Updating Content on Your Web Site

Customers ask me a lot about how they can have their web site content updated.  How this questioned is answered depends on whether you already have a web site or not. 

Existing Web Sites

If you already have a web site, it is usually best to use the original web site developer for maintenance of your web site.  The advantages of this are:

• They know the web site and the technology they used to create it, so updating the web site will have no research time involved or learning curve to come up to speed on the hosting company used or the structure of the web site and layout of the web site, etc..  Updates/maintenance time should be less and more cost effective.

Third Party Web Site Designer/Developer

Depending on your web site, this may or may not be cost effective.  It depends on the complexity of your web site.  For simple web sites there shouldn't be a huge amount of time involved in researching/discovering information about the web site (what hosting company was use, what technology was used, what is the structure of the web site, etc..).

For complex web sites, there can be a lot of time involved with researching/discovering the information regarding the web site.  There can be a high learning curve, which adds to the cost of maintenance/updating the web site.  Complex web sites are generally the most expensive to maintain.  These web sites aren't usually candidates for clients to try and update themselves.  They can be pretty technical in nature, so they aren't for the novice web site developer/office worker. 

Paint Creek Web Creations Web Sites

For web sites that I have created for you, I offer two methods depending of the level of complexity of your web site.  I can update the content on your web site (simple to complex web sites) for you or if you would prefer doing the updating yourself (simple web sites only) you can use Adobe's Contribute software for updating your web site (this software runs around $200.00) or you can use Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Editon, which you can download and use for free.

If you have plans for updating your web site content, let me know so we can talk about which option may work best for you. I find a lot of times that clients will decide in the end they don't want to bother learning a new software tool for updating their own web content.   That is fine.  I would be happy to do it for you.

For more information on Adobe's Contribute software, click here.

To see online tutorials of Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition, click here.