Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » templates http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog Web Hosting Industry News, Latest Trends, and Analyses. Thu, 24 May 2012 11:11:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Design A Profitable Websitehttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/design-profitable-website/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/design-profitable-website/#comments Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:04:12 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=3397 Most people, when creating a website, have one thing in mind and that is, how to make their website profitable. The truth is, the design of your website has everything to do with how profitable it will become. There are many steps to designing a profitable website and most of these steps can be easily followed and are not too hard, even for people who are not familiar with web design in general. When you have decent design for your website, you will receive far more traffic which will lead to a more profitable website in terms of traffic and visitors. For a profitable website, you will need:

  • Clean Cut Navigation
  • Manage Images
  • Decent Content Length
  • Use Appropriate Templates

As you can probably tell, these are just a few steps you can take to make sure that your website is more profitable. In fact, it is easy to make the necessary changes so that your web design looks professional and will be ready for lots of traffic and visitors.
For an example on Perfect Landing Page click here.
Clean cut navigation is essential. Visitors to your website should always know where they are going and where to find what they are looking for immediately. Your navigation should never be cluttered or confusing. If you use a simple yet convenient navigation system, all visitors of your website will know exactly how to navigate around your website and will be able to find exactly what they are looking for right away.

It is also important that you manage images on your website. Every website should include some images because it adds to the professional look and feel of a website and images are, of course, important because they tell stories and represent businesses and websites. However, while it is important to include images, images can often cause your website to take longer to load which is frustrating for some visitors. Try to keep your images at a limited number. Never overdo it with too many images anyway because that just looks unprofessional. Use only the most necessary images and your website will look great.

You have to remember to use decent content length for your website. The problem many website owners face is that they have so much content and place it all on one page which most visitors the website will not appreciate. Of course, you want to get your point across and can do so with the content on your website. However, you have to keep it short and to the point. Most visitors are often turned off by content that is extremely long in length. They will usually just stop reading the content after a certain point or may not even bother to read it at all. For must-have content that is kind of long, split it up into sections. You can also make the text look more appealing by using sub-headers, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Visitors to your website will greatly appreciate you taking the time out to highlight important content by using bullet points or numbered lists instead of scattering information all around.

When it comes to the general look of your website, you should use appropriate templates. The template is the basic layout of your website and should always look professional because this is what visitors will see as soon as they enter your website. There are tons of website that offer a collection of free templates as well as cheap and affordable templates. The problem is, in many instances, website owners will use free or really cheap templates for their website but those templates are also being used on many other websites and that just does not look professional to visitors. If they have seen your template on another website, it just ruins it for you. You should take the time to create your own template so that your website will be unique. If you have absolutely no idea how to design a template, you can hire someone to do it for you. Hiring a freelancer to create a template for your website will be simple because there are tons of websites for people looking to hire freelancers and most of them are willing to work for really good prices. There is no excuse for having a crappy template when you have so many options to choose from.

Conclusion

If you want your website to be profitable, follow these steps. This is basic website knowledge that you need to know especially if you want your website to be successful for a long period of time. Navigation, Templates, Content, and Images all play an important role for your website which is why it is so important to utilize them properly with your website.

Remember: always use a creative and unique template, not a template that is being used by thousands of other websites. You should always have informative content on your website but you have to make it more readable to your visitors. They most likely do not want to see a bunch of text put together but would very much prefer to read the content on a page if it is broken down and highlighted into sections using sub-headers and bullet points.

Images make your website look better but too many of those images can actually slow your website down which work against you, not for you. Think wisely when you make the decision to put images on your website. Use images that are not huge in size and will fit well with the content on your website. Last but not least, the navigation is most important and should be utilized on a website correctly. It is fairly easy to set up a navigation system and once you have it set up, you will notice how organized your website looks compared to when you did not have a navigation system. Just about anyone can create a profitable website but it does take time and effort. If you want your website to be profitable, follow these steps to make it more user-friendly.

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]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/design-profitable-website/feed/ 0 phpWCMS for Easy Content Managementhttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/phpwcms-for-easy-content-management/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/phpwcms-for-easy-content-management/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:28:04 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=260 When equipped with the right CMS, you can build a website that is fast, feature-rich, easy to deploy and manage.  A user-friendly system will help you effectively separate content from the website layout and allow inexperienced community users to publish their own material.  If you have a site that requires frequent updates but do not want to spend hours upon hours making the necessary changes, a CMS like phpWCMS can make your life much easier.

What is phpWCMS?

phpWCMS is an open-source, web-based CMS scripted in the widely used PHP server-side programming language.  Like many open-source software applications, it uses a MySQL database to store all website data with the exception of converted images and uploaded files.  phpWCMS is divided into a frontend and backend.  The frontend is for presenting the site while the backend is only accessible to registered administrators and users.  With backend access, members of your community can login and modify template settings, manage their own content and much more.  The learning curve for phpWCMS is much shorter in comparison to other systems, making this software ideal for beginner and intermediate users.  Ease of use and user-friendly features often make it the preferred choice over comparable systems like Typo3.

As a cross-platform application, phpWCMS runs efficiently on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems.  In addition, the backend translates into 13 different languages including English, Danish, Dutch, Italian and Swedish.

phpWCMS Features

The phpWCMS software is extremely rich in terms of features.  Below we have listed some of the most notable:

Unlimited page layouts - The built-in, customizable Page Layout Wizard allows you to mix and match elements to create as many page layouts as you want.

Unlimited templates – The Template Editor features support for custom HTML headers,  JavaScript onload functions and CSS stylesheets that enable the creation of unlimited themes.

Simple content management - Building your site is made easy with numerous content parts.  You articles and blog posts can have summaries, redirections and other parts that distinguish it from the layout.

Multiple WYSIWYG editors – The phpWCMS HTML editors give you the ability to build your site with little to no programming knowledge.  In addition, such a wide variety ensures that your creation looks good in popular web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Multiple content parts - Content comes in many different variations and phpWCMS is able to support many.  The software handles images, articles, multimedia files, newsletters, custom search forms, sitemaps, guestbooks and more.

Although phpWCMS is loaded with an array of useful features, it does not support a great number of add-on modules and therefore, it is not as flexible as more robust content management systems.  For this reason, it is recommended for small to medium sized websites.

Where to find phpWCMS

As an open-source application, phpWCMS is free to use and can be downloaded from the official project website.  In order to enjoy the benefits, you will need a web host that supports the software.  Because the system has become extremely popular, it is becoming easier to find.  phpWCMS is now offered in many web hosting packages as a one-click installation through control panels like cPanel and Plesk.

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]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/phpwcms-for-easy-content-management/feed/ 0 Assessing the Open-source CMShttp://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/assessing-the-open-source-cms/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/assessing-the-open-source-cms/#comments Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:18:05 +0000 Art http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=144 Many webmasters have a need to effectively manage content as it enables the creation of large, easy to maintain websites.  The problem is that not everyone can afford the high-end proprietary solutions such as IBM WebSphere and the Microsoft Content Server.  Fortunately, there are also several open-source systems on the market that offer a cost-effective means for achieving the same goal.  This article will shed some light on what you need to look for in an open-source CMS.

For the most part, every content management system is designed to produce the same results.  What mainly sets them apart is ease of use and features.  One product might lack some of the basic features but make up for them with add-on support.  A system that doesn’t have a WYSIWYG editor, for example, may offer support for an add-on module such as TinyMCE.   A product that has a complex interface could be enhanced by modifying the menu system or customizing layout templates.  When it comes to the open-source CMS, it isn’t so much about native features as it is flexibility.  You can access the overall flexibility of a system by viewing it from these angles:

Default Capabilities: The default capabilities of a CMS basically entail what is included with the installation, and determine if you can perform essential tasks without any problems.  When assessing the flexibility of any system, it is important to look for one that offers an acceptable level of basic functionality and provides the structure for creating a dynamic website.

Add-on Support: Most systems support add-on modules so it is up to you to find out what capabilities they possess.  Aside from features, consider how easy they will be to incorporate into the existing system as well.

Templates: Templates are a major part of any CMS as they allow you to modify the look and feel of your content.  If you are proficient with coding, you may want to find a product that lets you write your own templates.  In this case, you would need a system that supports the languages you are familiar with.

SEO: Many content management systems offer search engine appeal right out of the box.  However, not every product does.  Visibility is crucial for a large site so it is best to find a product that enables the easy creation of web pages and appeases the search engines.

Product Recommendations

The open-source CMS market is huge and there are a variety of products available.  Two of the most widely used systems on the market are Drupal and Mambo.  Drupal is a robust system with quality design and clean code.  It comes loaded with exceptional default capabilities as well as templates and layouts that are easily to manipulate.  Drupal is one of the most comprehensive systems available and the preferred choice for many businesses.

Mambo is easy to install and enables the simple management of content-rich sites.  The system includes a number of default features that provide support for multiple authors with little training required.  Both systems are SEO-friendly and support various add-ons for enhanced functionality.  Keep in mind that each product requires that you have a basic understanding of HTML and PHP.

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