Technology Resources
Explore the latest web design trends and tools with our comprehensive technology blog, packed with valuable resources and information.
Why WordPress vs. a Custom CMS?
If you are in charge of managing the website build for your company, you may have been approached by companies telling you that you need a custom CMS. For the uninitiated, CMS stands for “Content Management System”—in other words, it’s the back end that allows a less technically inclined person to manage a website. Most websites today have a front end (the part of the website that a visitor sees) and a back end (a part of the website that is accessed by an administrator using a secure login, that allows the administrator to edit and update the front end of the website). But we digress… so, often web development companies will pitch a custom CMS. Sometimes they’re right. Often they’re not.
Do You Need a Virtual Private Server?
If you have a website currently, you are probably used to paying under $10 a month for hosting it. The reason why it’s so inexpensive is that it’s a “shared” hosting package, which means that your web host (whether it’s GoDaddy or Hostgator or Network Solutions) is running as many websites as they can on one of their servers. Sometimes these other websites sharing your CPU and RAM are low-traffic, single pagers. Sometimes, they’re e-commerce stores with hundreds of visitors a day, hogging the server’s resources. But moving to your own server can seem like a steep upgrade. Even at a low-cost provider like GoDaddy, a dedicated server is a minimum of about $80 per month—on sale. But there is an alternative that can strike a balance that allows you more freedom to manage your server’s resources while costing less than a dedicated server: a virtual private server, or VPS.
How to Speak SEO
The abbreviation “SEO” is thrown around with abandon, and some parties scream that it’s irrelevant or a scam, while others try to sell you an expensive program without being very clear. Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a website by improving its search engine ranking. Most users will click on a result in the first page or two of results, so if it’s done properly, it’s a valuable endeavor. But SEO activity should be undertaken with a firm understanding of what’s valuable to search engine algorithms, and it requires continuing education about what works and what doesn’t. Our refrain is that there’s no shortcut to SEO. You need good content that users (and therefore search engines) will find relevant, and you need to get it out there. To learn more about SEO—and avoid wasting money on useless measures—read on.
