Are you are paying somebody to run your website? There´s very nearly nothing worse for your image than having an aged web site full of spent facts just because you´re dreading the cost of updating it.

It´s time to administer of your own site.

Rapid changes have come to the character of website design and management. Ten years ago the website design industry was dominated by the "website designer", a costly and (usually) highly educated professional who was able to use source editors like Dreamweaver and was familiar with strange programming languages like HTML, ASP and PHP.

Well, things change. Things are really different now.

There is a revolutionary new technology called a "Content Management System" or "CMS" that makes experts much less vital to the developing and care of just about all straight forward websites. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying: these adept people are still central elements of the website design industry, but their application is shifting. This approach makes it workable for any passably computer able individual to be their own webmaster. Essentially just a consistent evolution of editing software professional geeks have used for years, the CMS is really just "point and click website editor". You can append and cut pages with it. You can also modify pages. All content management systems include what's oftentimes referred to as a "WYSIWYG" editor, , in point of fact, just a remarkably easy word processor. As usual the jargon isn't nearly as frightening as it probably sounds! WYSIWYG is merely another word meaning "What You See is What You Get". It allows the user to construct tables and upload pictures, and otherwise format your page. By allowing you to make modifications to the website's Navigation Menu you can also lay out a site's entire feel .

A Content Management System allows nearly anybody to rapidly and easily do all the roles that took a costly programmer hours to do hardly a few years ago.

A free or inexpensive content management system is available from practically any important site hosting service. For almost all businesses this is more than what's needed. One of my favorite web site Hosts, GoDaddy.com, has a great content management system for hosting small to medium sized enterprise web sites. An application like Paypal that connects effortlessly into a site makes it straight forward to create "shopping carts" on retail websites. Intuit, a company that provides software for accounting and CPA firms has recently branched into this new mainstream market and their templates already include a shopping cart feature.

The difference, of course, is expense. Most web designers are commonly not as motivated as you are to get your work taken care of in a timely fashion and most make $25 or more an hour. It´s not atypical for turn-arounds on professional web design jobs to be a 30 days or longer.

This doesn't even include the time spent designing the website. It can frequently take 200 hours or more to design a web site from scratch. That translates to thousands of dollars invested and months of lost time. these costs are averted by Content Management System providers by designing websites in advance and offering menus of "ready-to-use" site styles.

Many CMS providers are able to tweak their existing templates quite inexpensively, if not outright duplicate your current site, for those website owners who are already delighted with websites they have already spent piles of money on (or those who just reject using "templates"). This is a recent technology, but it´s spreading extremely fast.

Alas, while low-cost and simple to manage, websites built in this fashion frequently lack important content. A whole side industry has been built around the necessity for industry focused content, so before rushing off to GoDaddy, do a Google search for web hosts that focus on your certain industry.

For example, suppose you´re an accountant. I used this model because it happens to be my business. You'll find an assortment of companies that furnish websites specially for CPA firms complete with Content Management System just by Googling the keyword "CPA Websites".

CPA Site Solutions is the best of these, IMHO. For more than a decade we've created ace sites for CPA firms. We're also one of those cms providers on the cutting-edge that can "fine-tune" their website styles or duplicate existing websites. To find out what we are referring to when we talk about "industry specific content" inspect a demo accounting website. I'll include a sample site in myauthor signature.

Check out the tools chosen particularly for website owners in the accounting industry: free reports, tax due dates, links to tax forms and publications, a portal for transferring accounting files, interactive financial calculators, email... Maybe a head-hunter or business consultant could use some of the tools on this site,but it would be useless for a business like a hotel. A site like this is not designed to be worthwhile to a broad smorgasbord of businesses. It's essentially only intended for accounting and CPA firms.

Many industries; retail, construction, schools, non-profit, restaurant and hotel, legal, medical; have equivalent providers.

It´s worth the time and money of retaining highly trained designers for selected big very specialized firms, but for most small and medium sized enterprises, especially in these tricky economic times, it´s time to examine new solutions. Finding a Content Management System that caters to your company will trim your expenses and at the same time increase your command over your site.