• What is a CMS (Content Management System)
• Is a CMS difficult to learn?
• Do I have to use your templates or can I supply my own
• Can I add other add-ons?
• Can we make PDF files available?
• How do I get all my accounts setup?

Q:

What is a CMS (Content Management System) ?

A static web site is like a printed brochure, it supplies the visitor with lots of information about your organization. It does not change from day to day. The same information is displayed six months from now as today.

A dynamic web site has content that change frequently, daily, weekly, sometimes every time you refresh the screen. Examples of dynamic content are newsletters, classified ads, discussion forums.

There are 3 approaches to building a web site that has changing content:

Custom designed site - in this case you have a design firm build a site and have them change content when needed. This means you pay every time you want a change on your site, or you purchase and learn the tools to change the site yourself.

Custom designed web application - in this case you have a web site built that has a back-end or administrator area where you can login and change content via custom screens. This type of web application would be designed specifically to your requirements. It could require a lot of programmer time up front to build and will be expensive. Adding a new feature (like classified ads) means paying a programmer to build the new functionality and administration into the site.

Content Management system - a CMS is a pre built web application specifically designed to allow a non-programmer to maintain (add/change/remove) content from the web site. The core system allows you to add any content pages you like. The system is designed to support add-on features so you can add functionality for little or no cost. This building block approach allows you to create a site with features you want without paying a programmer to create a custom new items.

Delegate to spread the work. The administrator can create other admin or manager accounts to maintain some or all of the site content.

A CMS is the most cost effective way to get a feature rich web site up and running. The down side to a CMS is that it is not built just for you, you do not have 100% control over how it works or how it looks. The CMS we use offers many features and is flexible in its ability to change look via templates.

Q:

Is a CMS difficult to learn?

There is some learning required however we chose a CMS that has a good administration side user interface. Adding a new page, for example, is quite like creating a document in any word processor. There is good user's guide and several 3rd party books that can help you conquer the learning curve.

There is an especially good book on Mambo that is applicable to Joomla as well, Mambo: Your visual blueprint for building and maintaining Web sites with the Mambo Open Source CMS

We offer administrator support and packages where we do the content entry for you.

Q:

Do I have to use your templates or can I supply my own?

You can use any Joomla template. There are many, many templates available off the Internet. Some are free, some not. The templates we supply are original designs modified to include your association name and image(s).

We can also make a template from your current web site. Call or email for an estimate.

Yes, your administrator account will have full control and can add any Joomla add-on. Or, if you find an add-on and want us to install it that can be arranged also.

Yes, it is quite simple to upload a PDF file then add a link into any content page. We have samples to show you how.