this has great intro presso - build it yourself, $60 per year, includes all that naf stock photog that they seem to love. and apparently spits out code suitable for searching.
http://www.homestead.com/also, googles online presso about 101 online marketing watch when time, might be good to pass onto clients to help educate them of process
Thinking for stingey clients who want the moon but only have a small budget and don't value branding, typography, usability, good photography, accessibility, load speed, xbrowser, they basically want a online version of a shoddy print shop brochure but it should show up first in google. (but look and function as slick as their competitors $30K websites and have a CMS and the video content must shoot, edit and encode itself... sighhh. slight exageration but its funny.)
Perhaps their entire budget is best spent on hiring a professional web copywriter/SEO dude to rewrite their copy and restructure their sitemap with landing pages, calls to action, all that. (as they think the way it looks is unimportant anyway and 'branding' is just sticking their logo designed in MS Paint in the top corner :)
Then, with that copy and sitemap in hand based on the copywriter/SEO experts advice, they can use a tool like homestead to build a site themselves that dosn't look like anything inparticular but has mad SEO optimisation.
Perhaps they need a building tool completely unfocussed on graphics. Sort of plain text wireframes, with their logo in the corner of course for clear branding.
Not really sure if that would work, the building tool would have to have decent SEO features so it all comes out right in the code. But its an interesting proposition and question, what's most important, rank in google or clear branding, user experience, etc?
For a small biz, they think always rank in google must be highest priority, except what happens when a potential customer gets to their site using IE6 and the main nav is unusable, or worse has the message 'this site may harm your computer', customer thinks hmmm dodgy these people don't seem that trustworthy I cant even find their contact details and whats with the shit logo and I cant read the text it's black on a red background in 9pt comic sans (for example :)
So what is the point of getting first in google if you can't follow through with something that looks professional and trustworthy?
Homestead templates look like a decent stop gap option for initial stages of growth or companies not needing a specific online strategy. Too bad if your competitor chooses the same template...
DIY wordpress themes roundup:
The thesis theme.
Its a commercial theme framework, as well as a WSIWUG theme.
resonable price of $164 plus $40 per client site.
Good for quick setups, looks easy to customise as blogger. Also apparently has an easy to customise menu for wp as a cms. Id have to trial it for real though to test, menus are hard in wordpress!
But with the base price and say 2 days of setting up and customising the colours and options and plugins, that might be adequate for some clients to get them started online.
Id like to also trial if using the DIY controls in this theme is actually faster than doing it in css. since you cant seem to preview the changes LIVE in the same screen like you can with firebug, I'd guess its a slow process to make a change and check it each time. But for someone who dosnt know css it would be really helpful.
Apparently it also has a feature that help you make custom hooks into the theme functions, which is what I'd find really handy, i don't like too much php.
actually, watched some videos, benefits include:
-simple navigation menu addition, renaming and ordering. (looks to be only one level, not child pages but need to check) its good not to need a plugin for this.
-easily add software scripts to header etc (or... you could just add them to your templates but whatever)
-seo options for each post/page without using a plugin, its all there on the page editing. this is good ya.
-updates. someone else updates the base theme with new versions of wp. I dont have to do it. That is a huge bonus really for the future. not my responsibility! and support if it breaks helps to have one other brain on it.
-the code output is really neat when you view source. even when you alter the design in admin panel, it dosnt write any screwy code, it seems to write to the css or swap stylesheets or something.
Still, it is pretty blog centric. Id like to see thesis as a cms specific features and layouts.
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