This post is in response to a client's questions regarding a transition to a CMS.
It appears from the requests for more information regarding comparisons of features there is some question of why make a change to the website. This seems to be the basic reason for requesting justifications for the move.
My short answer is…you don’t need to do anything with the current website. It works just fine. An analogy might be that I’ve been driving a 1954 Ford since 1954 and it continues to work just fine on all of the highways and it continues to use gas just fine. It continues to get me from home to work and back just fine. So, why would I want to buy a new car? The short answer is…you don’t need to buy a new car, the old one works fine. The reason for buying the new car would include such things as taking advantage of new technologies like anti-locking breaks, collision air bags, built in OnStar safety tracking systems, better power steering systems, etc.
The point I wish to make here is that the web site works fine for the technology it is using. The problem is the technologies driving the Internet and the World Wide Web are continually changing and advancing and that alone will begin to impact how people see our website if they are using the more advanced browser technologies.
I would also like to point out here that I am not intent on selling you something, my job is to advise you on your website and how well it performs based on the technology it is using and the technology of today’s Internet and how it is advancing beyond our website performance. The problems we are facing are how to combat cross browser conflicts and technical language validation among a number of other advancing issues.
Your current website has been written using .asp which, at the time of the design was the accepted "best practice" for web design. Since that time the Content Management System software has taken a lead to offer better page layouts with layered skin designs (using different specific languages like AJAX, DHTML, etc.), more advanced feature modules (see attachment A), better control of DOC TYPE standards (Document Type), more advanced page validation for being accepted by the W3C's (World Wide Web Consortium) design standards, and to help overcome cross browser conflicts that have become an increasing problem as more browser companies are born and as we continue to witness the growth and change of monitor sizes and aspect ratios.
Regarding the difficulties presented by an ever growing number of browser companies. What has become extremely difficult for web developers using static page design methods (Our website is currently a static web design) is how to accommodate cross browser rendering as more and more web browsers are used to present a website to the monitor. The problem is the lack of control of browser companies in mandating some type of world wide standard to be used for page rendering. In today's world without any control each browser company is free to design their own browser to perform and read the programming code and then, to display it in their own way. The result is readily seen today when we find some users take advantage of the Microsoft web browser, Internet Explorer and they see the web page appearing in one format. While other web users might take advantage of the Firefox web browser and they find the same web page appears differently or, they may use Opera or Thunderbird or Safari, Gecko, Flock, Lobo and many many more and find the same web page looks distorted or some text is formatted wildly across the page or some important items on the page like a Flash animation might not even appear.
The result of all of this non compliance to any standard is we, the website owners, continually find ourselves listening to complaints from visitors to our website who complain that our website doesn't work or looks funny or they can't read something. When questioned further we find the visitor is using a very obscure browser like Songbird which does not render the web page to the monitor in the same way the website has been designed to present the pages. This is what we call browser conflicts...when a website has been designed to render to the monitor perfectly in one browser while showing up very out of sorts when viewed in a different browser.
Our efforts to combat this along with many of the other problems I outline such as page validation are all a part of why we advise clients to move their websites to a more advanced technology such as a Content Management System (CMS). As a result, website owners often think web designers are simply attempting to squeeze more money from them when, in reality the designer is honestly trying to keep the website current with advancing technology. Websites are in need of re-designs about every 2-3 years to stay technology current and fresh.
To explain a little about page validation... Most pages on the World Wide Web are written in computer languages (such as HTML) that allow Web authors to structure text, add multimedia content, and specify what appearance, or style, the result should have.
As for every language, these have their own grammar, vocabulary and syntax, and every document written with these computer languages are supposed to follow these rules. The (X)HTML languages, for all versions up to XHTML 1.1, are using machine-readable grammars called DTDs (Document Type Definition), a mechanism inherited from SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language).
However, Just as texts in a natural language can include spelling or grammar errors, documents using Markup languages may (for various reasons) not be following these rules. The process of verifying whether a document actually follows the rules for the language(s) it uses is called validation, and the tool used for that is a validator. A document that passes this process with success is called valid.
With these concepts in mind, we can define "markup validation" as the process of checking a Web document against the grammar (generally a DTD - Document Type Declaration) it claims to be using.
This validator checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, XML, DHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc. The CMS program has built in language restrictions that help the web designer to author pages that validate within the Content Management Software and conform to the W3C's web design standards for language.
In addition, the CMS (Content Management Software) program has given birth to a whole new set of features the web designer can take advantage of to create state of the art, aesthetically interesting, and interactive websites. The features are provided in pre-programmed modules that are inserted into containers within the website and offer such things for the designer and the website owner as, account login controls, accordion styled text viewers that expand and contract to show large amounts of information in small areas, events calendars, content rotators that change photos like a slide show or change photos upon each entry to the page, contained blogs and forums, date controlled announcements, dynamic forms creators, user defined tables, feedback forms, registration forms, video displays, photo galleries with user interfaces that allow for uploading new photos to the albums, Flash animations, and much much more.
Blue Diamond Webs designs and builds next generation content managed websites that offer the client the ability to edit specific pages along with specific areas of a page based on the authorization of the website Administrator. This authorized security allows for you to have staff members edit entire pages or only specific modules they retain permissions to edit on any given page. At the same time Blue Diamond Webs will continue to maintain oversight of the website to insure we are able to maintain a polished and professional appearing publication and to be available if a technical question arises that needs our support.
Beginning in January of 2009 all web sites have been designed using the latest version of DotNetNuke Version 5.0 or later to take advantage of the advanced features offered by robust content managed paging designs along with page validation features.
Blue Diamond Webs designs are selected based on viewer populations using the most popular browsers as listed below. With this in mind, Blue Diamond Webs works to accomplish the highest success rate of cross browser rendering as possible as we attempt to comply with client feature requests and browser conflicts.
The following represent the World Wide Web viewing population as outlined by the W3C for the month of March, 2010.
• IE7: 54.7%
• Firefox: 37.2%
• Mozilla: 1.3%
• Safari: 1.9%
• Opera: 1.4%
The following browsers command less than 3.5% of the combined viewing population.
• Netscape
• AOL
Browsers that count for less than 0.5% are not listed here.
All web sites are designed to function as well as possible on the highest quantity of browsers keeping in mind the restrictions some browsers have and how those restrictions impact client feature requests. All websites are cross browser friendly insuring accurate rendering of all pages to the viewer for the highest population of readership. Cross browser testing includes compatibility for the following browsers:
Notable Level I Browsers:
World Wide Web
Mosaic
Netscape Navigator
Internet Explorer 6.0 – 8.0+
Opera
Mozilla
Safari
Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
Yahoo
Level II Browsers:
Trident (Supporting Internet Explorer 4.0)
Tasman (Supporting Internet Explorer 5.0)
Gecko
Webkit (Apple, Inc.)
Presto (Support for Opera)
AOL Explorer
Enigma
Konqueror
BOLT
OmniWeb
Level III Browsers:
Flock
HotJava
Lobo
Songbird
The list above is representative of only a small selection of the complete set of web browsers available for Internet viewing worldwide, currently in excess of 6,500. This listing does not include category listings for such web browsers as those represented in country specific, industry specific, society specific, data specific, club specific, ethnic specific, or language specific browser listings.
Subsequent Questions:
What development language do you use and why?
Blue Diamond Webs creates all web sites using .ASP (Active Server Pages). ASP was one of the first web application development environments that integrated web application execution directly into the web server. This was done in order to achieve high performance compared to calling external executable programs or CGI scripts which was the most popular method for writing web applications at the time it was introduced. The Active Server method allows for the more robust server to execute a majority of the commands associated with web page rendering which, allows for the web site to display more efficiently and with a much quicker display time. In conjunction with .ASP Blue Diamond Webs takes advantage of the Microsoft Windows web server application IIS ( Internet Information Services). Formerly called Internet Information Server - is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. The protocols supported in IIS 7 include: FTP, FTPS, SMTP, NNTP, and HTTP/HTTPS.
Do you validate your code?
Blue Diamond Webs has validated code for web sites using the Transitional Document Type
(<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
until the end of 2007. Beginning in January of 2008 Blue Diamond Webs began development using the Strict Document Type based on the mandate issued by the W3C that all web site development code comply with the "Strict" standard beginning in 2009.
Are your sites written in Table-less HTML or XHTML?
Blue Diamond Webs creates custom dynamic web sites using DotNetNuke Content Management Software to take advantage of advanced features that include database support, client editable pages and modules. These are the features that offer the ability to create a more customized appearance. All web design projects are written using HTML as the base language and are validated to insure all documents conform to the rules outlined below:
• Non-empty elements are delimited by both a start-tag and an end-tag.
• Empty elements may be marked with an empty-element (self-closing) tag.
• All attribute values are quoted with either single (') or double (") quotes. Single quotes close a single quote and double quotes close a double quote.
• Tags are nested but not overlapped.
• Each non-root element is completely contained in another element.
• The document complies with its declared character encoding. The encoding may be declared or implied externally, such as in "Content-Type" headers when a document is transported via HTTP, or internally, using explicit markup at the very beginning of the document. When no such declaration exists, a Unicode encoding is assumed, as defined by a Unicode Byte Order Mark before the document's first character. If the mark does not exist, UTF-8 encoding is assumed.
What elements will make our site search engine friendly?
Most often search engine compatibility takes into account numerous features far more involved than can be effectively addressed here however, we commonly incorporate search engine and spider characteristics that include some of the following:
• META Tag Design
• Independent Site Page Titling
• Site Description
• Page Independent Site Keyword Selection
• Image/Text ratio
• Image Alt Tags
• External Site Links
• Search Engine Submissions
• Industry database inclusions
• Google Sitemap.xml file
• Robot.txt file
• Google Analytics (Statistical Visitor Analysis)
What we have experienced is a situation where the technology leap frogs the current technology that is in place. The difficulties arise when the new technology is not designed as a continuation of existing technology. The result is that to move forward with the latest technology we are required to re-design our website using the new technology. A better analogy might be to say we have been driving a car but, the next generation of transportation is the airplane. The result is that we can't revise our car to fly so we are required to buy an airplane to be able to move ahead in the next generation of transportation.
I hope these explanations might help to explain why we might want to transfer the website to a more advanced state of the art software than what we currently use. I think you can see by the depth of the technical issues this is far more aimed at insuring your website functions properly in today's World Wide Web than just outlining some interesting new features that wow the visitor. So, to offer this information in a side by side set of comparable features is not really feasible.
Now that being said, if you feel uncomfortable moving forward with new technology or, if there is some question of cost, my advice would be to continue with the current website until we begin to experience a greater volume of complaints from visitors about the website not appearing correctly which, would mean we are experiencing a bigger problem with the cross browser rendering issue.
Attachment A (The following is a very limited list of available feature modules for Content Management Systems)
Account Login
User Registration
User Defined Tables
Events Calendar
Announcements
Feedback Forms
Registration Forms
Accordion Content Extender
Blogs
Forums
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
User editable Links
Survey Forms
Photo Galleries (User upload capable)
E-Commerce Storefronts
Social Networking
Flash Players
Video Players
Live Content page overlay
Tool Tips
Light Box Content to show videos in an overlay window