create a sub folder with the name that you want to use as the URL. Copy the specific page for that document into the folder you just created and rename it index.html (or index.php if applicable) and upload it to your server. Then you would simply link to the folder and not the specific file. By default, web servers will serve a file named index.html or index.php without including the file name in the URL first unless you have linked to a specific file name.

There are certainly several other topics that could be discussed concerning URL structure and usability but by first simplifying your URLs, you are off to a great start in more effectively optimizing your website.

What makes a great website?

1. Website Content
2. Appeal
3. Usability & Accessibility
4. Optimization
5. Purpose

Website Content

Simply put – if a user can’t find information they are looking for, they have no reason to be on your site and won’t stay there. You need to make sure content is easy to find; and can be found in a variety of ways if possible. For example, having a consistent navigational menu, a sitemap, footer links, and internal page links are all excellent suggestions.

A built in search function is also a great feature to have. All in all, make sure you take every step possible to ensure the user experience is a good one. Allowing them to find content easily certainly provides this ability.

You should also try to keep content fresh. Not only will fresh and updated content be more likely to keep visitors returning but Google itself considers the freshness of content an important value when determining rank.

Appeal

How many websites have you seen that may have had a great product but you were reluctant to purchase because of a poor design?

Unless you are one of the big boys like Google, you really need to make sure you look into your website design. It doesn’t have to be overly artistic but it should be appealing. Your goal is to keep visitors on your site and to keep them coming back. A poor design defeats that purpose.

Keep things are where most users expect them to be. If you can’t get your website to look great, meet the user half way and promote a sense of structure and conformity. Set out your page elements to be where the user expects to see them.

For instance, keep the logo in the top left, have top bar navigation and/or sidebar navigation or panels. Use a search function and use your footer area effectively. Your main content area should be obviously easy to read and void of clutter.

This is by no means a must do but it is what the majority of users expect. The most important factor is keeping everything consistent like colors, headings, navigation and etc. Don’t have all your links different colors, some with underlines and some not. Don’t have top bar navigation on one page and only sidebar navigation on the next.

These are just a few main areas to target and are a good basis for a solid website design.

Speeding up your website is important but not just to the website owner but to anyone who uses the internet. A faster site creates happy users and visitors. Everyone knows that if a website is slow to respond, people will be far less likely to spend time there.

What Makes for poor Page Speed Optimization?

• Poor page speed optimization
• Bloated code
• Large imagery
• Poorly written CSS
• Bad hosting configurations

Just to name a few…

This is in addition to slower internet connections and older computer that your website visitors may have.

Speed Your Website Up!

We will take a look at your entire website including the HMTL, PHP, CSS and any other applicable code and clean it up taking out white space and outdated technology and formatting make it more search engine friendly.

We will also compress your files and all imagery making it less bloated and heavy usually reducing the file size as high as 50% or more. Lighter page weight equals smaller file size which equals FASTER LOAD TIMES.

As an added bonus, we will look at your hosting configuration and make applicable changes that allow your web server to compress files even further before showing them to your website visitors. It will also “cache” them on the user’s computer so it won’t even have to deliver it across the internet the next time.

A little too technical here? Don’t worry, we will be glad to discuss it further if you give us a shout.

Why a Custom WordPress Theme Design?

A custom WordPress theme helps you to launch your website or blog to a new and exciting level. Your own identity, logos, favorite colors and own ideas can be incorporated that will help your website stand out and not be counted with the same old look.

Why WordPress?

WordPress is the best and one of the most popular blogging solutions that are available today. Due to its free and open-source engine, WordPress has gained widespread popularity throughout the world with a community of more than 1000 contributors working on improvements to WordPress platform. Utilizing its own API, WordPress developers have created a practically unlimited number of plug-ins that allow you to extend the standard functionality even more.

By using WordPress, website owners can manage their own content. Many website owners have no interest in operating a blog but will use WordPress to make updates, add or change images, add new pages and etc. to their own website without knowing anything about website design. Imagine, no more paying website developers a fee to change content on your website!

Browser Validation

Web Considerations WordPress themes will look equally beautiful in all modern browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Before your new design is finished, we test how it looks and functions in each of the most popular browsers so no matter which platform your visitors use, you design will look great.

Web Standards Validation

We also check all of our XHTML and CSS code to make sure it is W3C valid. Code validation, although not always seen by your web browser is very important. It plays a major role in how your website functions and even plays a role in how the major search engines judge your website. To us, it just doesn’t make sense to develop a website or blog unless it passes validation.

We offer informational, E-Commerce and PHP/MySQL database driven sites using strictly HTML and CSS designs. No more tables and cells that add additional markup and bloat to your website.

We can help you promote your small business online or personal website using SEO techniques that are proven to be effective in listing your site in Google and other search engines. Also providing one-on-one consultation to create the design that is most beneficial and suitable for you and your needs.

Your website will built and tested across multiple platforms including today’s most popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and others. It will also be validated for HTML Transitional or Strict document types as well as CSS 3.0 standards for optimal accessibility.

If you have an existing website but just need it modified, we can handle that too. Several of our customers have started out that way and before long, the old site is up to date and looking brand new.

Creative talent to appeal to your sense of style, training and knowledge of current web development standards and practices, and friendly personal service all combined helps Put Ideas into Reality!

Some designers get too caught up in the presentation, flashy animations and cool graphics and let the usability go by the wayside. On the other hand, those designers who focus only on how effective the accessibility is may let the visual appeal fall short.

The primary thing to remember is that the design, as a whole, is about what you are trying to communicate. If you want to design a new website that works perfectly well but looks bad, most people will not want to stay on your site too long. Likewise, if your website is a beautiful piece of art but is not easy to use, people may not want to figure it out and once again leave.

It is a problem all designers face when contemplating the design of a website. Keep in mind that both elements: usability and presentation, should work together as one unit so that visitors like the design but are also drawn to the content you are providing. Furthermore, it is an important fact that your navigation be intuitive so that users can find information and move about your site easily.

One final point to consider is the “consistency” of the website. It can be very distracting and often confusing if there are too many differences between your home page and other pages of your website. If there are differences, there should be a cohesive style that holds all the pages together.

As a designer, I am aware that the best practice in designing a website is by using CSS to separate the HTML markup (how it is laid out) from the content of your web pages. By doing so, you provide a much cleaner and often smaller amount of data that has to be read by the search engines to index your website. Effectively promoting better search engine results. Which after all is a key in a good website.

The problem is that there are sometimes different results that the bugs in various browsers can cause no matter how well your CSS is written and no matter how clean the HTML code is.

At Web Considerations, your website will be tested against all of the major and most popular web browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer (currently version 6, 7 and 8). We want you to get the most benefit from your new design and since there are so many different browsers, we want to ensure that you get the maximum exposure with little to no difference in how the site will look or function.

If you would like to know more about our testing practices before committing to getting a new website, feel free to contact us, it would be great to hear from you.

The first thing I did was to buy Dreamweaver and a 2 day class. It was a great introduction but as in most short class room shops I have attended, you go over way too much material in the short amount of time there is. You stay so focused on the outline and project steps, you don’t grasp the concept. At least I didn’t at first.

The next thing I remember was that I bought a few website templates. My thinking was that if I saw how a site was put together, I could break it down and get a greater understanding of design. It was a major step and it did teach me a lot but it was fairly short lived. The more I started learning, the more I realized that a lot of templates that you buy are still using tables and cells as opposed to straight CSS. I learned that tables and cells are not the best method for design so I pressed on.

I then purchased some CSS workshops that included a finished product complete with all the images, style sheets and HTML. It further provided a step by step guide with explanation of not only how to complete a particular design technique but it also explained why it was being done and the purposes behind it. I loved it! That was probably the 2nd most valuable tool I have come across so far to teach good solid web design.

I then got into a book buying phase. I probably have at least 6 different books on CSS alone as well as many other books on topics including JavaScript, PHP, ASP, Flash, Joomla and MySQL just to name a few. A good book is a perfect tool to learn a topic… the problem is that it takes a considerable amount of time to really read and study the book. I don’t know about you but time is not something I have a lot of between my full time job, church and other activities. However, if I want to learn something, I have found a great book can teach me so much more than most online courses I have taken.

Finally, I would have to say the best teacher is plain and simple hands on training. I have learned if I want to do something… I just start doing it. If it screws up, I just start over; it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time. Don’t be afraid to try something. Join some blogs and forums and ask a lot of questions. Get a second hosting account and use it as a test bed. I have a couple of accounts on my own hosting service that I use strictly for testing. If someone happens across that particular site on the internet… it doesn’t matter what kind of shape it is in. After all… it’s a test bed.

Hands down, hands on at your pace is the best teacher.

Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS) is recognized as the recommended way to maintain the presentational level of a website document.

The main and utmost important benefit of using CSS over presentational markup imbedded in HTML is that all styling can be kept separated from the content of the document. You can create a single CSS file and attach it to your web pages for easy maintenance.

For instance, if you had a website that consisted of 1000 pages and you wanted to change the text color of your <H1> tag, you could easily update all 1000 pages instantly by modifying one CSS file. If your presentational markup was imbedded into each HTML web page, you would have to edit 1000 pages if your website look was to remain consistent throughout the entire site.

Simply attaching one or even a few external CSS files to your web document offers a great number of benefits. It would be difficult to overstate just how beneficial using CCS is but in the simplest of terms: it is obviously much more efficient editing (or maintaining) one file instead of 100, 1000, or 10,000 HTML documents.

Sometimes with smaller sites, some designers may not recognize the benefit but I highly recommend getting into the practice on sites of any size. I can speak for experience… it save huge amounts of time.