Dynamic Websites

What you need to know about Dynamic Web sites

November 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Once you’ve decided to investigate a dynamic website powered
by a content management system, you’re likely to hear or read
some unfamiliar names, words and acronyms.

There will be talk of Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and others, modules and extensions, themes, open source versus proprietary solutions, and much more. To help you get grounded in the world of CMS, here are some of the words you’ll see most frequently and what they mean:

CMS

You’ve probably heard this acronym dozens of times. But what is it? Simply put, a content management system (CMS) is a layer of software that sits between the user (visitors or administrators) and the hardware, software and content that makes up and delivers the page. The CMS is designed to be user friendly. Administrators, for instance, can add, update or delete content via an easy-to-use administration page. The CMS tells the underlying components what to do. In other words, it translates commands that are easily understood by users into commands that are understandable by servers and databases. Visitors won’t necessarily know that they’re interacting with a CMS, except that the content is fresh and the design consistent across the site.

Modules or Extensions

One of the advantages of all content management systems is their extensibility and flexibility. If you want your site to have a chat room, a discussion board, a shopping cart or some other feature, you will add a module or extension. These are much like apps for your smartphone. You pick from a selection (there are thousands available) and install via the CMS’ administration page. With just a few clicks, the functionality is available to users of your site. If the module doesn’t work as expected, it can be just as easily removed. Typically, module installers take care of all necessary backend work. You need not worry about creating new databases, setting permissions or making any configuration changes.

WYSIWYG Editors

Most CMS programs allow users to change pages using a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) tool. The text that you enter shows up exactly as you entered it. If you can format text using a word processor, you can make changes to your site via one of these tools. As soon as you save the document, the changes are instantly available on your site. There are WYSIWYG tools available for static sites, too.

Themes

With a CMS, you are in control of the overall look and feel of your site. If you get tired of it, you can simply change a setting and switch to a new theme in the easy-to-use CMS administration page. Thousands of predefined themes are available with most CMS packages. If you can’t find one that suits you, you can create one from scratch – or hire a developer to do the job. Once the theme is selected, it changes the look across your site. There’s no need to manually change each page.

Open Source or Proprietary

When exploring CMS solutions, you’ll often see references to open source and proprietary software. These terms describe two very different software-development philosophies. Proprietary software is owned and controlled by a single company. Microsoft, for instance, has a CMS called SharePoint. Its developers update the underlying code, and the company licenses the product to users. If there’s a bug, or you want a feature that requires an underlying update to the code, you must wait for the next update to see if the feature will be supported or the fix made.

Open-source software isn’t owned or controlled by a single company. Instead, its underlying code is freely distributed and updated by volunteer developers on the condition that any improvements they make be made available to everyone. Such software is usually freely available and very frequently updated. And because it’s maintained by a worldwide community of developers, there’s never any problem finding someone to make changes for customizations specific to your organization.

Popular Open-Source CMS Solutions
WordPress is probably the best known CMS and powers thousands of websites around the world. It got its start as a blogging platform, though today it can do much more. There are modules available to support almost any need imaginable, from search engine optimization to e-commerce shopping carts.

Drupal has an extremely active community and is ideal for everyone from individuals to large companies. In fact, it’s maintained by more than 630,000 users and developers around the world. Unlike WordPress, which still has remnants of its past as a blogging platform, Drupal has had no such bias. You can make your site look like a blog, a portal or anything else using this powerful software.

Joomla is another popular open-source CMS. It’s well known for an easy-to-use installer that works in most shared hosting environments as well as its attractive administration interface. There are more than 3,200 extensions available to add any feature under the sun. However, many of the plugins, unlike other CMS solutions, do come with a price.

Filed Under: Dynamic Websites Tagged With: Dynamic Web sites, Dynamic websites

Why the future is next generation dynamic websites!

November 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Typical Scenario
Every website begins life with a big vision and grand plan.
It’ll attract visitors. Sales will double, triple or quadruple.
The Net will be abuzz with all that you’ve got to share with the world.

That initial burst of enthusiasm powers a great design.
Everyone talks about how easy the site is to navigate and find information.
But a few months later, the site quickly falls to the bottom of search results.
Nobody visits because the information isn’t updated.
You’d rather forget about it than update it.

What went wrong?
A well-built site by itself isn’t enough to guarantee success.
A site needs not only to be well-designed but also regularly maintained.
And if you don’t build a site with that requirement in mind, it’s most likely going to be a pain to keep up to date.
You could hire a pricey full-time webmaster to keep the site fresh.
Or you could just ignore it.
If you choose the latter, you can count on your visitors ignoring it, too.
Updated content, after all,
is what drives people to the most popular sites.

If you look closely at most abandoned websites, you’ll find that the majority are static and
require knowledge of FTP, HTML and other technologies to post content.
Once an item is uploaded to the server, the owner or their webmaster must do
surgery on the page on which the link is to appear.

At the very least, a hyperlink must be added without disrupting the elements that don’t require updating.
At the most, the entire page must be recoded and possibly redesigned to incorporate the new content.
It’s no wonder there’s never any new content on the site. It just takes too much time to add it.

There’s an easy solution to this problem – a dynamic website powered by an open-source application server.
Such sites are designed for easy updating via a simple Web form.

Content is stored in a database with instructions on how it should be displayed.
Once a visitor requests a page, the server builds the page on the spot with the latest
content in the database and following instructions coded into the site.
Once the site’s backend is finished, any authorized user can post content to the site
with a few clicks, and it will automatically flow into preset modules or templates.

The construction of dynamic websites can be a challenge, and that’s where we come in.
We’ll make sure your site is built to your specification, and that all modules that you’ll
need in the future are incorporated from the start whether you choose the Drupal, Joomla or Word Press platform.

Once your site is operational, you’ll be able to focus all your energy on creating the content.
When it’s ready to be published, all you have to do is upload it to a site via a user-friendly form.
The form will also ask you how you would like the content displayed and with a few clicks, your
site will automatically update to your specifications. As you can see, almost no effort is required
on your part to maintain your up-to-date presence on the Web.

Because your site will be hosted by us, you will have never have to worry about what happens on the backend again.
You can rest easy knowing that thousands of passionate developers from around the world are working to
secure and improve the engine of your site. If new features are added (and they will be) or a security
vulnerability is found, we’ll take care of patching and configuring the servers.

Filed Under: Dynamic Websites Tagged With: Dynamic websites, next generation dynamic websites

Having a Dynamic website will help you focus on your content

November 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Why do people visit a website?
More importantly, why do visitors return to some
sites again and again while forgetting about others?

The answer is simple: It’s the content.
Content – whether it’s thoughtful text, products for sale, photos,
videos or interactive graphics – drives traffic to websites.
Frequently updated content gets noticed by search engines.
It not only attracts first-time visitors but also repeat customers.

If you operate a successful website, you know that content is king.
If your website is struggling, look at its content.
Is it unique? Is it updated frequently? If not, why not?

Most of the time, static websites are the reason that fresh content never makes it online.
Such sites are often meticulously and beautifully designed. The problem is they’re a pain to update.
To add or update content, pages need to be recoded and sometimes even redesigned entirely.
It’s inefficient and expensive. Often, a webmaster must be hired just to handle updates
and make sure nothing gets damaged in the process.

There’s a better way to build a website. It’s a bit more work upfront, but it is worth
the effort once the site is operational and needs fresh content. The solution is to have a dynamic website.

The difference between static and dynamic websites
The content of a static website is hard-coded into each page.
When the content needs to be changed, the page code also needs to be changed.
With a dynamic website, the content lives in a database.
Each page is assembled by an application server according to the instructions coded into the page.

As mentioned earlier, dynamic sites require more work to build, but they’re
a lot easier to manage after they’re built.

Here’s why:

• Because the content lives in a database, anyone who needs to update the site only has to worry about
getting the new information into the database. This can be done via a simple Web form that can be submitted by anyone.
It involves pasting or linking the new content and checking a few boxes to specify placement or special treatment.
Click “Submit,” and you’re done.

• The actual Web pages delivered by the server don’t actually exist until a visitor requests them.
If a page’s instruction is to show the latest content in the database, whatever has been submitted will appear on top.
If the submitter of the new content specified that the content should get special treatment, the page
will know exactly how it should be delivered.

In the earliest days of the dynamic Web, smart site owners learned the skills to build sites using
databases such as SQL Server or MySQL and application languages like PHP or ASP.

Today, it’s a different – and far simpler – story.
Several open-source projects, such as Drupal, Joomla and Word Press, have developed
content-management systems that simplify the design and maintenance of dynamic websites.
They largely take care of the backend work, such as setting up the database and coding the pages.
These robust systems support a variety of themes, and new ones are being created all the time.
As a website owner, all you have to worry about is generating the content and selecting a few checkboxes to update the site.

Dynamic websites also can be powered by other data sources.
If, for example, you find an RSS feed that would be of interest to your visitors, all you have to do
is plug it into your site via an easy-to-use Web form. With a few clicks, your visitors will have instantly
updated news and content – and another reason to return to your website.

Dynamic websites still can be a lot of work to set up, but we can help you convert your old, static site
into one powered by one of these powerful website engines. Once the conversion is complete, all you
need to worry about is generating the best content to bring new and repeat visitors to your site.

Filed Under: Dynamic Websites Tagged With: Dynamic website, Dynamic websites