About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web
site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper.
Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive,
about £500 for a month's run.
Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where clients of the
calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought £300 was a lot
for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot
of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to know and
loathe.
This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could
ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised
how.
So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!).
1. Mambo Content Management System http://www.mambo.com
I wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware.
The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update
the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This
adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box
becomes a mini HTML editor.
If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site.
To get it running you need to know how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package.
You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users.
The only criticisms I have of this software are:
1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem!
2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to
your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those
available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There
are more restrained ones out there.
These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is
essentially a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once
you get familiar with it.
