Released on: March 12, 2008, 9:37 pm

Press Release Author: manoj kumar

Industry: Internet & Online

Press Release Summary: 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.



Press Release Body: 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 caliber 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 realized 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.



Again, this is full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware
\'plug-ins\' to it, to get a professional shopping cart.

Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the
default cart files. When you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may \'break\'
it, by overwriting plug-in, thus creating errors.

The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than overwrite
them) or that require minor alterations to existing files.

What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG
editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new
directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is
complex, I chuck it.

Mambo and Oscommerce. Don\'t try to integrate them! Hyperlink from one to the other.
I\'ve tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it
works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh!

*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will
still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they\'re all running off
the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ...

It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up twice at
your site, but you\'ll thank me for this sage advice later. Remember KISS is the
basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).


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