Tag Archives: cms

Four Design Tips For Updating Content on Your Website

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If you’ve been assigned the ongoing task of maintaining a website for your company, particularly if you are using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, here are a few tips that will help you keep the site looking professional.

1. Don’t Treat Your Website Like A Display Ad
Unlike a print ad, a website does not need to grab people’s attention. Users visit a website on purpose. They aren’t trying to read the comics, watch tv, or listen to music, so you don’t need flashing images or noise to draw their attention away from something else. Your website should make the visitor feel comfortable enough to stay a while.

When a user accesses your website, they want to find the information they are looking for quickly. If they begin to feel frustrated, if the site is too complicated or navigation is unclear, they’ll move on. Readability and usability are vitally important.

2. Follow the Design
A designer considers each site element for readability and success at conveying a defined message. Size, font, style, weight, color, and alignment are defined for heading, subhead, body copy, captions, links and more.

When it ‘s time for you to add new content, look at the styles that have been assigned to the different elements. Stick to those rules. Your goal is not to make the new copy jump out at the reader. In fact adding new content that doesn’t follow the overall structure looks less professional and can reflect poorly on your company.

3. Avoid All Caps
Type, above all else, must be readable. Ascenders and descenders of upper and lower case letters help our eyes to identify words. Using all capital letters makes that distinction difficult and visitors to your site are less likely to read all the information you so purposefully prepared.

4. Respond To Comments
Comments are a great way to help gauge the effectiveness of your online efforts. Demonstrate your appreciation to those visitors who left comments by responding to each one individually, answering their questions and thanking them for their business. Prompt attention to all comments is a real-life illustration of your commitment to customer service.

Five Reasons Why Website Updates Are Important

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A website is a great tool. However, even once you have your site up and running, the job is not complete.  Unlike every other form of advertising, websites are never finished. Done right, a website is a work in progress, continually being updated and improved. The websites that work best, the ones that deliver the best results, are constantly being tweaked.

1. New Beats Old
Search engines rank websites with new content higher than websites with old content. Updates should be done on a regular basis, monthly or even weekly.

2. More Frequent Indexing
Search engines send out bots to index web pages. If the bot finds your site hasn’t been updated in a month, another bot may not be sent again for two months. If it still hasn’t been updated, it may wait three months. Regular updates mean your site gets indexed more often and the your site’s contents will be searchable.

3. They Will Come
Posting new content on your website gives customers a reason to return. This can enhance your relationship with them and they may be more likely to use your services more often.

4. Know What They Want
By reviewing your web stats, you’ll learn what information your users find most appealing and where they are coming from. This will help you determine a direction for new content that can draw even more visitors.

5. Ch-ch-ch-changes
Search engines are constantly changing the way they index sites. The factors one directory considers important today may change dramatically tomorrow and every directory is different. Getting the most from your website requires on-going supervision and maintenance.

Maintaining a small website doesn’t require a huge chunk of time, it can take as little as a few hours a month. Outsourcing this task can be a good choice for those who don’t have time to do it themselves. If you’re interested in having us maintain your website, please call 518.392.0846 or email suzanne@trevellyan.biz.

Client Feature: Rebecca McBride

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Rebecca McBride found herself in an all-too-common situation. As a writer, editor, and researcher located in Old Chatham, her website was looking dated.

Rebecca came to us with two main goals – to update the look of her site, and to integrate a content management system (CMS) that would allow her to make her own changes. Rebecca’s husband created his website on WordPress and she was interested in going that route too.

WordPress is a free, web-based CMS. In its most basic application, users select a theme from the WordPress library and input their content to create a simple website. WordPress was originally conceived as blogging software, but customizable options now make it full-featured enough to power other types of website.

After reviewing the free themes that WordPress offers, we determined that none was exactly what she needed. We decided to create a custom WordPress theme that would give her the unique look she desired with the CMS capabilities that were required.

Rebecca’s website has seven pages – Home, About, Contact, Projects, Resume, Testimonials and Book, a blog page about her new book, Traveling Between the Lines. WordPress has the capability to allow readers to leave comments and ask questions, although the feature isn’t currently being used. Rebecca can change content, headings, style and order on her own. She can even create her own pages and links.

If you’re interested in having us create a custom WordPress themed website for your business, give us a call at 518.392.0846 or email suzanne@trevellyan.biz.

We Now Offer Custom WordPress Templates

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There are two ways to build a website; either from scratch (custom), or using a template. Custom websites are the most flexible and impose the fewest limits on appearance and functionality. However, making changes to a custom website requires extensive knowledge of html, and should be handled by a professional. Templated websites have limited customization options, but have the advantage of being manageable and editable by anyone with solid computer skills.

Trevellyan.biz now offers an option that blends the two – custom templates for WordPress.

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) based on templates. These templates can be created from scratch, so although there are some design limitations, they are less severe than those of many other systems.

If you are interested in having a website that you can maintain yourself, email suzanne@trevellyan.biz or give us a call at 518.392.0846