Template Customization

Choosing a Content Management System by Diona Kidd

Posted on 23. Apr, 2007 by Dave.

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Choosing a Content management system remains to be an issue for site maintainers and web site owners. The first issue seems to be “Do we need a CMS?”. The second issue is, of course, cost.

A common misconception is that there requirement of size before an organization can benefit from a Content Management System. Even small websites can gain valuable benefit from CMS solutions. The key is to pick the CMS that best fits your organizations needs and growth expectations.

And don’t be fooled into thinking you have to sell your first born child or a year’s wages to get a CMS. There are many different levels of CMS applications and different levels of implementation, both of which effect price.

Let’s discuss some of the details of Content Management Systems… What is CMS? CMS stands for Content Management System. A CMS is a software system that helps in maintaining and expanding website, often with no knowledge of web languages. The goal to make content and structure expansion easier. A CMS can also help by making maintenance by multiple parties in your organization possible.

CMS applications store their information in a database and generate pages as needed. Many Content Management Systems also cache pages to optimize a website’s performance. This means that once a page is requested, it is created and stored on the system until it changes so the page does not have to be created upon every request. This eases the load on your server and makes lessens the expense of hardware requirements. What does CMS do?Well, what exactly do you need? A CMS generally manages text articles and templates for a website. Template is just another term for a layout of a page. Generally, a layout is reused multiple times on one website and you can assign a layout to a page in a CMS. You might have a home page layout and another layout for the interior of the website. It is easy to assign the interior template to newly created pages.

Certain CMS systems may also have Permission-based Publishing or Workflow tasks. These features allow customization of the publishing process. Permission-based publishing allows certain roles or people to publish while others can only submit articles for review.

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Web Design Templates customizations

Posted on 18. Apr, 2007 by Dave.

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive about our web design templates is, “Do the forms, newsletters subscriptions and search fields on your web design templates actually work, and how will the search engines be able to find and index my web design template?”

I’m glad you asked! Any web design template purchase alone (meaning a purchase that do not include professional customizations) consists of the design only (or just the web design template PSD file(s), HTML file(s), Flash files(s) fonts etc.); custom design such as programming, SEO (search engine optimization) or scripting is not included. All forms such as a newsletter subscription or a search field are inactive.

Web design template Customization
Notwithstanding professional customizations may be purchased separately to fit that individual business needs. Please, chat with a design consultant now to ask about our low budget template customization package now only $380. To make your web site based on our web design template unique our low budget package comprises customizing the site name, changing links, adding your logo, contact form script, and up to 5 pages of content; up loading and testing of site to your server also included.

Search Engine Optimization
Fact of the matter is that the esthetics characteristics of your web design template are of no or little relevance to having visitors find your site; conversely Google (or most major search engines) play a major roll in this equation. First of all if you have no idea what a search engine really is, you should go check out PageRank in a Nutshell right now. Are you going? You should go… I can’t hear the mouse clicking!

Now that you understand how search engine really work; another really useful resource you’ll want to discover is Google’s Webmaster tools. If you do not already use Gmail or some other type of Google Account services you will need to create one before you can access this service. Webmaster tools is something very special indeed, and not just cause it’s free, but because it’s stacked with some really awesome statistics, diagnostics for the management of Google’s crawling and indexing of your website, as well as many answers to sometimes very hard to find optimization questions you’d wished you knew the answer to. To learn more about Google and how to optimize your web design template for higher ranking, got to http://www.google.com/webmasters/

But I digress. Listen, besides substituting the dummy text on your web design template with your own text and weather you choose a Flash web design template or whatever the underlining technology used to built your web design template may be, the long and short of it is that this is merely the beginning; depending on what skills you posses, you are going to have to make some choices. If you have experience in Flash and HTML then you should think about making these customizations yourself. Also our after sales template help section provides lots of comprehensive web design template editing tutorials that would give you a great start.

On the other hand, if you prefer to avoid HTML like the plague. Then professional customizations are a great solution provided, that together your template customization specialist and you have a clear understanding of your individual business needs and everything that is to be expected upon completion.

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Cheap But Effective Web Site Traffic Promotion Strategies by Neil Day

Posted on 08. Apr, 2007 by Dave.

In today’s Internet world, there’s nothing more critical than web site traffic promotion. Once you set up an online business, you need to spread the word of its existence. If you don’t, the chances are your business will go down the drain. The Internet is such a huge marketplace and you may probably want to know how you’re going to get free web site traffic.

For no or little cost, there are a lot of ways you can generate free web site traffic. But for the purpose of this article, we can sift through the number of ways where you can get web site traffic promotion without shelling out some of your precious dollars. While it is a fact that some businesses are not ‘big’ on marketing budget, there are still available ways that they can avail of free web site traffic.

Exchanging links is one type of web site traffic promotion that’s proven effective. All other web site owners want to market their own sites the way you do. Through link exchanges, web site owners can get exposure and put themselves on show for viewers to browse on. At the same time, it exposes them to the products and services of the others. This is a very helpful tactic in building and generating free web site traffic. It should be noted, though, that one should establish links with associated web sites. Try to establish link exchanges with sites that are related to your online business. You can try getting your web site’s name spread across as widely as possible.

Another stable web site traffic promotion is offering free items. Everybody likes freebies. You can offer guidelines or tips on certain subjects related to your online business. Try to make your giveaways as valuable for visitors as possible.

You can also create a business blog for your web site traffic promotion. It is an effective tool that you can use to blow your own horn, let the Internet world become aware of your existence of your new products or services, and let your customers know why they should have something to do with you business-wise.

Probably the most excellent way to accomplish web site traffic promotion is through search engine optimization. Major search engines are places where you want to get high rankings. To help you achieve this, there are several ways that can help increase your web site’s rankings. First, you have to submit your web site to major search engines so they can send their web crawlers out, pick your site up and go through it. Second, make use of keywords in the text content of your web site. Select unique keywords that would help pull in searches to your web site.

And don’t forget word-of-mouth as another effective technique for your web site traffic promotion. It is considered to be one of the best forms of advertising. Have a brainstorm session and come up with ways to create a buzz about your web site that will keep online visitors coming back.

For the most effective web site traffic promotion, you can use a combination of these methods. If you decide to use more than one technique, chances are you will catch the attention of online visitors and search engines.

About the Author
Look over the shoulder of an underground traffic guru as he reveals the exact blueprint to web site traffic promotion that generates 15,000 visitors a day to his websites … Visit http://www.website-traffic-blueprint.com TODAY and grab his blueprint for traffic success!

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5 SEO Techniques For Beginners by Liz Lunn

Posted on 06. Apr, 2007 by Dave.

5 SEO Techniques You Must Use

1. Focus your page:

Each page should focus on one keyword or key phrase. Your keyword should appear in the title, the heading tag and one in bold on the page. You can bold one other closely related keyword or phrase, but do not overdo it. Check the keyword density of the page. There are plenty of free online tools to check the keyword density. It should be between 5% and 15%. If the density is higher than that then you run the risk of being penalized by the search engines.

2. Choose the proper title tag:

Your title tag is the first thing a search engine spider sees, so it is on of the most important SEO tools you have. You title should consist of only 1 thing – the keyword of your page. The title tag is the text that will appear in the title bar of the web browser when someone is visiting your page. Take a look at the title of this page.

3. Design your site for your visitors AND search engines:

Many experts advise designing your site for your visitors and not worrying about the search engines as much. However, with today’s tools, it is very easy to design a site that both your visitors and search engines will like. Make sure to use ALT tags for all of your images. Avoid the use of frames, flash and javascript. Have someone other than your mother or your spouse give you an objective opinion about your site. Is it is pleasing to look at? Is it easy to navigate? Would they come back?

4. Use unique content:

Search engines like unique content. Do not fill your website with articles like this that you found on a free article site. It is fine to use some of them, but you must have content that is not found anywhere else on the web. Ideally, all of the content on your main page should be unique as this is the first page the search engine will come across. But if you want some individual pages indexed for a particular keyword, then at least the top content of the page should be unique.

5. Use backlinks effectively:

A backlink is when another website links to your site. There are many ways to obtain backlinks (which is a topic for another article) but once you have the opportunity for a backlink, you should use it wisely. Make sure that your keyword is in the text of the link. For example, if the link text is “click here” the link will not carry as much weight with a search engine as the link text “Cookie Recipes” will – assuming the linked page is about cookies recipes.

About the Author
You can read more about using SEO and other techniques to increase your website traffic at DriveTrafficOnline. Be sure to sign up for a FREE 30-day course on getting targeted traffic to your site.

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Web Based Content management system by Shakir Hussein

Posted on 03. Apr, 2007 by Dave.

A web based content management system (CMS) is used for web design so that the php, asp or jsp scripts call in the data from the mysql or sql database to create the content on a page. You would enter the content of a website in a database using a user friendly Admin Panel and this would update itself on the actual website. CMS is critical to the success of almost every website and intranet.

The need
Static websites are easy to design but hard to maintain. You have created a static website with desired content and you put in efforts to promote that site. As a result, the website grows organically over time, and while it is very useful, it is far from perfect. The search engines give more importance to the websites, which are updated regularly. To update the site content on regular basis, you would require the web professional company to give you continuous support. Now this dependency leads to either continuous expenses or poorly update site.

Thankfully, this dependency is what a content management system is specifically designed to solve. A web based content management system (CMS) helps you manage the content data on the website. The management includes creation, updating, distribution, publishing, and discovery of content. And it is not the only thing that the CMS can do for you. The CMS now helps to generate new pages, categorize the content, manage the layout and presentation of the site, manage users and permissions for the site, manage other dynamic modules on the site and many other things using a very user-friendly Admin Panel which requires minimal or no technical expertise.

Features and Benefits
There are a wide range of features and benefits that can be achieved by implementing a CMS, including: * Create and Manage New Pages * Manage site navigation and meta content * Assign users to manage the content in decentralized way. * Manage site layout and presentation by editing the HTML. * Manage other modules on the site. Like if you have forum installed on the site, you can manage the forum preferences, settings, categories, forums, users from the Admin panel * Better consistency * Increased security * Reduced duplication of information * Reduced site maintenance costs Out of all the features, content management remains the mainstay of the CMS sites.

Content management.
The CMS based sites have a front end which the site for public, a database which stores the vital data of your site and a Admin Panel to manage the site. Through the Admin Panel, you can create content pages like you are creating a document in MS Word. This is a completely non-technical interface to create new pages or update existing pages without any knowledge of HMTL, javascript or programming language. You can simply click create pages and a page opens which asks you to define the attributes of the page like Title of the page, Link Title for the frontend navigation menu and page content. The page content box uses a WYSIWYG editor which helps you to improve the presentation of the page like making any text bold, colored or creating hyperlinks. You can also upload images with your content. You can also define the meta tags for the page, publish and expiry date, author information etc to make the page more meaningful.

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Online Home Business Basics by Glenn Cutforth

Posted on 02. Apr, 2007 by Dave.

Current statistics indicate, that home based businesses are among one of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy. Millions of people have discovered the freedom and convenience working from home can bring them. As long as you get your work done, you can create your own work schedule, and the only person you have to answer to, is you! You may just need a little inspiration and guidance to help you decide which home based business might work for you. Let’s look at some basic steps you should take to reach your goal of working for yourself.

The first thing to do is brainstorm. Write down any idea you have about anything you’re good at. Do you have a particular skill or talent? Write it down! Even if you don’t think you’re strong in many areas, perhaps you’re a fast learner. Everyone has something they can do. Find that something by narrowing down your ideas to the ones you’re drawn to the most. It has to be something you’ll enjoy, because loving something will drive you to work hard at it to make it work, even if it takes time.

Once you’ve decided what you can offer, whether it’s a product, or a service or both, you must do a lot of research. For instance, who are your competitors? Explore their websites and ideas. What can you offer that they don’t? There’s always something you can do to make your business a little more unique then someone else’s. Be creative with this one! Don’t discount any of your ideas as worthless or silly.

What’s in a name? A lot! Use your brain power and think of a good name for your business that could draw people in. Compile a list of everything that pops into your head, and then do internet search engine searches to see if these names are taken, and in what capacity. It doesn’t cost too much to copyright a business name, and if you have a good one — do it quickly!

Designing your website is very important! If you happen to know someone who can help you, it doesn’t hurt to take advantage of that golden opportunity! Hiring a website designer can cost a bundle. If you have a budget for it, ask for quotes and make sure you see samples of work done previously. Otherwise, you’ll have to try to do it yourself, which isn’t impossible. If you’re ambitious, there’s software and free website templates available to help you along. Think it through. People shop with their eyes first, so to speak.

You’ll want to have your business name in as many places as you can, and free is best! Try search engine listings such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. Learn the basics of search engine optimization because, again, this is a huge component in attracting clients to your site.

The most important thing is to take your time! Do it properly. You want to spend time ironing out every last detail before launching an online business. You, of course, can always improve as you go along, but try to be as polished as possible to make an immediate positive impression on prospective clients. This means you should read all you can about starting online businesses, and the particular kind of business you wish to start. Attend any seminars or free lectures offered at libraries, convention centers or universities. Sometimes you can sit in for free in accredited university courses, as long as you don’t expect a credit. Knowledge is power!

Hopefully you’ve found something here to inspire you to begin your journey. Believe in yourself, love what you do, and chances are with hard work and determination you’ll be successful with your online home business dream!

About the Author
Glenn Cutforth is a writer, graphic designer and publisher of quality eBooks at Maxx Publishing http://www.MaxxPublishing.com. If you’re interested in getting started with a Home Based Online Business, you’ll find a wealth of information, tips and resources at his website, Guide To Online Success at http://www.guidetoonlinesuccess.com

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