My definition of a CMS (Content Management System) consists of the following attributes:

• Standard format design
• To promote Services
• To update readers on information regularly
• Used for communication
• Highly flexible

It is more than likely you would choose this package if you wanted to promote your services to your potential online customers, as well as keeping an audience informed of news.. It is an excellent means of marketing via Yellow Pages and other online Search engines. You would choose this package to promote services via text, images, video, sound, animation… As well as keeping your website up to date and on demand.

Below, you will find a video to help explain the concepts of CMS, that we will build into your website.

 

What do I get for my money?

I use Joomla Open Source Software as the backbone for our CMS Websites. The features included as part of Joomla include:

• Joomla has a registration system that allows users to configure personal options. There are nine user groups with various types of permissions on what users are allowed to access, edit, publish and administrate
• The Media Manager is the tool for easily managing media files or folders and you can configure the MIME type settings to handle any type of file. The Media Manager is integrated into the Article Editor tool so you can grab images and other files at any time
• The Contact Manager helps your users to find the right person and their contact information. It also supports multiple contact forms going to specific individuals as well as groups
• If you want to find out more about your users, it’s easy to create polls with multiple options
• Help navigate users to most popular search items and provide the admin with search statistics
• Providing link resources for site users is simple and you can sort them into categories, even count every click
• Joomla’s simplified three-tiered system of articles makes organizing your content a snap. You can organize your content any way you want and not necessarily how it will be on your website. Your users can rate articles, e-mail them to a friend, or automatically save a PDF. Administrators can archive content for safekeeping, hiding it from site visitors
• On public websites, built-in e-mail cloaking protects email addresses from spambots
• Creating content is simple with the WYSIWYG editor, giving even novice users the ability to combine text, images in an attractive way. Once you’ve created your articles, there are a number of pre-installed modules to show the most popular articles, latest new items, newsflashes, related articles, and more
• With Joomla, it’s easy to syndicate your site content, allowing your users to subscribe to new content in their favorite RSS reader. It’s equally easy to integrate RSS feeds from other sources and aggregate them all on your site
• The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus and menu items as you need. You can structure your menu hierarchy (and nested menu items) completely independent of your content structure. Put one menu in multiple places and in any style you want; use rollovers, dropdown, flyouts and just about any other navigation system you can think of. Also automatic breadcrumbs are generated to help navigate your site users

Design Process

The first goal to achieve at this stage is to create a design with visual appeal. If your site doesn’t look good, the chances are it is not reaching its sales potential. For most website designers, once they have produced an appealing design their job is done. However, I invest just as much time in organising the content so that it may deliver everything it demands from your audience. Guides that we keep in place are as follows:

• To clearly show what your company has to offer (Aims/Services)
• Achieving a good priority listing of products/services, so which ever benefits you most is displayed first
• Site navigation needs to be crystal clear
• Your contact details for clients must be clearly marked
• Points of sales need to be simplistic and intuitive
• Avoid cluttering the site as this will put many people off from first impressions
• Content should be clear to the reader

They are very simple guidelines, however if implemented correctly, can make or break you from your competitors. There are always exceptions to this rule, for example portfolio or hobby websites.

Once I have created a template, which you are happy with, I will use it as a backbone for the rest of the site… However, I will make minor adjustments to sub-pages as to stop the website from boring the client to easily.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Pretty much every web development company out there offers search engine optimisation (SEO). The main difference, which makes Wolf Web Design stand out from the rest is that I will monitor your website on google to make sure your website is not slipping down the pages. Every time I learn something new, or a new algorithm is put in place, I will submit the adjustments.

Search engines are constantly evolving with the aim of providing higher quality and more relevant search results.

 

Consultations

It is extremely important to find out what my clients need. The better I can understand your goals, the more likely I am to end up thinking on the same wave-length in order to bat ideas to one another, rather than going cold. We will initially consult online or on-site in order to answer some of the following questions and go through any potential templates:

• Explain the process
• Explain the benefits of one package over another
• Decide on the type of look your after
• Work on how many pages you will require
• Decide what sort of images will do best
• Take on board what facilities you may have to cater for
• Set you some homework with regards to the content you wish to have