A lot of talk these days is about the relative merits of a proprietary CMS system as opposed to an open source CMS system.

Here are a few reasons as to why we recommend using our proprietary Webi CMS, content management system over and above an open source system such as Drupal or Wordpress:

1) With a proprietary system such as Webi CMS, you get the guaranteed ongoing support from us 24x7 (365 days a year), our support is always there.

2) When using an open source system, you would tend to get an expert in (an individual) who knows how to set up a site with a particular open source system. Generally there are still many ways that you can set up that website, and only that developer will know exactly what has been done. Generally that developer is also a freelancer and you have no guarantee that after the website is built that they will still be around for years to come (e.g. they might have gone off backpacking, or might get a permanent job) and then they can no longer support the site, plus you have to get someone new in who is prepared to continue working with another developers code and no developers like working with another developers code!

In fact, even if the developer is full time, unless the design/development agency has a team of developers who all work together on projects, then the same risk applies - the developer leaves and no one else has the required knowledge of the system to properly support it.

3) Open source systems work on a completely different model to proprietary systems such as Webi CMS in terms of updates. Open source systems tend to have their core system updated approximately every 30 days, and it's then up to the developers supporting each clients individual copies of this system to upgrade it. This provides a significant ongoing overhead to the developers supporting it to continue to do these updates whenever they are available - in some systems these updates are not straight forward and if there is a significant upgrade to the core open source system then sometimes it becomes more difficult again.

If the open source system has been customised to handle specific client website requirements then these upgrades become more difficult again because now every core/standard system upgrade needs to be considered as to the potential impact with the customised functionality - again creating a significant time/cost overhead to the supporting developers, creating the potential for errors, and either leading to the developers not upgrading on a regular basis (or at all), not doing it with due care and attention as they aren't being paid enough for the level of support required, or them charging an astronomical support fee to cater for properly handling these updates.

Our approach is very different, we essentially have one copy of the system that everyone uses, which is continually kept up to date - there's no 30 day cycles and no multiple copies of the system to update - furthermore, it is the core development team performing all updates rather than having to push out updates for other people to apply.

4) Any developer that works with an open source system, is never going to know the content management system as well as a company with a proprietary system that they have built themselves from scratch.

5) An open source system cannot be as flexible, given the proprietary system can be fundamentally altered by the company who has developed it (if needed) whereas there will always be restrictions in how much an open source system can be altered. Equally many open source systems such as Drupal are fundamentally template driven systems again limiting the extent to which they can be set up or customised to exacting requirements.

6) Lastly, there are so many open source systems out there, you cannot possibly know which open source systems will stand the test of time, there are many that come and go, so you have no guarantee that the platform itself will even continue to be developed, and the moment that stops then no freelancers will continue to support it.

If you have any specific questions on our proprietary content management system, Webi CMS, then please dp get in touch by calling us on 020 8739 0020 or emailing us at info@webicms.com

Recently, we were helping one of our new design agency clients by providing some considerations, tips and pointers for them to consider when writing their Webpage Titles - and we thought, why not share the knowledge with the wider world too!

So below is some info as a guide to help with getting the most out of your webpage titles.

It's so frustrating to see a site that has been so beautifully architected, designed, and programmed and finished to such as high standard, but then not fully Search Engine Optimised (SEO)...

We like to think that Webi CMS is one of the best content management systems for SEO, and the tools we have available in Webi CMS mean you can drastically improve and enhance your search engine performance without having to pay for an SEO consultant.

In addition to adding in Webpage titles, Webi CMS features the ability to add Friendly URLs, Meta Keywords, Meta Descriptions, there are helpful 'hover texts' to provide users with guidance on what to write where, as well as having high quality clean HTML, and making sure all right SEO tags are included in the right places. We have the expertise to set websites up in a way so they are Search engine friendly, and our CMS has been designed so you effectively have free SEO tools at your fingertips (literally!) without you having to pay for any extra SEO consultancy.

This blog isn't to talk about enhancing SEO in general, it is more to give some more specific pointers to how you can make the most out of your webpage titles.

Out of all the SEO features in Webi CMS, and in fact out all the SEO work you could do, the Webpage titles are the single most important thing you can do to optimize your site for good performance in search engines, so it's really worth spending some time in getting your webpage titles right. However they are so often tragically neglected or forgotten about by many website owners.

So here are a few of our pointers and tips for your Webpage titles:

1. You want to be aiming to write between 60 and 70 characters for your Webpage title. Too little and you're not using your full allocation available, and too many will mean the Keywords will be diluted.
2. The terms that appear first in the webpage title will be given more importance, whereas the terms at the end will be given less importance when the page is indexed by the search engines.
3. There is no need to repeat a keyword on a page where it is less relevant. For example if your design agency offers both 'videos' and 'websites' then on the Webpage title for the 'Websites' page, then you don't need to mention 'Videos' in the webpage title too.
4. There isn't much point in having your company name in the Webpage title (unless your company name contains keywords relating to what your business is about). For example, Webigence our holding company doesn't have our company name here in our webpage title http://www.webigence.com/ and the fact we are called 'Webigence' is irrelevant for a person looking in Google for a web development company in London. If however, you do want to include your company name then make sure it is right at the end of the webpage title, not at the beginning (as mentioned above).
5. Don't duplicate your webpage titles, as this makes it difficult to determine which page is which when they are all displayed in search engine results pages. All of your website 'pages' should be unique — so by logic, all of your 'web page titles' should also be unique.
6. You should also try and make sure your webpage titles reflect the content of your page. So if possible the body text on the page should contain the same terms as used in your webpage title.

If you can implement the above then hopefully over time you will see some uplift in your search engine performance. Of course there are many other factors which are important in rising the search rankings but the webpage title is vitally important to get right, so we hope the above helps.

We are working on new websites and enhancements to existing websites all the time, and we are really proud of the quality of websites we have running on our Webi CMS platform. We are lucky to have lots of great designers and agencies who create some beautiful and effective designs and we can then add on the content managed elements to create some really powerful and compelling websites.

So here's just a few examples of websites we have worked on recently:

World Arthritis Day

We were on a tight timeline to get this website set up, but I'm pleased to say we hit all the deadlines we had set and all parties seem to be extremely pleased with the results.

The website combines lots of different aspects, including a photo competition with voting on the website, activities of the month added on a regular basis and lots of downloadable resources.

World Arthritis Day is on October 12th and I would encourage you to visit their website and back the campaign to 'Move to Improve'.

Visit the website: www.worldarthritisday.org

Superstat

We work with Superstat in a number of ways, including now powering their own website. They are able to very easily add any number of additional pages, additional menu items, documents to download, forms and create easy to navigate pages with sub-menus.

The second screenshot below shows their online ordering page, where they talk about several website products they offer as a business - and all of these are also powered by Webi CMS.

They also have a logged in members area with lots of additional features that I can't tell non-members about!

Visit their website: www.superstat.co.uk

Katie's Cards

We have worked with the team at Katie's Cards for several years now, to help them develop a really successful ecards business, where users can sign up to become a member of the website for a small annual fee, and can then send out any number of their beautiful ecards to friends and family.

It's a complex website to content manage, but it is all taken care of using Webi CMS and the website continues to go from strength to strength.

We are just in the middle of a series of updates, so within the next few weeks the website will become even better than it is now!

Visit the website: www.katiescards.com

New Beccehamian Hockey Club

This is the first sports club related website that we have worked on, but we now hope to do many more as we know many sports clubs and associations often have very poor websites, and we would like to help them improve to better serve their members. These types of websites are normally very well suited to be content managed as there is regular need to add more content about sporting results, photo galleries, and more besides.

The New Beccs website includes the functions mentioned above, makes it very easy to add more pages, easy to content manage contact details, easy for new members to join and then receive access to the members area, and even has a Roll of Honour section where New Beccs can provide a permanent record of those members who have done very well or very badly!

Visit their website: www.newbeccshc.co.uk

fc-d

We also build and power websites for a number of design agencies. fc-d is one of those - we look after their own website, and we work with them on client projects too.

fc-d's own website is really very simple, they aren't trying to do anything flashy, simply show who they are and what they've done in a straight forward and easy to use website.

Visit their website: www.fc-d.com

Final words

As the above examples hopefully demonstrate, we can power all manner of websites and in almost every case the websites we produce have very specific design, branding and functionality requirements, and we are here to make sure everything is done properly and in the best possible way as we integrate with our Webi CMS platform.

If you would like an equally powerful and compelling content managed website for your organisation then get in touch and we are always happy to talk through how we could work with you.

HTML5 clearly has a big future, and that future is rapidly approaching. It provides many advances and advantages over previous versions of HTML, but actually you don't need to try to take on everything at once.

Why we love it

Mostly because we can see the potential of what can (and will) be achieved with it in the future, particularly in the mobile space, but also because it feels absolutely like the logical and next progression that the web should be taking.

You may well have heard about "the semantic web", and how search engines and other machines are trying to better understand the contents of websites and HTML5 (along with other related specifications such as Microdata) helps with this process by providing additional tags that infer meaning to the content.

There's also other perhaps more pertinent benefits of HTML5 for the here and now, such as "Local Storage" that can store lots of data locally on the user's browser. We could already do this with the use of cookies, but (and without getting too technical in this post - it's not intended to be a techie post!) local storage is more efficient, handles more data and a wider range of purposes.

HTML5 on mobiles is also going to be huge, and in fact there's plenty of other good things and I suggest you investigate further (or get in touch and we can tell you more about it).

What about cross-browser (IE6/7/8) compatibility?

That's totally taken care of. You simply add (Javascript) script into the <head> section of the webpage and it takes care of everything. It's called html5shiv (and confusingly html5shim although they are one and the same), and you can get the exact syntax to add into the <head> section on the official google code page.

So when should you get started with HTML5?

Well as far as we're concerned, that's an easy one to answer - as soon as possible!

We are actively encouraging our web designers and design agency partners to start working with HTML5 and we are helping them learn more about it where they would like our help. It can certainly be a little intimidating to get started with it, but as we've found for ourselves when setting up this website itself to use HTML5, once you get your head around it then it makes a lot of sense and then it's relatively easy to then carry through that knowledge to subsequent sites.

Without doubt it does add on additional time to the HTML build both to learn about it in the first place (obviously) but also once you have become more familiar with it, firstly because the HTML5 standard is still evolving to a certain extent, but also because there simply additional considerations you need to think through in terms of how best to organise the content.

How to get started

A great starting point is the HTML5 Doctor website, which provides a great reference to all the new tags available in HTML5.

Do you have to learn about it? Any alternative options?

Actually you don't HAVE to, if you're a designer or organisation and you'd prefer not to get into any type of HTML then that's absolutely fine.

Particularly if you're a designer and you want to focus on the creative side, then you can simply let us take care of the HTML(5) build, and inevitably we would look to use CSS3 as well (which we love almost as much as HTML5!).

Next steps

Well, if you're read this far then well done, you've probably gone further than most! If you still have the will to live then give us a call to talk about your existing or future website and we can discuss when and how to best integrate it into Webi CMS so you can take advantage of both content management and HTML5.

Call us any time on 020 8739 0020.

Still the same great content management system, all we've done is change the name and redesign the public website.

I say that's all - the new website looks great! It's also built using HTML5 and CSS3, which we have learned a great deal about in building the Webi CMS website. The main benefits of these new technologies are that everything on the page is much more semantically structured - what that means in layman terms is that it provides more information to things like search engines about the structure and meaning of the website content.

Completely unrelated to this redesign and renaming, we've also been making lots of other improvements to the system over the last month or two and some of these upgrades are starting to make their way into existing client websites. Do get in touch to find out more about what we've been doing, or otherwise we will be blogging about some of these upgrades in the next couple of months.