Free Content Management for SEO Websites
Joomla or WordPress Tools for Easy, Cheap Web Development
Feb 23, 2009
Content management applications are smoking hot for web masters from guru to beginner. Content management systems (CMS) range in cost from free, to dirt cheap, to very expensive. But for most entrepreneurs, the open-source CMS tools, which are free, like Joomla, Mambo, and WordPress, will suit just fine.
How Content Management Helps Web Design
Joomla requires users to have a hosted website. In other words, the site files and domain are owned by the user and self-hosted or located on the site of a web-host like Go-Daddy or HostMonster. WordPress can go either way; a site can be hosted at WordPress for free, or hosted with an outside vendor, which gives more owner-control.
Interestingly, it’s quite possible to get up and running with WordPress in about 15 minutes, if the user has at least upper-beginner level experience. Joomla takes a bit longer, as do the others. Here are five things a new user needs to consider before diving in.
- Does the web hosting company support SQL data bases and PHP scripting language? The host can provide this info quickly.
- Does the host offer Fantastico, an application that allows one click installs of many developer applications? Check the documentation on host's site.
- Does the user have at least a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and how it works. No need to know the language, just how it performs.
- Does the user have enough familiarity with the backend or control panel of his website to do a simple install and upgrades?
- Does the proposed website have enough content to make it viable and to attract search engines?
If those items look like a go, the next step is to read a bit of detail on the packages being considered. WordPress, for example, is robust and intuitive. Each new iteration of WordPress simplifies the user’s tasks and tightens up security, long a problem with open-source management systems.
What Is Included with Joomla or WordPress?
There is no need to be a designer, a writer, or a programmer to create an excellent website with these systems. A lot of functionality is built in, including SEO (search engine optimization), color choices for backgrounds, foregrounds, and text, as well as built-in “containers” to drop text, images or other items into.
Once a content management system is installed via the documentation provided at Joomla.org or WordPress.org, small code snippets called plugins or widgets can be obtained, often at no cost, from entrepreneurs who have written and packaged needed code. Plugins and widgets add functionality that oncerequire hours of programming. Examples:
- Templates – free and commercially produced applications that set visual style including name banners, drop down or interactive menus, page layout.
- SEO plugins – small programs that make the entire site search engine friendly, intending to draw traffic to the site.
- Search programs – an engine rather like Google, on a small scale, designed to allow visitors to search the wihtin the website, using keywords.
- Guestbook – where visitors may sign in, allowing the web master to capture email addresses for a contact database.
- Slide show – allowing photos to be loaded into the site and automatically scrolled from image to image.
These days, it isn’t even necessary to learn how to upload and download files from local computer to web hosts’ server. That task is built in and one-click.
Any system has challenges, but content management is user-friendly. A website can be built in minutes, as robust and complicated as it needs to be. A bit of homework online at WordPress.org or Joomla.org will get a fledgling webmaster on track. Classes are readily available for those who want to dig deeper.
Maryan Pelland is a long-time writer at Suite101 and an experienced tech writer for other publications.
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