The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

WordPress once was thought of as nothing more than a blogging platform. It was considered – and still is – the premiere blogging platform on the Web. There’s good reason for thinking of it that way. No other blogging platform offers the same level of design flexibility with search engine optimization benefits and maximum functionality.

Today, however, WordPress is thought of as more than a blogging platform. It is a blogging platform PLUS. And that plus is a big deal.

It is being billed today as a content management system. That means you can use WordPress to upload all of your website’s content and you can build a full-fledged website using it to manage your content from beginning to end. However, there are some pitfalls.

As an example, if you use WordPress’s media upload features and you decide to move your website to a new server or host, then you’ll have to migrate those photos and images and if you aren’t careful you could lose them. It’s much easier to make a website transfer with a traditional HTML website. You simply drag and drop your folder to the new server and you’re done. It’s not that easy with WordPress.

That’s just one example. Designing WordPress also comes with its own set of headaches. For instance, are you going to use an off-the-shelf template? Be careful because a lot of them are not optimized correctly for the search engines.

You could use a premium framework, but those cost money. You could end up spending as much money to design with a WordPress site as you would to pay for a custom HTML design, and have fewer headaches.

While I wouldn’t say don’t use WordPress for your next web design as an absolute imperative, it’s important to know the dangers and pitfalls before you make that decision.

Should you design your next website with HTML or a content management system (CMS)? To be sure, each has its pros and cons.

HTML – We are on the dawn of a new age with HTML. HTML 5 is currently in development and some website development experts have already started using it, either in purity or in conjunction with a CMS. New developments in the Web’s basic language make it extremely attractive, especially for pure website designers who want to build a website from scratch.

There are many good reasons to design your website with HTML, but you’ll always be relegated to updating your website one page at a time. A CMS doesn’t have that disadvantage.

CMS – While a content management system has its flaws – decreased security, for instance (and even then they have come a long way to defeat breaches) – a good CMS can make your life a whole lot easier. Instead of focusing on design with every website update you undertake, you can focus on the implementation of your content and save yourself oodles of time in the process.

There are free open source CMSs available that can make your website look like a world class website. And there are systems that you can pay for that will do the trick as well. Either way, a good CMS can offer many of the same advantages as HTML.

So which is right for you, HTML or a CMS? That sounds like a question a web design consultant can answer for you.

The debate has been going on a long time. Some proponents of web design prefer to design their website using HTML. Others prefer a content management system, or CMS. But which is better?

I think it depends.

First, some CMSs are better than others so you have to be careful which one you use. Do you go for a paid CMS that you have to spend oodles of money on or do you opt for the paid open source version?

Here are some things to think about before deciding to use HTML or a CMS.

• Security is better with an HTML website
• Designing a website from scratch is usually easier and quicker with a CMS
• You have more control over design with HTML
• A CMS can be enhanced with plugins and add-ons
• Traditionally, SEO has been more effective with HTML, however, many CMSs now rival HTML with search engine optimization
• CMSs are often code heavy and can slow down your website, which diminishes your SEO effectiveness
• You don’t have to know any coding languages to work with a CMS
• If you design your website with HTML, it can be very tedious; one character out of place can mess up your entire website

There are pros and cons to using either a CMS or coding a website with HTML. Weigh your options and choose the one that is best for you.

Google announced three days ago that it was introducing another markup attribute that webmasters could use on their websites. The attribute is obviously geared toward news sites that use multiple authors for writing page content. But any website with multiple authors or content creators can use the link attribute.

The attribute of which I am speaking is the real=”author” attribute. It’s to be used on links on the same domain, not on links that point from one domain to another.

For instance, if you have a website where videos are posted by several regular contributors and you want each of those contributors to have a bio page, then you would link from each video content page on the site to the creator’s bio page using the rel=”author” link attribute. It would look something like this:

< a href="http://www.samplewebpage.com/videoproducers/mickeyspillane" rel="author" >Mickey Spillane< /a >

In this example, Mickey Spillane is the video’s producer. Because he has produced more than one video for the sample website, he would have several links pointing from his author bio page to his videos. In turn, each video would point back to his producer bio page with the rel=”author” attribute.

This is a rather nifty link attribute I think. If searchers are looking for a particular video content producer, then the link attribute would likely be used to help them find that producer.

Web design has come a long way in the last 20 years. It used to be, if you wanted to build a web page, then you had one option – HTML. Hypertext Markup Language is the basic language of the Web. Today, if you are building a website of any kind, chances are you are going to incorporate HTML into your programming even if you use other languages.

But HTML is not the only language you need, by far. If you expect your web site to have some interactive features, then you’ll need more – much more – than HTML.

CSS, or cascading style sheets, is a language devised to help Web programmers build websites where design elements can be defined in a single document across multiple pages. Then you can use HTML for your content on each individual page.

PHP allows Web site designers the ability to add interactive design features into their web pages without jacking up the HTML.

JavaScript is another interactive and dynamic Web language with some useful features.

Microsoft has joined the web design game as well with its own programming languages and Web application framework. ASP is the basic Web language of Microsoft. ASP.NET allows you to build more dynamic web pages on a Windows server.

Other application frameworks have entered the market as well. One popular one in recent years is the open source Ruby on Rails, which is based on the Ruby programming language. Twitter, and a few other popular websites, was built on Ruby on Rails.

So, to answer the question, how many Web languages do you need for Web design? You really only need one. But if you want to build dynamic web pages that are interactive and keep visitors coming back for more, sometimes you need to incorporate several languages into a single web design.

One of the best developments in web design over the years is the technology called CSS. CSS stands for cascading style sheet. With a CSS file you can make updates to your websites in minutes, updates that used to take hours prior to the development of style sheets.

CSS allows you to make changes to your website across an entire section or your entire site. Rather than go page by page to make changes that affect each page of your website, with CSS you can change the element one time and it changes across your entire website. Isn’t that cool?

There are still some web developers who design pages entirely by HTML using tables. This is a very primitive way to design websites, but it can be done. However, I’d recommend using CSS when practical and possible.

With CSS you can influence the following types of changes sitewide with a single update:

• Navigation menus
• Page background colors
• Font styles and types
• Link attributes
• Page layout
• Column width
• Header and footer details
• Mouseover and hover effects
• Special effects like drop shadows and rounded corners

There’s plenty more you can do with CSS. In fact, you can get quite creative with it. If you are designing web pages today then you must consider CSS in your design strategy. Pages built strictly with HTML are quickly going by the wayside.

Members of the W3C are muddling their way through an update to HTML, the principle language of the Web. The new version, HTML5, is said to be an improvement over HTML4, the current version of HTML. But is it?

Some of the code elements that are being tested as we speak include:

• <header>
• <footer>
• <audio>
• <video>
• <article>
• <embed>
• <nav>
• <section>

The above HTML tags are currently not included in HTML4. I will say this much. These tags will certainly streamline the code in HTML and make some parts of web design much easier. The big issue will be in the implementation of the new version of hypertext markup language and whether or not HTML4 will still be acceptable to modern browsers.

My guess is that HTML4 will still be acceptable and readable, but I do see a point afar off in the future where HTML4 will be phased out completely and replaced entirely by HTML5. Of course, HTML6 could be in development by then.

What do you think. Will HTML5 make web design easier?

PHP is one of the most versatile web design languages available today. There is so much you can do and the options are very wide. You virtually have your choice of server types, hosting, database options, and many other variables. One of the best aspects to PHP is its ability to embed easily into HTML.

While you can embed PHP into HTML, unlike HTML, it is a server-side language. HTML is a browser-based language.

Web design is a lot more robust with PHP. You can script forms and do all sorts of other server-side scripting with PHP. You can also write command line scripts for your web pages. And you can also design desktop applications. But that’s not all.

PHP is compatible with all the major operating systems – Linus, Unix, OS X, Windows, and many more.

With PHP, your web design has so much more flexibility and a wide range of web design options is available to you. I highly recommend the use PHP for web design, not in place of HTML, but in conjunction with HTML.

Website design is not an exact science. It is part art and part science, which might come as a surprise to some people. Those people might consider it 100% art.

I consider it partly a science because there are some technical aspects to website design that require a scientific-like approach to thinking. Artistic endeavors are typically right brain activity. Science hails from the logical part of the brain, which is on the left hemisphere of the big grey lobe.

But whether you approach web design from a scientific or artistic perspective is largely how you see your role as web designer. If you are strictly artistic in your approach then you might look for a template and move things around as you see fit. If you are more scientific, or at least a mixture, then you may prefer to build your site with straight HTML.

A template can be good and save you some time. But there are things to look out for. Is your template optimized for search engines? If not, you’d better be prepared to modify it or ditch it. With HTML, you can influence that fight right from the beginning.

Website design really is not so cut and dry. There are a lot of variables and you have to remain flexible. Whether you built with a template or straight HTML isn’t as important as making sure that your site ranks well for its keywords and that it is capable of converting traffic to sales. If you can do it with a template then you should; if you prefer HTML then you should go that route. Either way, a great site is a great site.

You’ve decided to build a website to promote your business online. You don’t have a huge budget and you have limited technical skills. Should you build an HTML website or use a content management system?

There are pros and cons to doing it either way. But I’d say if you are a small business and you are on a tight budget then you might consider a content management system (CMS).

You are likely going to pay someone to set it up for you if you don’t have a lot of technical skills yourself. But you’d pay someone to design you a website using HTML as well. Either way, there’s an expense. And it costs about the same for HTML or a CMS design. The big difference, however, is in the ongoing maintenance.

With an HTML website, every time you want to update it you’d have to pay someone to update your website for you. It may not be much, but it’s an expense. With a CMS, once the initial set up is done, you can upload your content yourself. Just log in to the CMS and input your content. You can do that on your own and it won’t cost you a penny.

The only time a CMS will cost you is when performing routine maintenance or when fixing a periodic problem that requires technical skills you don’t have. Otherwise, ongoing expenses are less than for an HTML site.

The question may come up for your company on whether or not you should hire a website designer to build you a site using HTML or whether you should use a content management system (CMS). Which is best for you?

Whether you design with HTML or use a CMS depends on a number of factors. Let’s start with how big a site you need. Do you need a large site or is a five-page portfolio all you need? If you are going to put up five pages and that’s that then you’ll probably do well just to build with HTML. It’s a quick down and dirty. But if you’re planning a larger site, say a couple hundred pages or more, then a CMS can be a great benefit.

Budget also plays into the factor. Got a large budget? Is the moon the limit? Then by all means, hire a fancy designer to do your site the right way. Can’t afford a great designer? Alright then, find one who will design you a site with CMS and teach you how to upload your own content.

Just one word of warning: If you do build with a CMS, make sure you configure it correctly. Some CMS systems do not crawl well and some will only crawl well if you set them up in a certain way. Dynamic pages, for instance, may see issues. And adding shopping carts and other third-party software to a CMS has its own issues. Just because the uploading of content is easy doesn’t mean that setting it up is easy.

A CMS can be a big time saver for companies that want to do a lot of their own, but don’t want to learn how to code with HTML. Some web design firms will work with you and teach you how to do some of your own uploading. You’ll just have to do your homework and do what is right for you.