Content management is the process of supporting the life cycle of digital information, through updating information, removing redundant data and verifying content reliability.
Content management is the responsibility of a number of people. First and foremost the creator of the content, who creates and edits the content; secondly the Editor, responsible for modifying the content to suit the target audience. The Publisher releases the content for public use. The Administrator is responsible for managing access rights o the content, as well as technical support for users. Consumers are the final group responsible for content management, by viewing the content, they can determine whether it is correct or up to date, and inform the administrator of any issues of content management.
A content management system is a set of automated processes responsible for the following actions:
Creation and import of content
Identification of the key users of the content and their roles in the system
Assigning roles and responsibilities to the various content categories
Tracking and managing multiple versions of a single piece of content
Defining workflow tasks
Alerting content managers to changes in content
Publishing content to a server or website to enable users to access the content.
4 Open Source content managers include:
Drupal; http://www.drupal.org/
Exponent CMS; http://www.exponentcms.org/
Mambo; http://www.mamboserver.com/
Silva; http://www.infrae.com/products/silva
Monday, November 17, 2008
Web Marketing
PPC- Pay Per Click:
Google show their paid advertising links on the right side of the results page under the "sponsored listings" section. These links are mini-advertisements that are paid for by an advertiser on a per click basis. PPC increases the level of internet traffic to a website dramatically in the same way as SEO.
Facebook advertising:
Facebook allows you to advertise your website to an exact target market, by selecting the area, age group, gender, interests, education, and relationship status of the people you want to attract to your website. You can then choose between paying for the number of clicks or the number of views., setting your daily budget and the amount you are willing to pay per click/view of your site. You can also select at what time you want your ad to be run.
Display Advertising:
Display advertising is most commonly a web banner, which can contain static or animated images, as well as interactive audio or video elements. Flash animations are the most commonly used form of web banner.
Email Marketing:
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which involves companies and individuals emailing potential customers to increase awareness of their product or service, to encourage customer loyalty and entice new customers. Email advertising is also designed to create repeat business among existing customers.
Advertisements are also often added to emails sent by other companies to their customers.
Unsolicited advertising emails are known as Spam.
Social Media Optimisation:
Social media optimisation involves increasing public awareness through social media rather than search engines. Social media commonly includes RSS feeds, blogs, Flickr galleries and Youtube videos. SMO is a technique of viral marketing, but instead of using word of mouth to raise awareness, awareness is raised through social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites.
Google show their paid advertising links on the right side of the results page under the "sponsored listings" section. These links are mini-advertisements that are paid for by an advertiser on a per click basis. PPC increases the level of internet traffic to a website dramatically in the same way as SEO.
Facebook advertising:
Facebook allows you to advertise your website to an exact target market, by selecting the area, age group, gender, interests, education, and relationship status of the people you want to attract to your website. You can then choose between paying for the number of clicks or the number of views., setting your daily budget and the amount you are willing to pay per click/view of your site. You can also select at what time you want your ad to be run.
Display Advertising:
Display advertising is most commonly a web banner, which can contain static or animated images, as well as interactive audio or video elements. Flash animations are the most commonly used form of web banner.
Email Marketing:
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which involves companies and individuals emailing potential customers to increase awareness of their product or service, to encourage customer loyalty and entice new customers. Email advertising is also designed to create repeat business among existing customers.
Advertisements are also often added to emails sent by other companies to their customers.
Unsolicited advertising emails are known as Spam.
Social Media Optimisation:
Social media optimisation involves increasing public awareness through social media rather than search engines. Social media commonly includes RSS feeds, blogs, Flickr galleries and Youtube videos. SMO is a technique of viral marketing, but instead of using word of mouth to raise awareness, awareness is raised through social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Search Engine Optimisation
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the volume of internet traffic to a website from a search engine, by placing the website higher in the search results.
Search Engine Optimisation is important because the higher on the results list a website appears, the more likely the site is to be visited. This results in greater user awareness of the company/product/service that the web page is for. More traffic means more potential customers which results in more profit, from both sales and the sale of advertising space.
Four search engines are Google, Yahoo!, Baidu (China) and Live Search.
Google had 135 million visitors from the US alone in one month.
Yahoo.com attracts at least 1.575 billion visitors annually, while the network of Yahoo! receive 3.4 billion page views daily.
Baidu has an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files, with over 5.5 million visitors annually.
Live Search processes over 2.5 billion queries every month.
SEO can be improved through a number of different ways.
Create dynamic titles; use titles that is relevant to the information, and use a heading formatting tag, to increase its importance to both search engines and users.
Write a relevant META tag; META tags are found in the and contain keywords, a site description and author information.
Create a sitemap; sitemaps include all the links in your page, and a search engine uses the links in a page to determine its relevance. Enough said.
Use tooltips; tooltips are descriptive text that appear over text and images when the mouse hovers over them.
Ping your content; using a ping feature informs a search engine when you update your site, and recently updated sites are more likely to have a higher ranking.
Create an account with Google; as Google is the world’s largest search engine, making them aware of your site is likely to give your site a higher rating. After creating an account, verify your site. (Complete instructions can be found here, http://tutorialblog.org/8-tips-to-improve-search-engine-optimisation/ ).
Links; the higher the number of inbound links in your site(links to your site from other sites), the higher priority a search engine will attach to your site.
Key Words; Headlines and Title Tags should always contain key words regarding the content of your website.
Category Pages; creating theme or category pages results in related data being found in a single place, meaning search engines will place greater importance on said page.
Highlighting Content; highlighting content prominently on your page, such as a “Top 5” list once again attracts a search engines attention.
Search Engine Optimisation is important because the higher on the results list a website appears, the more likely the site is to be visited. This results in greater user awareness of the company/product/service that the web page is for. More traffic means more potential customers which results in more profit, from both sales and the sale of advertising space.
Four search engines are Google, Yahoo!, Baidu (China) and Live Search.
Google had 135 million visitors from the US alone in one month.
Yahoo.com attracts at least 1.575 billion visitors annually, while the network of Yahoo! receive 3.4 billion page views daily.
Baidu has an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files, with over 5.5 million visitors annually.
Live Search processes over 2.5 billion queries every month.
SEO can be improved through a number of different ways.
Create dynamic titles; use titles that is relevant to the information, and use a heading formatting tag, to increase its importance to both search engines and users.
Write a relevant META tag; META tags are found in the
Create a sitemap; sitemaps include all the links in your page, and a search engine uses the links in a page to determine its relevance. Enough said.
Use tooltips; tooltips are descriptive text that appear over text and images when the mouse hovers over them.
Ping your content; using a ping feature informs a search engine when you update your site, and recently updated sites are more likely to have a higher ranking.
Create an account with Google; as Google is the world’s largest search engine, making them aware of your site is likely to give your site a higher rating. After creating an account, verify your site. (Complete instructions can be found here, http://tutorialblog.org/8-tips-to-improve-search-engine-optimisation/ ).
Links; the higher the number of inbound links in your site(links to your site from other sites), the higher priority a search engine will attach to your site.
Key Words; Headlines and Title Tags should always contain key words regarding the content of your website.
Category Pages; creating theme or category pages results in related data being found in a single place, meaning search engines will place greater importance on said page.
Highlighting Content; highlighting content prominently on your page, such as a “Top 5” list once again attracts a search engines attention.
Web Accessibility
Web accessibility is the practice of making web sites available to people of all abilities and disabilities.
Web accessibility is important because is important because the more accessible a site is, more users can access the information contained in the site.
Accessibility can be improved in the following ways:
Correctly naming images to enable the use of text-to-speech software/ text-to-Braille hardware.
Making images and text enlargeable to accommodate visually impaired users.
Making active areas such as buttons and links larger to accommodate users who have difficulty using a mouse with precision.
Coding web pages so that they can be accessed by keyboard or a single switch device exclusively.
Close-captioning of videos, or a sign language equivalent makes multimedia available to the hearing impaired.
The use of plain language and instructional diagrams in informative websites provides ease of access to users with dyslexia or learning difficulties.
Ease of navigation and designing buttons and links to stand out also improves accessibility for all users.
http://www.samanzerin.com/ is an example of a website that is not considered accessible.The site has miniature navigation buttons, that are hidden in the texture of the background. These buttons also seem to link to random pages, rather than back and forward as most users would presume, considering the buttons are left/right arrows.
There is almost no text contained in the site, explaining what is going on, or even what the site is for.
http://www.questacon.edu.au/ is an example of a website that is easily accessible. With an easily accessible menu bar that features drop down menus with high contrast rollovers, a home page link that appears when you navigate to another page, it is impossible to become lost. On each of the sub pages, links to different information pages come complete with descriptors, explaining what is on the next page, saving time and effort required to find the desired information. The bright colours are designed to engage the target audience of school children
Web accessibility is important because is important because the more accessible a site is, more users can access the information contained in the site.
Accessibility can be improved in the following ways:
Correctly naming images to enable the use of text-to-speech software/ text-to-Braille hardware.
Making images and text enlargeable to accommodate visually impaired users.
Making active areas such as buttons and links larger to accommodate users who have difficulty using a mouse with precision.
Coding web pages so that they can be accessed by keyboard or a single switch device exclusively.
Close-captioning of videos, or a sign language equivalent makes multimedia available to the hearing impaired.
The use of plain language and instructional diagrams in informative websites provides ease of access to users with dyslexia or learning difficulties.
Ease of navigation and designing buttons and links to stand out also improves accessibility for all users.
http://www.samanzerin.com/ is an example of a website that is not considered accessible.The site has miniature navigation buttons, that are hidden in the texture of the background. These buttons also seem to link to random pages, rather than back and forward as most users would presume, considering the buttons are left/right arrows.
There is almost no text contained in the site, explaining what is going on, or even what the site is for.
http://www.questacon.edu.au/ is an example of a website that is easily accessible. With an easily accessible menu bar that features drop down menus with high contrast rollovers, a home page link that appears when you navigate to another page, it is impossible to become lost. On each of the sub pages, links to different information pages come complete with descriptors, explaining what is on the next page, saving time and effort required to find the desired information. The bright colours are designed to engage the target audience of school children
Useability/ Useability Testing
Useability/ Useability Testing
Useability refers to the ease with which a user interface in a website can be used.
According to Jakob Nielsen, useability is important because "studies of user behaviour on the Web find a low tolerance for difficult designs or slow sites. People don't want to wait. And they don't want to learn how to use a home page. There's no such thing as a training class or a manual for a Web site. People have to be able to grasp the functioning of the site immediately after scanning the home page—for a few seconds at most."
Jakob Nielsen (1994), Usability Inspection Methods, Morgan John Wiley & Sons.
Useability can be improved by making web sites more efficient, tasks can be completed faster; easier to learn’ operation can be learned by observation; and making the page more visually satisfying to use.
Useability can be tested in 5 ways, outlined by Jakob Nielsen: Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
Useability refers to the ease with which a user interface in a website can be used.
According to Jakob Nielsen, useability is important because "studies of user behaviour on the Web find a low tolerance for difficult designs or slow sites. People don't want to wait. And they don't want to learn how to use a home page. There's no such thing as a training class or a manual for a Web site. People have to be able to grasp the functioning of the site immediately after scanning the home page—for a few seconds at most."
Jakob Nielsen (1994), Usability Inspection Methods, Morgan John Wiley & Sons.
Useability can be improved by making web sites more efficient, tasks can be completed faster; easier to learn’ operation can be learned by observation; and making the page more visually satisfying to use.
Useability can be tested in 5 ways, outlined by Jakob Nielsen: Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
Key Web Terms Defined
URL
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
A URL is the unique address for a file that is accessible on the Internet. The URL contains the protocol to be used to access the file resource, the domain name that identifies a specific computer on the Internet, and the path name, which is a hierarchical description specifying the location of a file in that computer.
An example of a URL is http://scosborne-web-design.blogspot.com/
A URL can be obtained from an web hosting company. Personal URLs are often obtained from Internet service providers, such as Optus, Telstra, iiNet, Vodafone, etc.
HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.
HTML was developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1980, with the purpose of allowing researchers to share and update information amongst themselves. The use of HTML led Berners-Lee to develop the World Wide Web, to increase the amount of researchers that could share information.
HTML looks like this:
An example of an HTML website is:
http://www.killersites.com/
CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, is a style sheet language used to determine the appearance of a website written in a markup language such as HTML and XHTML. CSS consists of a list of rules, with selectors and declarations, which define the function of a website.
The advantage of CSS is that it improves content accessibility, as well as providing more flexibility and control of the presentation of a website. CSS also reduces the complexity of the structural content, because it does not require the use of tables for design.CSS enables the same page to be presented in number of different formats, such as on-screen, print, voice and also on Braille-based tactile devices.
CSS can be implemented in two ways. One is to attach the style sheet to the HTML page as a separate document contained within the root folder. The other method is to embed the CSS coding into the HTML document itself.
Flash
Flash is a vector animation program, designed to create animations for web display.
Three advantages of using Flash content in a website are:
Flash movies load faster and have smaller files because they are vector based.
Flash caches movies that have been viewed, meaning they don’t have to be downloaded multiple times.
There are almost no browser compatibility issues with Flash, as everything is embedded, and does not rely on any coded formatting.
Three disadvantages of using Flash content in a website are:
Flash handles text very poorly, which is a problem because the Internet is based on users reading text.
Flash also displays text very slowly and in poor quality.
Development of Flash sites are also significantly slower than HTML development. Even with the incorporated coding available in the program, coding in HTML is still faster.
Javascript
JavaScript is a simple coding language used as an add-on to HTML coding. It is cross-browser and cross-platform compatible.
Some instances of where to use JavaScript in a website would be:
Creating an image rollover
Creating pop-up menus that enable instant navigation
Form validation, which informs the user if a submitted form is valid, without connecting to a web server.
Creating body text, with the use of the tag, and applying text formatting with JavaScript.
Browser
A browser is a program or application that allows the user to view and interact with web pages.
The first web browser was Tim Burners-Lee’s WorldWideWeb.
6 web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera and Netscape.
As the default Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer has the greatest market share, with 71.52% of the market share across its 8 versions. Version 6 has 24.67% of the market, while version 7 has 46.35%
Firefox controls 19.97% of the market share.
As the default browser for Macs, Safari has 6.65% of the market share.
Google Chrome has approximately 1% of the market for web browsers.
Opera also has approximately 1% of the market share, although it is used by approximately 20% of the Russian market, and is a common browser on mobile devices.
Netscape currently has approximately 0.4% of the market share.
Cross Browser Compatibility refers to the ability of a website to maintain its correct appearance and functions across all different web browsers. With the advent of more web browsers this has become more difficult, with a feature that works on one browser often causing problems in another.
Cross browser compatibility is important for web design because it means that your web page design will display and function correctly on any web browser. It is because of cross browser compatibility that tables have been replaced by CSS code, because CSS relies less on the web browser to display correctly.
ISP
An ISP is an Internet Service Provider; a company that provides its customers with Internet access through dial-up, cable modem, DSL or dedicated high speed connections.
iiNet and Optusnet are Australian ISP’s, while BT Broadband provides Internet services in the UK.
Hosting
Hosting involves running Internet Servers, allowing individuals and companies to upload information to the Internet.
Web Central is Australia’s largest web hosting company, while ASPHostCentral is a web hosting company based in Houston, Texas.
Open Source
Open Source is a program where, the source code is publicly available for use and modification from its original design for no cost.
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