How many times you were in a situation where you should decide which Technology to choose for filling in your site content ?
Since years ago websites were built with static tools such as Netscape navigator editor or Microsoft Front page , which could give you the ability to edit graphicly the content of your web pages, Nowadays these tools become very weak due to the complication in the use of them .
Content, Content, Content….
Nowadays the care and the frequent of updating your website become critical both for your visitors and both for search engines , we can find a lot of Free systems and content management system to create, edit, and add content to your existing website. So where is the catch ? usually those free systems gives the answer to 85-90% of your needs, and the rest causes you to work so hard In order to achieve 100% of your goals in the content management system. Lets make it clear ! im not saying that these Free tools are bad, they are awesome and decrease your expenses in developing or buying an alternative system. But usually they are built for use in generic needs and environments.
Content management systems.
Here are some of the benfits in using a tailored content management system:
First, let me makes it clear. The tailored solution is the main point here, it gives you the best way to edit, add and create your web content.
Most of websites that build into consideration of fast changes, it is important that the content management you choose can adapt your future Web site technology.
Choosing the right one for you.
The knowledge to choose the right solution is depending in how long you have experienced with content writing and updating websites. In addition you might need the experience in using different types of systems and knowledge management, in order to be able to get the cons and pros from each system you have experienced.
Here are some parameters you might want to consider before choosing the one.
- Ease of use: The GUI (Graphic User Interface) is one of the most important factor to consider when going to choose a slolution . Because GUI is human dependent, the only way for you to know which GUI is better is that you use and work in a demo environment of the system.
- System Requirements: Because web hosting companies can give you different types of hosting plans which includes a certain platform that your site is going to be running on , the ability to adapt your Content management website from one hosting to another is a big issue to consider. There are also different limitations at certain Operating Platforms , such as Microsoft windows server is a platform that out of the box gives a web server component that can be very usefulll when your code is .Net frame worked and application is developed in .NET Architecture. on the other hand if you are using Open source IDE’s (Integrated Development Environment) such as PHP , Mysql , you might know that these components can run under different platforms. So when looking at the Content management system you choose, check the architecture of the system with considerations of your future needs.
- Features: A list of features can be a major factor if only one of them is not the right for you ! Please note that NO SYSTEM will provide you with hundred percent of your requirements . but if you list your most wanted features and then look at the available market systems you can have it will be a good start .
- Support: any Software without a support can be BAD for you .because humans are writing software and code behind it, you should know that bugs and understanding of use will always be something you face during time. So choosing a big development firm is not always a good decision , there are the pros and cons , but choosing a small stable , very supportive company that you can reach and get answers in minutes can be a good decision.
- HTML CODE VALIDATION: One of the most technical important thing that you DO NOT want google to think of your web site , is an invalid code when reading it . Code validations are available from many websites such as (w3svalidator.com) that you can use to validate the HTML behind your content .
SEO and beyond…
One of the major factors to consider when choosing the right content management solution is Content optimization when going further to Search engine optimization (SEO).
Google as a search engine like to read a readable content and especially readable URL’s of your web pages. Along with this , a URLS that are made with Rewrite mechanism helps to optimize the rank of your web pages, because you expose your content titles, and keywords not only by the title , but also from the URL’s that the search engine crawler reads. In addition to this , a search optimization is a bulk of actions that first of all takes place in your site content where youo can Achieve full control over the code, content and webpage meta data.
Content management systems can provide you with features that makes the ability for you to do all your SEO stuff in one place. That’s one of the factors to consider along with others when choosing the content management system for you. This ability can be usefull with the meta tags editing .
Other types of content
When using an editor in your system , you might want to add, edit and delete also other objects such as , Images from your web server , video’s , embedded code for gallery or video from Youtube , and flash content. If your system can handle editing these kind of objects, this can be very helpful when using a gallery pages , and promote them in search results by adding meta data to each picture , video , or flash content. By using the ALT/Title attribute in the images html tags , you help the search engine crawler to understand whqt is the subject of this photo . In flash content , the situation is a bit harder , cause usually you don’t have the tools to edit in one content management the flash file inside , so what google suggest is adding text labels inside the flash source file so the search engine can read its content and understand the subject.
With Video , the situation is straight forward compliant with Optimization as you have the platforms such as youtube ,Google video and facebook , also other social networks to upload , embed and share the video ’s online. These systems let you add meta data , text , tags and content to each video file you upload , and even more automatically index this content in google and display the video search results format.
A system that What you see is what you get …
Among those many factors to consider when choosing the right solution for your web content management system , there is always one question that bothers you : How do I edit ? or how do I see my changes ?
I have experienced with many solutions for content and web management system , and realized that most or all of the current available known solutions focus on two sides of the content editing : The Front side –which is what the surfer see and read.
The Backend – which is only available for the web managers or content managers for the website.
This separation is very popular in a client-server systems and gives a security benefits in the Backend side.
This caused me to develop and use in my clients websites a brand new, technology content management system, that build into codiderations of the future needs for optimizing , editing and using the web . The system I designed is called CONTESIA , and im telling you for sure that out of the box is far from being a perfect system. But I can ensure that when tailoring it for your website content and you , it will handle 90% of your needs for both ease of use and Search engine optimization.
The major difference in the system is that it supports the ON SITE Editing feature which lets you see what the surfer sees and edit it on the same page (of course with proper authentication). Now what about security? I decided to take the security into a big consideration when planning the architecture so when you use the Admin side of the system , your actions are tracked and logged into the system .
Conclusions…
For your best solution in web content management , you might think a little further before going to any solutions. Please note that in this article there is no intent at all to suggest you a certain solution, but gives you the knowledge to choose the right one for you.
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