| LED Digest 2580: Content Management Systems |
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The LED Digest
Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. January 31, 2008 Issue no. 2580 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Clients Providing Crap Content ==-- ~ John Smart "It frustrates me to see what a site could be, when I see what it has become." ~ Lori Smart "I feel your pain with great empathy, Brett." --== Are Content Management Systems Worth It? ==-- ~ Brad Waller "Ahhh, CMS. What fun, what a royal pain." ~ Michael Martinez "I would not advise anyone to use Drupal." ~ Reg Charie "...CMS are about the best thing since sliced bread." --== Flexible & Affordable Shopping Carts ==-- ~ Viggie Bala "...go for php-mysql packages such as x-cart." --== Bounce Rates ~ Chris Nielsen "I was very disappointed to see this link in Avinash's post..." <Moderator Comment> ~ Avinash Kaushik "100% of my proceeds from the book are donated to charity." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: John Smart Subject: Professionalism > What do you do when... A client is going to > send something out (email) or put something > on their site that just looks > unprofessional? - Brett Atkin, LED 2579 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1994/190/ It is so frustrating - the times we have created an awesome site (if I do say so myself) and then the client tries to 'improve' it - don't get me wrong, it is the clients site - and we want them to be happy - we like to work with them, not dictate to them. The worse, in my opinion is the one who says 'We love your work, design something for us' leaving the design open ended. So we do that and almost *every* time we hear 'That's nice, but could it be more [green / blue / brief / exciting / interactive / flashy / whatever]. So we do, and then the rest of the changes happen. In one recent case, the 1st draft was lovely, the final one, that the client loves, looks awful! We took our name off the page footers! When trying to politely correct a client, I try stating the obvious - say it is a mechanic, I can say, you know, I have seen a lot of good cars, so I bet I can build one that works really well. No, that doesn't make sense, so stop telling me how to build your web site'. Okay, I am much more polite than that - but that is what I *want* to say to some of them :) All I do to put up with it, is make all the changes they want, and send them the bill. It frustrates me to see what a site could be, when I see what it has become. But The client is always right. Sometimes annoying, shortsighted, ill-informed, badly worded, aesthetically endowed like a dead slug, talentless in marketing and design, but always right :) Hmm, just read through this before hitting send. Seems I have some issues with some clients I need to address that - thank you for letting me vent here - really, I am a nice guy! John Smart InternetDesign.com A Human Touch in a Digital world. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Lori Smart Subject: Professionalism I feel your pain with great empathy, Brett. A long time ago, we realized that the bulk of our work would NOT go into our portfolio. However, we often put sites we are slightly less than proud of in our portfolio. We just put notes with each. Something along the lines of... "Client came to us with exact specifications regarding look of the site, and we provided an exact rendering of their vision." Reason #1, the customer is always right. No matter how bad we think their grammar, business model or heaven forbid, Microsoft Word Art & clipart happen to be, they came to us with what they want on THEIR website. They are paying us for our ability to put their stuff onto a website. Reason #2, they didn't come to us as business consultants. If they think they need a business consultant they'll hire one. Sometimes they have no idea that they even need one, which is not really our job to point out. Our worst client scenario is when someone comes to us with "The Next Big Internet Sensation" and they'll have already had a logo designed, lawyers draw up incorporation papers, T-shirts printed, and this IDEA that is just so lame, we KNOW it won't work. They'll want us to do $250K worth of work for $800, and a share of their business that will make millions for all of us. But they want to pick our brains as to what will work, how to make it happen, and what they should do to advertise. All off the books, of course - for that share of the millions they'll make. We point them to S.C.O.R.E., remind them that we cannot give them business advise, but for $X, we can make a website for them that will do whatever they want it to do. As much as some of our small business clients drive us nuts with the grammar, bad graphics, etc., we value them highly. Partly because we're a rare business model ourselves. We'll take some very small stuff that even companies much smaller than ours refuse to do. We take on a LOT of clients that have been let down by their other developers that flaked out, and we also take on the small single page sites, even their hosting. We've had people unable to get GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, and all the other big guys that offer cheap hosting, domains, etc. come to us to help them, willing to pay a little more for hosting & domain registration because we will hold their hands, or even do it for them. Is it worth the measly $10 we make on transferring a domain for them? Honestly, yes. We have several elderly clients that are building up fairly good businesses. We can easily tell them to go elsewhere, or find a student to help them, but often, it just feels right to take them on. Since 90% of our business is word of mouth, such high customer service levels really does pay off. So, my advice is to just do what you do best. The graphic arts side of me may rant for a few hours when I'm given a color scheme that makes me feel like retching, but when I focus on giving someone what they want and they are ecstatic with the results, that always makes me feel good. Better than I would feel if they accepted what *I* thought looked better, read better, etc. Lori Smart Internet Design.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= One Way Links to your Site, by the Hundreds? Yes! Get Traffic and Link Popularity to Your Site from Legitimate, General Interest Web Directories. DomainDrivers Makes It Hassle-Free. Details Here: http://www.domaindrivers.com/directory-submissions.html ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brad Waller Subject: CMS > So, what experience do any of you have > implementing and using a CMS system > (Joomla, EE, DotNetNuke, Drupal, etc...)? > Have you found it to be huge savings in > up-front development? From the SEO side of > things, have you found the system's you've > used to be SEO friendly? - Brett Atkin, LED 2578 Ahhh, CMS. What fun, what a royal pain. We have been using various types of CMS for some projects and it can be amazing. But it also depends on your skill level and how well you grasp the concepts. It also depends on the server technology you are hosting it on. I have experience in both Drupal and Joomla, and both IIS and Linux servers. Be warned that many CMS systems, modules, and templates do not like IIS systems. I am doing the third go round setting up the site for the PTA at my daughter's school. See http://altavistapta.org is you want to check out what one of these can do. The first time I tried installing everything myself and I had problem after problem. I literally spend dozens of hours and got nowhere. I then broke down and paid for the fully bundled template with all modules configured for a site and that got the site up and running in only a few hours. I then modified the template to fit our elementary school, but I had lots of problems with certain modules. After a lot of tech support, the answer was that they were made for Linux and the developers could not help with an IIS configured site. Now I've moved the site to a Linux server and started from scratch. It took a lot less time, and the mailing list portion worked the first try! I even installed a module myself and had it up and running very quickly. I'm no expert, but I do feel pretty confident on it now. Drupal is very similar, and many of the same features are available on both Drupal and Joomla. From my use, Drupal seems to be the programmers version, and Joomla is easier for the less technical. Drupal seems to be more SEO friendly. I know that a Drupal developer just got $7 million funding, and Joomla just released a major upgrade. Both have tons of users and active user groups. Both have lots of open source modules and templates. For me, the choice was Joomla because the school template I wanted to base the site on was made for Joomla. Maybe there is a template or feature you absolutely need and that will help guide you to the best solution. More reading: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?topic=4364.msg35306 http://cmsreport.com/node/543 And more: http://www.google.com/search?q=drupal+joomla Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: CMS I would not advise anyone to use Drupal. Content Management Systems make it easy to create Web sites but you have to live with the programmer's decisions in a lot of little things that can really add up. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Reg Charie Subject: CMS Brett, You are really pushing my buttons, as IMO, CMS are about the best thing since sliced bread. First off, I want to say that I am a developer, and as such can answer this from my both my and my client’s point of view, across a wide range of needs. I have probably done some 55 or 60 sites in CRELoaded, Joomla, Mambo, and similar open source. Some were easy, some hard, and some useless. Some clients just want to have an info site, some need to sell, some are affiliate promoters, and others want to build a portal type site, which can include a shopping system, customer, affiliate, banner/ad management, and more. While I favor CRELoaded for most sites, there are other options. I recently did a site for a client that wanted a dating portal and I used Dolphin from Boonex. (This was after trying 4 other PHP/MySQL systems). > Have you found it to be huge savings in > up-front development? Has it been overkill? > Did the clients require a lot of "coaching" > on how to use it? Very much so. A fully featured site can be built in under 1/2 hour, with a custom design running another 2 hours. In some instances it could be over kill when it comes to using the features. Not everyone wants to run ads or an affiliate program or have 3 levels of pricing. But just because the options are there does not mean you have to use them. > From the SEO side of things, have you found > the system's you've used to be SEO > friendly? CRELoaded is very search engine friendly as it stands, and there is a SEO url system that can be added on that takes the page names from the titles. Reg Charie http://DotCom-Productions.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Viggie Subject: Shopping carts > I know a lot of developers like oscommerce > or zencart, but both of these are beyond my > abilities and I don't have the finances to > have someone build the site for me. So with > that info in mind??? - Ron Carmickle, LED 2578 My suggestion would be to go for php-mysql packages such as x-cart. It would be cheaper than paying someone to build. The X-cart admin section does takes time to comprehend, but it has most features built in standard cart, and add-on modules were rarely required for a start-up site. You can also find a lot more ready packages at Hotscripts.com. It would be better to opt for one that has good reviews & allows a demo. Best regards, Viggie Bala Helping websites to work http://www.viggie.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= WebSite's Secret Members Area You pay one fee and have unlimited access for 6 months to a collection of Will Bontrager's handy web tools. (Since this is a new service, the fee is still low.) The latest addition - Spam Resistant PHP Form: The form, the form handling script, and instructions are included in the download file. http://www.willmaster.com/SecretArea ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Bounce rates > Barry does provide a excellent way to check > if bounced visitors are really "bookmarkers > and they'll come later" or people who were > just bounced - measure repeat visits by > those. I could recommend using the > persistent cookie value, and hence Unique > Visitor, to do that computation. - Avinash Kaushik, LED 2578 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1993/190/ I was very disappointed to see that this link in Avinash's post: www.snipurl.com/wahour goes to http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470130652/ref=nosim/?tag=occsrazbyavik-20 which I am pretty sure is an affiliate link (-20). So as the author he gets paid for any sales twice. My problem is not that but with hiding the true nature of the link. And he says he is a contractor on his blog, not a regular employee of Google so that was a little misleading as well. No reply needed... Thanks, Chris Nielsen <Moderator Comment> Chris, thanks for your attentiveness about this. The part about Avinash working at Google was added by myself, I said "Avinash Kaushik of Google" in my comments above his post - he didn't make that claim himself. Also, I published the links from his sig file - using them without his knowing. When he sent me his reply post, he used a standard signature that he does for all email. I forwarded your comments on to Avinash and got the following reply, which he's asked be published here (see below). Let me just state that Avinash is one of the most ethical, classy and moral individuals working in this field - I think of him very highly. Read on for Avinash's reply... -Adam ------------------ From: Avinash Kaushik Subject: My post to LED Adam, As you know 100% of my proceeds from the book are donated to charity (Doctors Without Border and The Smile Train). I get Zero, and that is a choice both because the book came from a blog (which I love doing because I just love doing it!) and also to make a small difference. My proceeds include the link with the amazon affiliate id. I have been very open about it, see half way through this post: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/06/web-analytics-an-hour-a-day.html And I regularly updated people on the funds raised and donated already ($18,000 in the first five months of sales): www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/12/web-analytics-blog-reflections.html I am sorry that Chris felt slighted. I feel terrible about that. Also I am a consultant for Google and not a permanent employee. I spend about 70% of my time at Google and rest on personal consulting engagements. Another thing I am very open about. -Avinash. Book - Web Analytics: An Hour a Day: www.snipurl.com/wahour Blog - Occam's Razor: www.kaushik.net/avinash (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank |
