Web site design is the main thing most clients have in mind when they contact me.  Sometimes they don’t have a  web presence yet and want me to design a site from the beginning.  Other times they already have a functional site but would like some modifications made or perhaps even a complete site redesign. I offer two main web site design options:

Standard HTML Web Site

This is what most people think of when they talk about a web site.   HTML (hyper-text markup language) is the way most web sites have been built since the beginning of the world wide web.  It is very flexible as a method of web design and most of the sites I’ve built have been built with this method.  The down side to using this method is that if you ever want to update your site you will need to pay me or another web developer to make the changes to content on your site.  This is fine if you feel that you won’t change much about your content over the years or if you don’t mind paying for changes as they come up.  However, there is another option that can give you more control over your content.  That option is for me to use a “content management system” to build your site.

Content Management System

This is now my preferred way of building web sites.  A content management system (CMS) is like an engine for your content.  Instead of taking the time to program in all the functionality you need on your site, I can use the CMS to do the heavy lifting while I concentrate on the design and filling in the framework that will hold your content.  Once your site is built using a CMS, it takes MUCH less time to make changes in your content. I can either teach you how to make changes to your content yourself or I can do it for you.  Since it takes so much less time to make changes to your content you save money whether you choose to do it yourself or have me do it for you.

The CMS that I have used the most and like the best is a free open-source package called “Joomla!”.  It’s free so it saves you money and it is being used by many thousands of web sites around the world so it is going to be around for a very long time.  Another benefit to using this system is that there are many “templates” available for it.  If we can find a template that you like I can use it as a basis for designing your site and save many hours of design work which in turn saves you money.  The professional templates generally only cost about $35-$40 which is a fraction of what it would cost to have me design one from scratch.

So as you can see, using a content management system has the potential to save you money in many ways.  If you’d like to learn more about the Joomla! CMS, click here to visit the Joomla! home page .