» Be A Net Builder Archives
Own Your Domain
A famous surgeon loses his business website and the ownership of his domain name. Avoid this by owning your domain. Plus how to register your domain name and select a web hosting company.
Websites in the Desert
90 percent of all small business websites will never get found in natural search engine results. Here are the common mistakes and how to fix them.
Free Advice Worth 1 Million Dollars
I’m happy to report that we have arrived. If you know nothing about HTML, XHTML, or CSS, you can publish a great website with ExpressionEngine.
Search Engine Basics
Building a website is easy; building a website that is effective and drives new customers to your door requires knowledge. This is Step 1 of our Site Building series and it will walk you through the basics of how a search engine will find your small business website and how you can make sure the search engines will know when to display your website in search results.
» Full Archives »
Free Advice Worth 1 Million Dollars
By Adam Meyerson
If you’ve spent any time building web sites as your profession you know about the quest. The quest to find a web publishing tool that will allow your customers to update their site on their own. Many companies have tried to solve this challenge but until recently no one had succeeded.
Soon after the first web sites starting appearing in 1995 and 1996 products started sprouting up to make it easy to publish a web site. I was there and tested and used many of the products. Some notables include Fusion from Net Objects, Home Site, Front Page on the low end of the price range and products too numerous to list from IBM, Microsoft ATG, Vignette, Broadvision, and Interwoven on the high end. By high end I mean expensive, not necessarily effective.
Needless to say today’s website is dramatically different from the static brochure web sites we built 15 years ago but one of the biggest challenges has been consistent.
How do we make it possible for non techies to change and update a website on their own, with no help from the techies?
Web Empowered for $250
I’m happy to report that we have arrived. If you know nothing about HTML, XHTML, CSS, FTP, SSH, or any of the other alphabet soup technology or tools you can publish a great website. You will need help in the initial design and creation of your website. But once you’re up and running you will be empowered. The Secret is Expression Engine. A Web Publishing Tool from ExpressionEngine.
The Search for Web Publishing Power
My search for the ultimate web publishing tool became really important in 2000 when I headed up the team that built Visa USA. Visa is a big organization with a lot of talented people. Most of the Visa team were not techies but rather marketing and business experts who knew exactly what they wanted to put on Visa.com. The challenge was empowering them to do it.
The Million Dollar System
Before my team took over the Visa site, Visa had settled on a content management System called TeamSite made by Interwoven. The base product cost about $250,000. But to make TeamSite work they way the Visa team wanted took a lot of custom development to the tune of another $750,000. So we had a million dollar content management system. Here’s the rub. The Visa team still couldn’t post new articles or edit existing articles on their own.
Still Not Empowering
The history of content management tools is ugly. Lots of big dollar software that in the end is used by the developers who don’t need it. In the case of Visa, my team of skilled developers created all new content (articles, etc) and made changes to existing content. The Visa team used TeamSite to view changes and approve them – workflow.
This is not a criticism of the Visa project, Expression Engine did not exist in 2000. If I could go back in time and take Expression Engine with me I would.
Back to Expression Engine
One of the keys to the effectiveness of Expression Engine is its focus. Expression Engine makes it easy to:
- Publish new web pages
- Edit existing web pages
- Register users
- Allow user Login
- Allow users to create a profile
- Allow users to submit comments
- Control when pages are published
- Create private areas and control access
- Upload photos
- Add Photos to web pages
This is just a fraction of the functionality in Expression Engine. ExpressionEngine provides a comprehensive list.
Nothing is Perfect
A large part of my high tech experience has been testing and reviewing software (and hardware) products. I did this for many years at PC Computing and as a consultant for big companies like NEC, Net Objects, LoanCity.com, Pottery Barn, Lycos, and others. I’m really impressed with Expression Engine but every product can be improved.
Normally this is the part of the story where I would list the things I’d like to see improved or added. In this case I won’t. ExpressionEngine is constantly adding new features and functionality and you get the upgrades at no charge as long as your license is active. That’s the beauty of software – it’s never done - as long as the software maker keeps improving and ExpressionEngine is working hard. I almost forgot to mention – you get source code. So if you are a PHP developer you can dig in and customize Expression Engine.
This web site Netbuilders.com is built with Expression Engine.
Two other sites we recently completed WorkoutAmerica.com and KeymoradaFishing.com are also built with Expression Engine – and we have many more in the works.
Comments about: Free Advice Worth 1 Million Dollars