These days there are so many factors to have a look at when it comes to a perfect web design solution for your business. From look and feel all the way to practicality, implementing and maintaining your website. This is where a CMS (Content Management System) is very useful to meet all these prerequisites.

A CMS web design solution will make anyone’s life easier whether you are a beginner or novice when it comes to creating a web site and maintaining it. And to make it even more sufficient these CMS platforms comes with loads of plugins, including plugins to better SEO and so many more features.

The two CMS platforms I myself use and specialise in is WordPress and Joomla. Below I will go in a little more detail on each of these CMS web design solutions, laying out there benefits and most important features.

Joomla

Joomla CMS is specialised for easy management of many different type of content in many different positions on a website whilst making it all look good and perform fast. When it comes to a blog it would be best to run Joomla with a WordPress installing on the same domain and sharing the same MySQL database.

Joomla Pros

Installation size on server is roughly 30MB and with working Template and site results to about 100MB
Friendly for all different users including Developers, Designers and Administrators
Huge resource based community for support and help with developing websites
Is growing rapidly and improving itself for over more than 3 years now

Joomla Cons

Still lacks when it comes to user friendliness for the novice to average computer user
Not best CMS when it comes to blogging
Does not work well on linux server not SuPHP enabled

WordPress

This is the best solution for bloggers and blogging websites and as you know Google loves blogs. With the latest WordPress 3 and a WordPress 3 template you also have multiple menu positions and layouts as Joomla and one can create a web site with a static home page and much more.

WordPress Pros

Very simple to use as it is right out of the box with no modifications
Best for blogging or sharing your experiences and thoughts in a sequential matter
Even the most non computer friendly users can get the hang of it quick and easy

WordPress Cons

Not developer friendly
Upgrades can bring more bugs and incompatibility issues with other plugins than fixes
For some reason the WordPress community complains the most

So in conclusion whether using WordPress or Joomla it depends what your specific needs are, but I would suggest using them both together for best long term ROI and ensuring great rankings in Google and other search engines.

These days there are so many factors to have a look at when it comes to a perfect web design solution for your business. From look and feel all the way to practicality, implementing and maintaining your website. This is where a CMS (Content Management System) is very useful to meet all these prerequisites.

A CMS web design solution will make anyone’s life easier whether you are a beginner or novice when it comes to creating a web site and maintaining it. And to make it even more sufficient these CMS platforms comes with loads of plugins, including plugins to better SEO and so many more features.

The two CMS platforms I myself use and specialise in is WordPress and Joomla. Below I will go in a little more detail on each of these CMS web design solutions, laying out there benefits and most important features.

Joomla

Joomla CMS is specialised for easy management of many different type of content in many different positions on a website whilst making it all look good and perform fast. When it comes to a blog it would be best to run Joomla with a WordPress installing on the same domain and sharing the same MySQL database.

Joomla Pros

Installation size on server is roughly 30MB and with working Template and site results to about 100MB
Friendly for all different users including Developers, Designers and Administrators
Huge resource based community for support and help with developing websites
Is growing rapidly and improving itself for over more than 3 years now

Joomla Cons

Still lacks when it comes to user friendliness for the novice to average computer user
Not best CMS when it comes to blogging
Does not work well on linux server not SuPHP enabled

WordPress

This is the best solution for bloggers and blogging websites and as you know Google loves blogs. With the latest WordPress 3 and a WordPress 3 template you also have multiple menu positions and layouts as Joomla and one can create a web site with a static home page and much more.

WordPress Pros

Very simple to use as it is right out of the box with no modifications
Best for blogging or sharing your experiences and thoughts in a sequential matter
Even the most non computer friendly users can get the hang of it quick and easy

WordPress Cons

Not developer friendly
Upgrades can bring more bugs and incompatibility issues with other plugins than fixes
For some reason the WordPress community complains the most

So in conclusion whether using WordPress or Joomla it depends what your specific needs are, but I would suggest using them both together for best long term ROI and ensuring great rankings in Google and other search engines.

When you have made the decision to make a website for your business there are many things to consider. Where do you begin to look and what should you be looking for and where do you get started? Now that the decision to use a professional designer is made how do you choose the best designer for your business? There are 7 key items to use in choosing your web design company.

1. Determine your needs. There are an infinite number of websites out on the web today. You will see some very basic and simple designs and others designs that could blow your mind. To find the right business web designer for your business you must determine what your need is. If you have a large budget there are many more options than if you have a smaller budget. Determine what functionality you want and what your budget will be.

2. Google It! Google “business web design,” check out the first few sites that come up. If a site pops up in the first three results on a search engine they obviously know what they are doing. Half of the battle of a good business web design is will is show up on the search engines. What good is a business web site if it cannot be found? Explore what these companies have to offer. Will they fit your needs?

3. Portfolios. When researching a business web design company online see if they have a portfolio. A portfolio will show past work that they have done. Browse through work that some design companies have done and see if you like it. Besides just the pages to look through, see if there is a comment section from past clients. If there are case studies that show past successes, it shows how a company related to its clients.

4. Call Them. If you have found a company you are interested in working with give them a call. Building a business web design requires a partnership between the business owner and the web designer. Make sure you will be able to work well with the business web designer you choose. There will have to be excellent communication in order to make your dream web site a reality.

5. Ownership. Ask your web design company about ownership. Will the design company own your site after development, or will you own your site? Many web development companies use proprietary systems and software that can not be transferred. It should be discussed that if a company designs your site will they have to host it or will you own the web site and all content, and be able to move it and establish web hosting elsewhere, any time you wish.

6. Administrative Capabilities. Find out what administrative rights you will have over your website. When you are exploring what business web designer to use, find out how you can make changes and updates to your site. Some designers will give you administrative rights over your site. This will give you the power and ability to more easily manage your web site. This would enable you to control the administration, maintenance, upkeep and ongoing modifications to your web site at all times. Some other web designers will need to make all changes to your site, no matter how small they are. This can result in fees and updates taking longer than you want.

7. Other Services. Ask your web designer what other services they offer. When you choose a site designer will they be able to update and add on to your site in the future. Even if you want a basic package up front, you may want to upgrade in the future. Find out if a designer offers add ons, such as photo galleries, content writing, blog modules, IM and chat capabilities, newsletters, E-Commerce or SEO packages.

This article explores the standard acronyms used in web design today and explains what each one means as well as the technology behind it. It will be a massive help to new starters in the field and could potentially help more experienced user gain a better grasp of the things they are working with.

The web is full of scary technologies but getting a grip on the basic ones will make life a lot easier. As with everything that is connected with computers there are a lot of scary acronyms but we will be taking a look at a few of them and hopefully giving you a boost to your general knowledge.

W3C: The W3C are the World Wide Web Consortium and their goal is to “lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth and stability”. This basically means they try their best to make sure internet technologies actually work and that everyone plays nice out there.

HTML: The most common acronym you will come across in web design is HTML. It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. It is now overseen W3C.

HTML is essentially a simplifies programming language that helps computers (or more specifically, browsers) to understand text and what to do with it. It uses a standardised set of “tags” that surround some text to “mark it up” for a certain formatting. An example would be the tag strong which defines the surrounded text as important and generally emboldens the text.

By combining different sets of tags as well as editing their attributes you can soon open the door to thousand of possibilities for just simple text content.

XHTML: This stands for eXtended Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the natural progression from standard HTML and is a big part of the future for the web. It is part of the W3C project “The Semantic Web” and is part of an idea to get several new web technologies understood by browsers and humans and open new doors for what is possible on the internet.

DHTML: Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language is variation on standard HMTL. It involves a combination of HTML and special scripts (executed on the clients side) to create interactive effects or animation. DHTML also commonly uses CSS to help it define styles.

In today’s climate DHTML is most commonly associated with JavaScript as many client based browsers and OS support it.

CSS: As part of the evolution of the web HTML and XHTML are no longer truly used to fully decide the full visual style of a web page, only define its content and how it fits in to a style. To handle the presentation of a site the W3C worked to help create CSS or Cascading Style Sheets.

CSS has many advantages including specifying a layout for all mediums (such as browser, printer and TV) and helps to reduce site loading time and complex page by allow a single file to control every web page on a site.

Is the bounce rate of your website very high? The bounce rate measures the percentage of total visitors that leave your site without visiting another page. If the bounce rate of your site is high, this means that your site is not sticky enough to make visitors stay longer and explore other pages.

Now, let me share with you 4 secrets to reduce your site bounce rate and make visitors stay longer:

1. The site navigation menu must be easy to use. You may find it extremely easy to navigate through every page of your site because you are the one who builds it. But for first time visitors, they may not find it easy. And when they have difficulty navigating through your site, they will leave and visit other websites. You should label your navigation buttons clearly. Make sure that visitors know where each menu button leads to. One way is to use common naming conventions.

2. Solid and updated content. Content is king. You site will not attract and retain visitors if it does not have valuable and updated information. So make it a point to update your site regularly. You can add a corporate blog to your site and make new blog post every day. If not, you can add articles that are related to your industry onto your site once every week. With solid content, visitors will explore your site more often and even pass your website link around to share with others.

3. There should be call-to-action statements to entice people to explore other pages of your site. You cannot expect visitors to explore your site automatically. Sometimes, they need a gentle reminder. You can include call-to-action statements on your home page to entice people to explore other pages. For example, if your website is about web design services, you can place a sentence like this on the home page: “Take a look at our web design portfolio by clicking here.” This will prompt them to take action and click on the link to explore your site.

4. If your website contains lots of content, make sure that you provide a search function. The search function should easily be found on every page of your site. When a visitor cannot find your search function quickly, he or she may get impatient and leave. So always make sure that you place the search function at a prominent place on your website.