Content Management: Keeping Things Fresh

So you have a bright and shiny new website, the launch went well, people have complimented you, and everyone is excited. What happens next? Do you just let it sit there for the next couple of years? In that case, you shouldn't wonder if your visitor statistics are disappointing, the search engine ranking goes from poor to non existing, and the site generally doesn't do much for you.

The importance of regular updates cannot be stressed enough. There are the obvious reasons: Information, prices, services, timetables will go out of date. It is frustrating for a client to look up information on the site, then find, when they call you or visit your store, that the model they are after has gone out of production last year, or the class or event they were coming for isn't actually taking place. Do you think it promotes trust in your business if it presents information which has not been updated for the last three years?

The other good reason is that search engines favour fresh content. The principle behind search rankings is, simply put, that the engine tries to find the content which is most likely to be relevant to the person doing the search. The four main factors which play into this are: keyword match, popularity of the page (i.e. the number of previous visitors), number (and reputation) of sites linking to the page, and how recent the content is. So updating your pages regularly already takes care of one quarter of your search engine optimization!

This is one reason for the popularity of blogs: blogging sites allow users to input text and other content themselves, with no need for any web design or programming knowledge. Blogs are, by definition, frequently updated - and it turned out that search engines really liked this! Many people even choose to only set up a blog, not an entire website with their own domain. For some businesses this makes perfect sense - especially if you're only just putting your feelers out in the online realm. Most blogging sites are free to use: some of the most well known are Blogspot (which is hosting this blog), LiveJournal, and more recently, WordPress.

Wordpress even offers the ability to sign up for your own domain name, and a few other features which allow you to set up an easy to manage site yourself. These services are available for a monthly fee. Again, this can be a good solution for a first web site - but as with all out-of-the-box solutions, there are limitations to how well you can adapt this system to your own requirements.

Easy to use online content management systems are quickly becoming the standard for personal websites. They are often built using one of the available content management packages as a backbone - Drupal is one such package, which is popular with website developers. These packages offer a wide range of advanced interactive features: blogs, forums, image galleries, shopping cart solutions, password protected areas, you name them. The capabilities and adaptability of such a system go well beyond a humble Wordpress site - but it still is limited in some ways, particularly in the ways you can lay out and structure your site.

My personal preference is to create my own content management systems for my sites. The last two sites I have built - www.margarethiley.com and www.wellingtonyogacentre.co.nz - are both fairly small sites, and using a massive online content management system requiring hours and hours of setup or programming, seemed like overkill. Instead, I choose to work with text files, which can be updated by the user in one of the common word processing programmes, without the need for special web authoring software, or being fluent in html. This does require a certain level of feeling comfortable with computers, and a willingness to familiarize yourself with setting up an FTP connection, folder structures, and a minimal amount of html tags. But it helps to keep the cost down - in both cases, adding an online administration area would have doubled the work, and hence the price.

The site I am currently working on is a gallery site for a photographer. Here, one of the main requirements is that the client can easily add new images, and the associated information. This site will have a full featured online content management system - fully flexible, and adapted to this specific client's needs.

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net

Success Stories

It seems that in my eagerness to spread online knowledge, and promote other people's sites, I have completely failed clap myself on the shoulder and pass on the fantastic feedback I got from a recent client, Margaret Hiley (I've introduced her site in a previous blog post). So here is what she said:

"When I set up my translation and proofreading business, I knew that having a professional-looking website was a must. However, I also wanted it to stand out from the crowd and have a quirky, creative feel to it that would attract my clients, many of whom work in the creative industries themselves.

Astrid has created exactly the kind of website I was hoping for. In fact, she obviously realised exactly what I wanted right from our initial consultation, as the first draft she provided me was so fantastic we decided to go ahead with it! Astrid also provided me with valuable feedback on what to include on the site, and kept me up to date on her work throughout the entire design process, so I felt fully included in the creation of the site.

The website was finished to deadline, and Astrid even gave it a first publicity push through her own blog and website. If you want a professional, individualised and creative web design service (and who wouldn't!), I wholeheartedly recommend Asni Multimedia!"

***

"Online Promotion for Everyone" kicks off again at the Featherston Community Centre on April 12, through to May 17 - six evening classes, Tuesday nights from 7.30 to 8.30 pm. The classes need to be booked and paid for in advance. The price per class is $ 15 for any individual class, or $ 72 for all six classes - this amounts to $ 12 per class. Please contact me to book your place! The maximum number of participants is 12, on a first come, first served basis.

The course will cover the following topics:

12 April 2011: Planning your website — When planning an online presence, ask yourself: who are my visitors, and what do I want them to do? We will draw up a site map and think about how visitors should navigate through a website. We will also discuss alternative options, such as using a blog, Facebook page, or other online service as your main web presence.

19 April 2011: Internet: how does it work — This session will explain some of the basic technologies used on the web. We will look at some samples of static and dynamic websites built with HTML & CSS, PHP, and Flash. This knowledge will be very helpful when communicating with your web designer. We will also look at security considerations, and what to watch out for when choosing a web hosting service.

26 April 2011: How to be found — SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is only one way to promote your site. Understanding the logic of search engines and optimizing your web presence so it comes up on top in search results is important., but we will also look at other ways to drive traffic to your site: the use of social media, email, offline promotion, and paid advertising such as Google Adwords.

3 May 2011: Content management — There is nothing worse than a website which is hopelessly out of date. This session will introduce ways to keep your site fresh, and interact with your visitors: Content Management Systems which enable advanced interaction, as well as more low key options such as regular news updates and blogs, RSS feeds, and feedback forms.

10 May 2011: Selling things online — E–commerce presents the chance to sell your products to a potentially worldwide market, quite literally from your bedroom. This session will look into some of the available options for trading on the internet: auction sites (Trademe, Ebay), online marketplaces dedicated to a particular kind of goods (e.g. Etsy), using Paypal to process payments, or setting up your very own online shop.

17 May 2011: Getting fancy: Multimedia on the internet — With the increased availability of fast broadband internet connections, videos, podcasts, and other multimedia content on the internet continues to be on the rise. Youtube, anyone? This session will take a look into the future, and introduce some creative options to share your content, which are available even on a modest budget.

***

Speaking of online promotion, here is a strange thing that happened recently in the weird and wonderful realm which is cyberspace. Some little while ago I posted a drawing of The King of Elfland with the face of David Tennant (he of Doctor Who fame) on my Facebook profile, with a comment along the lines of "wouldn't this face make a great elf king face". As indeed, there are persistent rumours flying around of David Tennant's possible involvement in the Hobbit movie, and I am a great advocate of him being cast as King Thranduil. I mean, David Tennant in a blonde Legolas wig? Who could resist.

A couple of weeks ago, it came to my attention that IMDb now semi-officially lists "The Hobbit" as one of David Tennant's upcoming movie projects ("rumored", it says) – and the part he is supposed to be cast in is King Thranduil ("rumored", it says – mind you, most of the other possible parts are already very officially taken). Well hurray I thought, just what I've always been saying – but I wonder how much substance there is to that rumour. It turned out that there was an article posted on TORN on 11 January, citing an article from Digitalspy.com, to the effect that there are persistent rumours of a possible involvement of David Tennant in the Hobbit movie, and "he has been linked to the part of Thranduil".

Not to sound paranoid-megalomaniac or anything, but it did seem like a bit of a weird coincidence. I posted that image, and my suggestion that David Tennant has a great Thranduil face, on Facebook on 8 January. The people on my friend list include Michael Regina of TORN, and a few others prominently involved in the fan community, or indeed the making of the movies themselves. Serendipity, or a butterfly fluttering its wings? I guess we'll never know for sure, but I have begun to think that at $12 per class, my online promotion tuition is *REALLY GOOD VALUE*. :D

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net

Ave Christchurch

I've made a new year's resolution to stick to a stricter schedule with this blog in the future, and that means an entry is due today - but at the moment my thoughts, and I am sure everyone else's in New Zealand, go out to the people in Christchurch.

Gone are the days when most of us would be blissfully ignorant of the day's events until after dinner, when it was time to watch the tv news. The first I heard about the earthquake was via a friend on Facebook, about an hour after it struck. He'd been following the news, and he was posting links as the news came in.

Within the space of perhaps another hour, pretty much everyone I know on Facebook who lives in New Zealand - and quite a few people abroad - were aware of the disaster that had struck, and had posted something, thoughts, good vibes, or hard news.

More importantly, messages were being passed on - such as Vodaphone's nationwide appeal to please stay off the mobile networks, so that emergency calls could get through. And not just to organize help and support - at the time, there were people trapped under rubble, and some of them had phones on them. A good priority.

I then jumped on Twitter, and punched "Christchurch earthquake" in the search field. The tweets I found included links to a people finder tool set up by Google at short notice: http://christchurch-2011.person-finder.appspot.com/#chch%20#eqnz - incidentally, very much in the spirit of keeping worried friends and relatives off the mobile networks. The count of records they are tracking has gone up from 1600 approximately an hour ago, to 2500 at the time I am writing this paraqraph, to 3400 by the time I am finished with this blog post.

The University of Colorado, of all places, chimed in with a crowd-sourced map of earthquake damage, enabling people to check which parts of town were the most affected, and to post their own observations: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/TtT_eqnz_map_byEvent.html - well, at least if they can work out how it works.

I would like to point out that this has been by no means an in-depth search: the Facebook messages came to my attention in the course of my habitual casual internet browsing while doing work on my computer, and looking up the links on the Twitter feed took all of five minutes. ‎

The message Vodaphone has been posting, to request people to stay off the mobile networks, read like this: "Vodafone is requesting no non-essential calls across the whole country - pass it on".

"Pass it on" - three magic words. All this cutting edge modern technology, and it's back to the oldest news spreading mechanism in the world: One person who tells some others, who tell some others, who tell some others. And it's still by far the fastest and most efficient way to spread a piece of news.

I remember well the time, 1985, the big earthquake in Mexico City. My father had been posted on a work stint to Queretaro, ca 200 km north of Mexico City. I remember the date so well, because it was the very week I was writing my final examinations to finish high school. The tv news, in their usual sensationalist way, made it look like not just Mexico City, but half the country was affected, but without being very precise about what exactly where exactly. Phone lines were down due to the damage, and for a week we couldn't get through. There was an information phone number broadcast on the tv news - but when that wasn't overloaded, the info they could give you wasn't very helpful. Eventually, my father made one of his routine calls home. It had never occurred to him that we might be worried sick, because in Queretaro, they'd hardly felt the quake at all.

I remember well the time, September 2001. I was two weeks into a six week internship at ZDF, one of the two public tv stations in Germany. The editorial staff of the programme I was working on was assembled for their weekly meeting, when one of our colleagues burst in to say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. "Stupid sports plane accident" was the first thought ... then we stood and watched, in real time, as the Twin Towers collapsed and Manhattan disappeared under a thick cloud of dust, leaving everyone in suspense, throughout that whole long afternoon, just how much worse was to come. I remember, most vividly, taking the subway train home that evening, looking at the faces of my fellow passengers and thinking "They don't know yet". Thinking, they'll go home and have dinner and switch on the tv news, and find out that someone has just declared war on the United States of America, and we don't even know who it is.

Though that wasn't quite doing the tv news justice. They were perfectly sure who it was, perhaps an hour after the first White House spokesperson had tentatively mentioned the possibility of Al Qaeda being behind the attack, and well before there had been the remotest chance for anyone to find any actual evidence, let alone analyze it. That I also remember very well, and this is when I stopped watching tv news.

These days, I get my news on the internet. And by that I don't mean online media channels or magazines, or even political blogs. Mostly, I rely on Facebook. If something is so important and earth-shattering that I need to know about it, someone in my online network will be talking about it. Then is the time to do a Google search or jump on Twitter, to find more information. Or I might know someone who lives close by, and might have some more first hand information than what trickles down through the traditional mass media.

What is the point in knowing how many people have died gruesome deaths in the latest war or plane crash or natural disaster, if there is nothing you can do to influence the situation? That's just sensationalist voyeurism and an unhealthy fascination with the gruesome, if you as me. Not to mention a good livelihood for a whole professional caste of media people.

Most of us, most of the time, think of the internet mainly as a tool to promote ourselves - our businesses, our professional expertise, our artwork and music, our ideas and worldview, or even just how cool we look with that new haircut, or what a great time we had on that last holiday. But at times like these, it becomes apparent that the internet can be far more than that.

Passing on information, Tweeter to Tweeter and Facebook friend to Facebook friend, about where to find information about family and friends in an earthquake zone, or where to direct yourself for food and shelter, or finding beds for passengers stuck in an airport unable to travel on to their intended destination, or staying off the mobile networks so that people trapped under rubble can get through with their calls - that on the other hand, might quite literally save lives.

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net

New Year, New Projects

A Happy New Year to all my cherished readers! I hope 2011 finds you all happy and healthy, and your businesses going the way you want them to go.

I am fortunate to be able to put a tick on all three points. After a nice long summer break - during which there was no blog! - I am now back in the office and ready to tackle whatever the new year may throw at me.

So far, it's been all good. I had a nice long break - not so much lazing in the sun, though there was a bit of that as well, but mostly working on a few things whose benefit is likely to be more long-term than immediate.

I have had time to work on improving my programming skills, both in PHP - which I have come to LOVE - and in Flash Actionscript. I am now able to offer customized content management systems even for my smaller sites, and already have the first two clients queueing up for it.

I have also been able to do some work on my own web page - music streaming is now available, though there are still a couple of issues with the new Flash play buttons: so far, you need to manually stop the previous track before you listen to a new one, otherwise there will be a cacophony of simultaneous tunes. This is obviously no good, and I am working on the issue. I think even so, it is a lot more elegant than it was before! Bearing in mind that this is a work in progress, you are welcome to have a look and a listen here.

This month, there has been a steady flow of smaller projects - mainly updates and site improvements for previous clients. It looks like once someone has got a site, they want more! I assume this means that their sites are really working for my clients.

One interesting new project I am involved in is more consultation than design work: I have been setting up a Facebook page for 50 plus Travel - a business based in Upper Hutt which offers escorted tours to Russia, Central Europe, the Ukraine, Vietnam and China for singles and couples of the older generation. Anna Jones, the business owner, emigrated to New Zealand from Russia half a lifetime ago, and I can't think of a more fun, or expert person to organize your travel and introduce you to the local culture. Do follow her on Facebook if you want to find out more!

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net

To Facebook, or not to Facebook ...

... Actually, that is not really the question. Whatever else one may think of it, Facebook is, hands down, one of the most efficient online tools for people who run small businesses or work as independent professionals. Its ability to to automatically find and suggest contacts on the basis of shared friends, shared interests, or a shared work history, is incredibly useful especially for those who are operating in a niche market, or a particular local environment.

There are two different types of profiles one can set up on Facebook. The personal profile is intended for private, personal interactions. Access to it is restricted to those people who are on your "friend" list. Users can send friend requests to another user, and these need to be individually, and mutually approved. As per Facebook rules, personal profiles are required to be registered under your real name - though this is a rule that gets bent quite a bit. I admit that I myself have registered two profiles, one under my real name, which I have set to private, and strictly limited to people I actually know in real life, or from other online forums. My other profile is registered under my stage name, and this has turned out really useful for making contact lots and lots of other harpists. My sheet music sales have gone up noticeably since I started posting on Facebook!

Ideally, this second Facebook profile should have been a "page" - but I admit that when I first joined Facebook, it took me a little while to get my head around how to best set it up, and by that time my second profile had already accumulated a sizable friend list! I do have a page as well, but have found that people are more likely to send me friend requests to my personal profile. Perhaps it feels less one sided? Or perhaps it is simply a snowball effect. There are several other musicians on that friends list who also use their stage name on their profile, so I don't feel too bad about it. Personally I think it should be a person's choice if they want to share their real name on the internet, particularly given the recurring issues about Facebook privacy policies.

The other option is to set up a Facebook "page". These are specifically intended for promoting your business or service, art, music, or personal or public interest. There are "Community pages", which can be created by anyone, and "Official pages", which may only be created by an official representative of the business, organization or person in question. Official pages come in three different flavours: "local business", "brand, product or organization", and "artist, band or public figure". It is necessary to register a personal profile first, which is used to administer the page.

Unlike personal profiles, pages can usually be seen by anyone browsing the internet - you need not be logged in to Facebook to access it (though this depends on the privacy settings you choose). They are also more one-sided than profiles: people can decide to "like" a page, which means that anything posted on the page will appear in their news stream. This does not require approval from the owner of the page. Also, unlike becoming "friends" with someone, the things that the users who have subscribed to your page post on their profiles, will not appear in your news stream! If you have ever managed a profile with more than a couple of hundred users - each of whom may be promoting their own pet cause or interest - you will instantly grasp the advantage of this. ;)

Two other useful features on Facebook deserve at least a short mention: "Events" can be created either on your official page or your personal profile. Creating an event allows you to send invitations to the people on your friends list, and to update them with posts on the events page. People can also respond to say they are attending, or not attending. A very economical way to inform and update your core audience about anything from opening and launches, to special offers or new websites.

"Groups" are in some ways similar to community pages, and can be used to interact with other people who share a common hobby or interest. If your business operates in a niche market, this may be a good way to get the attention of people who may be interested in your service or product! However, bear in mind that groups are not primarily intended for self promotion - it really is all about the interaction, on Facebook.

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net

Introducing: www.margarethiley.com

This month has been mostly busy with proper paid web design work, which is just how it should be. I've already introduced the Wellington Yoga Centre website in my latest - it is now properly online and live, and can be admired here: www.wellingtonyogacentre.co.nz

Next up was a business website for a client in the UK, Margaret Hiley. She is the sister of a fellow budding illustrator friend I met online, and a specialist on Tolkien and music! A little while ago she asked me if she might cite from my Travels in Middle-earth CD booklet for a review she was writing, and things sort of developed from there. Incidentally, her father is a professor of Musicology, and the author of a big fat scholarly study and reference on Medieval Plainchant, which has been gracing my bookshelf long before I ever met either of his daughters. Such is the smallness of the planet.

Margaret is a professional academic and keen folk musician, and - having grown up bilingual - has recently set up a business offering English/German translation, editing and proofreading services for academics, writers, and the cultural and creative industries. Her areas of specialist expertise include fantasy and science fiction literature, music and musicology, myth and mythology, media studies, and breweries … so we do have quite a few interests in common!

This site has been a real pleasure to work on - not least because I could play with the beautiful cartoons created by Margaret's sister Catherine, an illustrator and print maker currently residing in Edinburgh.

I am really pleased with the look of this site, and even more pleased with some of the behind-the-scenes functionality, which is based on some smart and economical application of PHP scripts: for instance the "testimonials" page, where new referrals can easily be added by uploading a text file to the appropriate folder on the web server. This task is easy to do even for the not so computer initiated, and it is a much more simple and streamlined solution than setting up a complex content management system requiring a database.

Have a look at my latest brand spanking new website! Proudly introducing: www.margarethiley.com

Some feedback from the client: "Well, what can I say - I love it!!! Very clever what you have done with the watercolour image - thanks!" :: "I can't wait till the site is up and everyone can see how great it looks!"

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net

Introducing: www.wellingtonyogacentre.co.nz

The other day when I was having my exhibition at Thistle Hall, I got into a chat with one of the visitors, who asked me about my web design work. She told me she was having a bit of grief with her website. Apparently she had gotten a young person who had offered to do the job for very cheap, for the sake of the experience (really, *very* cheap - in fact, on hearing the price, it was quite apparent to me that this poor person probably did not know what she or he were doing, though unfortunately, I am also aware that quite a few potential clients seem to actually expect that they can get a decent site built for that amount of money) - but she was now getting the impression that this person was not really up to the job.

When I looked up the site, it was quite apparent that indeed, whoever had set up those pages, had not the first clue how to write a proper CSS layout. The paragraph text was floating awkwardly next to the main navigation menu in a way that was clearly not intentional. There were no proper page margins, one link in the main navigation menu was not functional, and what layout elements there were, were plain to say the least, and somewhat oddly proportioned. The logo and existing branding elements that were available had not been integrated at all, apart from the general colour scheme.

The owner of the site was understandably concerned that this would not give a good impression of her business - but she had also noticed that the website was definitely doing the trick, in that she had already been getting some enquiries through the site. She was quite anxious to get it fixed up and looking professional as soon as possible.

At first I thought this would be a matter of simply turning what existing design there was into proper HTML and CSS, but as we got talking, she decided to invest in a proper redesign of the site. The result went online earlier this week: www.wellingtonyogacentre.co.nz

The main thing I concentrated on was to create a simple, calm and functional design with pleasing proportions and a clear structure, and on making the site look good regardless what screen size, resoluation or browser is being used. I was fortunate to be able to base this design on the excellent logo and branding done by another design studio - I really do love the colour scheme they came up with, and decided to stick with it throughout, apart from introducing a couple of matching shades for the graphics on the home page.

The "rising sun" logo gives a calm yet structured background for most of the pages, and works well in that it does not distract from the main content and images. For the home page, however, it did seem a bit dull, so I introduced the yoga silhouettes in their concentric circles. After a bit of initial resistance (not uncommon when one sees something that is a bit different from what was expected for the first time), my client ended up loving them.

In terms of functionality, it was important to enable my client to create news announcements on the home page, and to be able to update the timetable. To this end, I set up a couple of PHP includes which can be edited without having to actually change the code of the respective pages. It does require an understanding of simple HTML, and an ability to upload pages via FTP, but the site owner assured me that she was confident to be able to learn those skills. It is a far more simple and streamlined - not to mention less pricey - solution than setting up a full database integrated content management system for what are, in effect, only a couple of items that need to be regularly updated.

As a bit of an extra, I also created a PHP script that builds the image gallery on the gallery page, which will make it easy for the site owner to upload additional images without having to change the page code at all.

Here is what my client said: "It looks really terrific, Astrid (i'm not just saying that)" -- "The site is really good, thanks Astrid" -- "It is a lovely site Astrid. Do you want to make up a flier for me now??"

Mission accomplished. :D

Asni: Multimedia Art & Design:: http://webdesign.asni.net :: http://www.asni.net