Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

At any given moment I have a pretty long list of website repairs needed on my own site. There’s always something to do, and I’m lucky (a) because my site is built on WordPress, which is a very easy to manage website platform, (b) because I know how to make changes to my website myself and (c) because I don’t charge myself to work on my site.

Of course you’re probably not as lucky and there will come a time when you need to stop spending money on website repairs and invest in a brand spanking new website. Now you may think this sounds odd coming from someone who repairs websites for a living, but it’s really just good business sense.

So when should you opt not to repair a website and hire someone to redesign it instead?

1. When your business goals have changed

If you find that your website isn’t in tune with your business, either because your branding has had an overhaul, your market has changed or your business objectives have shifted, it’s probably time to redesign your site and bring it back in line with your business.

2. When your website repair quote is higher than the cost of a new site

If your website manager rubs his hands with glee every time you phone him and he comes to visit you in his new Porsche it’s probably time to re-invest your web site repair budget in a new site design. Adding/editing content on a small business website shouldn’t be a full-time job for anyone, and if you’ve spent the money hiring someone who knows what they’re doing, your search engine optimization should be pretty much taken care of from day 1.

3. When nothing you try seems to be working

If you’ve spent money on countless content changes and search engine optimization, or your site runs every bit of Web technology known to man and you’re still nowhere to be found on Google, there’s either something fundamentally wrong with your website or something seriously wrong with your marketing plan. Take action and spend a bit of money to change the way you market your business online.

4. When your website looks like it was designed in 1997

If you want to chase people away from your website, make sure it looks (and works) like it was designed before the turn of the century. In the grand scheme of things a website is a cheap marketing tool. Invest your website repair budget in a redesign every couple of years and you’ll probably increase the number of visitors, sales leads and customers your website attracts.

What should you do next?

If you have doubts about whether to re-design or repair your website, send me an email or contact me on Skype with the details of your site address and what you want to achieve online. If you can give me some information about what you’re currently achieving that will help too. I’ll take a quick look and give you my opinion based purely on the facts. I look forward to hearing from you.

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WARNING: Geeky Web designer content ahead.

I’ve read a dozen or so articles proclaiming that WordPress, the world’s best blogging platform, can be used as a Content Management System (CMS) for business websites. So when Craig from Presslink asked me to develop a new 100+ page site for Air Products South Africa, we decided that we wanted to give WordPress the opportunity to prove itself as a CMS, a decision which made me more than just a little nervous.

WordPress was obviously not designed to be a CMS, and unlike open source CMS solutions like Joomla, it lacks certain functionality out of the box. That said, it’s a bunch of fun once you add in some plugins (of which there are literally hundreds available) and do a little bit of custom PHP coding.

Not being the world’s best PHP programmer (in fact, I may be among the worst) it took me a little longer than it could have to pull RSS feeds from Air Products’ US site, and I’m still not completely happy with the way I showcase blog posts on the home page. But the final product turned out fantastically. The client loves the design (that was Craig’s doing), I love the way developing with WordPress is faster than with Joomla (and it almost validates too!), and Presslink’s staff are impressed with the ease of populating the site with content.

If you’re a designer looking for a new CMS platform to make designing corporate websites easier and more user friendly, give WordPress a bash. It’s my new CMS of choice.

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If ever you wanted to learn how to build and manage websites, one of the greatest online resources ever is back, and I only found out a few minutes ago.

For many web designers, Webmonkey.com was our classroom until it got sold off a few years ago, forcing us to either spend money on a library of books we didn’t want, or subscribe to a bunch of less impressive web resources.

But now the guys at CondeNet (who also own the very cool Wired Magazine) have brought the site back into their stable, given it a fresh redesign and begun posting new tutorials. I’ve got this really cheesy grin on my face right now!

If this seems like a totally trivial thing for you, it’s probably because you have absolutely no intention of understanding how the Web works. But for the rest of us this is definitely something worth adding to our feed readers.

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