Building Blocks
Welcome to our website. The parts cost $140. That's right. Modular web publishing lets you upgrade your online presence for a fraction of the price of a custom product. It's long been gospel that business sites need to be custom-built. So, right about now, you are having a "they-don't-want-you-to-know" moment. They don't want you to know that web development is being automated just like word processing, page layout and graphic design were automated years ago.
With modular web publishing, you buy a prefabricated website shell, called a template, and then customize it. Each template houses a series of modules which contain your content. Hundreds of add-ons are available. The package comes with a highly flexible content management system. You don't need a webmaster once the site is up and running. Anyone with reasonable computer skills can manage it. All software is free or nominally priced. That's because it's "open-source" the product of a worldwide community of idealists, dedicated to a free and open Internet.
Armed with some knowledge of HMTL and a little design know-how, you could probably do the construction yourself. But a better choice is to have us initially set up the site. Here's why.
Content Is King
Your website needs visual wow. But remember it is only a conveyance. The content — the message — has to aim true and make plain sense to your customers. That's where a lot of clients need the most help. It's also the hardest and most time-consuming part.
For an example, take the development of Javelin's site. I built it as a technology demonstration project with the aid of an associate who is a journeyman IT professional and web developer. He helped me find a template I liked and tutored me in the CMS. I needed only about eight hours with him, spread out over three weeks, to get up to speed technically. But the creative part — developing the site content — required 10 times that investment.
There's another reason why you need to have some level of professional support. Web browsers are so divergent that the look of your site can never be totally consistent. It will have to be in effect averaged across multiple combinations of browsers and computer operating systems. Also, depending on how wide a net you want to cast, we recommend that your site be optimized for search engine visibility.
Even with the aforementioned caveats, I want to emphasize that development time and costs are telescoped dramatically. Is the bell tolling for the all-custom website? Not quite yet. It's going to live on at big corporations. Small and medium-sized enterprises, however, can be very capably served by this new, versatile and highly affordable modular web publishing technology.
We'd love to show you around. Here are some recent examples.
-Jim Gribble
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