Updating your Website – The options

I read a piece about running your own website. You can read it here

I was surprised to see this kind of reporting on a reputable site. I couldn\’t post a comment on it, so I thought I would blog my response here.

The key theme through the piece is the assertion that :

People hate being held to ransom, but that\’s what you do when you give control of your site to a web designer.

Now, that is a comment that I find a bit offensive.

The writer (who is unnamed) then goes on to talk about the benefits of using a content management system (CMS) to manage your website\’s content.

CMS systems are great and they work for a lot of people, but when I engage a new client we talk about updating their website.

Contrary to the above articles assertion, not all business owners want to make the changes themselves. Not all of them have the know how, inclination or time to learn and then keep making changes so the learning is not lost.

From experience, for small businesses, updating their website is low on their list of things to do.

I have clients that when I first meet them, want to make changes weekly; special, newsletters etc. But when it comes down to it, they mostly don\’t get time.

However, to provide them with the options they need to manage their website, I offer three choices

  • Content Management System – for those who have a large amount of information to manage, with categories and the like
  • Adobe Contribute –  a great piece of software you can install on your PC or Mac and update (plus add new pages) based on the template we have made
  • Hold them to Ransom 🙂  – do changes for you as and when you need them.

Other options that are more recent are things like Twitter, Facebook and Blogs

While reading the article, I got the sense that the writer had a bad experience and was getting it out of their system.

With quotes such as:

I hate being held to ransom. And I\’m sure you do, too

and

I\’ve invested hundreds of hours researching various CMS\’s

So the end result of the these hundreds of hours of research, the writer decides on a product called GoodBarry (I\’ve never heard of it).

Now since he has spent so much time researching it, and his complaints about free CMS systems like Joomla having a steep learning curve, he then admits to:

After a couple of months tinkering in the back end of GoodBarry, I\’ve been fairly impressed. But the proof will be in the pudding when one of my businesses goes live with it later this month. So do I recommend it? It\’s too early to say. Ask me in a few weeks.

So at the end of it all, he has spent hundreds of hours, then three months setting it up and it still isnt live!

He doesnt even know if it works for his business.

I personally don\’t know if a business owner can spend that amount of time (read money) setting something up on the say so of someone who hasn\’t even proven the product works in their live environment.

My advice is to ask people, other businesses, web designers to get the best you can for your money.

Be honest when a designer asks you about you needs for updating the site. Any good designer will be able to provide a solution that will help you achieve your business goals.

What are you thought about updating? What do you prefer?