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Tek Tip Topic: Websites - the basics

Are you are about to venture into the World Wide Web with your website? Do you know what you want from your new website? Have you bookmarked or tagged some favourite sites that look like something you want? Do you have a colour scheme and logo you want to use?

If you answered yes to the first one you best get on with answering yes to the rest before you go to your carefully selected web developer. Even if all you want is some sort of three page flyer that will allow visitors to know who you are, what you offer, and your basic contact details you will help your developer if you have the sort of information mentioned.

You also need to know in advance: will the content of your site be changing regularly? Will you need to be able to update the content yourself? Or do you want your website developers to do the updating for you? If you want to manage the content yourself you better mention this to your site developer at the get-go.

There are a number of content management systems (CMS's) out there - and more on the way I'm sure - that allow the non-geek to easily control the content of their sites. One I like is Joomla! and not just because it's free. Another free CMS that is gaining great popularity is Wordpress which is proving very helpful for businesses that regulary blog.

The degree of popularity a CMS has is relative to the level of support you can find for it and, in turn, then generates a high level of experienced developers for the given CMS. CMS's like Joomla! let the every day non-web expert log in as an administrator to the back-end of their website and edit their webpage content without needing to know HTML, PHP, or any other acronyms. The other beauty of these CMS's is they are able to grow without having to start your site again from scratch. A big business will need their own servers with a slew of staff just to manage their website content but a good CMS can give you a professional big business look without the entourage.