Content
Managed Sites
The Pros & Cons of Doing it Yourself
A content
managed site is a site designed in such a way that the site
owner can readily update the pages himself without contacting
the site designer. While this may sound like a great solution
for those who wish to put new content at their site on a regular
basis, it has some serious drawbacks that you should consider.
Site
Architecture & Search Engine Indexing
The site architecture determines whether or not your site can
be properly indexed by the search engines. Some content management
systems provide a site that can be indexed others do not.
A content
management system where the actual page content resides in a
database and is called up to fill in a template for the site,
does not provide easy indexing for the search engines. Typically,
this type of architecture offers only one set of title and meta
tags (on the template page), thus limiting site optimization.
Add to that, the content having to come from a database, and
you may well limit the number of search engines capable of reading
that content. Even Google admits to problems reading dynamic
content if not done properly.
A different
content management system is offered by Macromedia in their
Contribute™ product. Contribute works in conjunction with
sites designed using Macromedia Dreamweaver and allows the site
owner to make updates in the "live" area of the page
while protecting the overall page design (header, footer, main
navigation). Since this system offers static HTML pages, each
page has it's own set of title and meta tags for optimization.
Contribute is a reasonably priced product and, while it should
have a short learning curve, it still does not solve other problems
connected with site owners updating their site.
Professional
design, well written copy and other issues
No matter what content management system you select, there are
other issues that need to be addressed.
Colors:
Most Web designers will supply a client with a style sheet that
has set type to specific fonts and colors. This is to ensure
that the site continues to have a "professional" look.
Unfortunately, these specs can be overwritten by the site owner
using font tags. I'm sorry if I'm insulting anyone reading this,
but I am speaking from personal experience - some people are
color blind. The designer creates a custom palette for a site
and that palette includes colors for fonts, only to have a site
owner decide to introduce bright red (because of the holidays
- who cares if the site is deep burgundy or brown tones), or
orange (it's Fall). A well-designed, professional looking site
suddenly looks amateurish.
Fonts:
Bigger is better, right? Not necessarily. What may appear to
be a small font on your 1200 resolution monitor may be perfectly
readable, even a bit large on a 800 resolution monitor and type
that looks fine on your 1200 resolution monitor may be absolutely
huge on an 800 resolution monitor. Font size should be determined
by the average screen resolution of your market audience - not
your monitor. Font size increases should be discussed beforehand
with your designer who will then set them in the style sheet.
Also, along
with fonts is the belief that ALL CAPS CAPTURES THE READER'S
ATTENTION. First, all caps equates to screaming on the Internet,
so it should be reserved for short headings in small type face,
not entire sentences in a large font. In addition, any graphic
designer - print or Internet knows that sentences done in all
caps are difficult to read. On a computer monitor, it is exceptionally
difficult.
Graphics:
This is the one area that causes the most problems with a content
management system. If you are going to put up your own graphics,
you must have a graphics program than can properly size the
graphic and you should get some guidelines from your designer
about acceptable sizes. A 1600 pixel wide photo will not fit
on a web page with other graphics on a monitor set to show only
1200 pixels. In addition to graphic size, you need to consider
file size. A small file size does not necessarily equate to
a small photo. It would be well worth your while to learn about
preparing graphics for your site if you wish to maintain it
yourself. Incorrectly sized graphics can push navigation items
out of site, break apart some designs and, in general, just
ruin what was a professional looking site.
Deciding
Factors
Remembering that your Web site may be the first and only impression
a prospect has about your company, do you think that it is worth
taking the risk of messing with a good design? Is having instantly
updated content on your site more important than having a site
that looks good and reads well? Only you can answer these questions,
I can only point out the "issues" I've encountered
over the years.
Internet Marketing For Industry
Issue
6 Volume 11~November, 2004