Why be limited to 3.5" x 2" anymore? Click to enlarge.

It’s the hot App on Facebook these days, “What jet are you?”,”What song are you?”, “What drink are you?” and so on.

Seriously though, as a creative professional, “What business card are you?” .  With all our expertise in graphics and the availability of inexpensive laser printing options, we need to start thinking out of the box guys.

Last weekend, I was inspired by a website recommended via Twitter from @nsmithmorgan.  The website was a collection of 100 uniquely inspired business cards.

So, I was needing new cards and showed the site to my wife over breakfast last Saturday and she immediately said “You need a card that folds like your Mac”, and voile, this is what I got.

It’s not a photo, but several rectangles with various gradients of gray applied and a blue “screensaver” where  my main message is.  The nice thing is I had them printed at the local Office Max on their laser printer  and therefore had the option of only making about fifty to start with.  I already know what I want to change, so the next iteration will be different; grays lighter, font different and so on. At least there were no typos

I just thought in this age of Content Management, where I preach to clients the wonders of easily managed content in their website [a la WordPress, Joomla, et al], why should I get locked in to ordering 500 boring, 3.5 x 2 business cards.  Now I am inspired to develop several business card templates and change them up (using my standard logo consistently of course).

Enjoy your new found freedom and be yourself in your business card development.

Content Management (aka CMS) is a way of building websites today that is transforming mainstream web design.  For instance, do you use a service like Blogger.com or a Facebook page? Then you’re already working in a CMS environment.

To appreciate CMS you need to understand a little background on web development history.

IN THE BEGINNING…

In the early days of web design, developers were a more programmers than designers, using a code called HTML or hypertext markup language.  You typed the actual code  in a simple text editor like Notepad™ to determine where a picture would display in a webpage and more code to indicate how text should look (bold, italics, size, color, etc.) and where it should be placed.  In short it was a lot of trial and error.  Read that: very time consuming.  But that was the roots.

The next step occurred in the late 1980’s with a new way of building sites with the advent of WYSIWYG editors (pronounced ‘wi-zee-wig’).  This was an acronym: What You See Is What You Get. Essentially like using  Microsoft Word™ or Publisher™ to form documents (aka web pages) expressly for the web written in HTML for the web. You’d create a page using tables and insert pictures where you wanted them, then could actually see at what you’d created on your computer in real time and once satisfied, save the page, upload it to your server and boom you had a slick looking site that could now have some real aesthetics.

The important take away form this is that it now opened up web design capabilities to those outside of the programming community.

Adobe came out with the first gold standard WYSIWYG editors (PageMill the later GoLive) and others soon followed and an era of visually exciting websites with significant production value came to be.

AHH….THE PROBLEM

The primary problem had to do with that word again: scalability.

As individual sites grew, business and organizational sites were prone to several common complaints.

First, like a MS Word document, these early web pages had content and code smacked together on the same page so to speak. For example, sometimes just  swapping a photo that wasn’t sized correctly on their original page would throw the layout off drastically and make text wraps move text where it shouldn’t.  A second issue often arose when you had several people working on the same site.  One  might use a small serifed font in dark gray and another use a larger non-serif font in black.  In short, the sites often turned really ugly, really quickly.

Second, as you added new content often the pages developed a life of their.  Headers changed, tag lines changed, fonts varied, links began to lose the target=”_blank” feature and so on.  Business and organizational sites began to resemble more a conglomeration of individual web pages using one domain name rather than one cohesive corporate expression of the your purpose, mission, product line, or whatever you were trying to share in a logical and intuitive format.

ONE ANSWER

The next step in the evolution of web design came in the form of  yet another development called Cascading Style Sheets or simply, CSS.

The CSS document is a separate document that is created that literally defines and implements into your website [irregardless of who adds content] hundreds of variables such as font, font styles, text area sizes, image area size and position and on and on.  It is linked to the website pages forcing everything through out the site to remain consistent.

However, CSS can be both a panacea and nightmare at the same time for a designer.  The reason? Not all browsers display CSS defined sites the same.  A line of text may have an extra space between it and the next line when viewed in Internet Explorer™ and not in Firefox™ or Safari™. Hmmm.  Bummer.

In short CSS’s cross-browser compatibility has and continues to be a major issue we as developers deal with.

Here is a lighthearted but maybe all too truthful [at times] work-flow pie chart that probably sums up how most developers look at CSS and other factors that make life as a web developer difficult:

ENTER CONTENT MANAGEMENT

There are a lot of flavors of CMS, but by far in the Web CMS category (the other is Enterprise CMS which won’t be covered here) the most popular systems use PHP, CSS and MySQL.  PHP is the code/language to build the pages, CSS configures everything and MySQL is the open source database that contains your data.

What makes CMS so inviting is the fact that it’s EASY TO USE!

Also, they are generally more cross browser compatible than straight CSS sites.

Say, for instance, you’re tasked with writing a weekly article for your organizations web site.  You really don’t need to know anything about website design, code, CSS, and so on.  An added bonus is the fact that you don’t need any high priced software to speak of to run your own CMS based website.  You need only have an internet connection and a computer with a browser.  In fact if you’ve ever used a Facebook page you’re probably skilled enough manage your own website using CMS.

I need to back up at this point for the sake of not over-simplifying and say CMS website platforms come in a lot of flavors.  Some work out of the box while others require by design, a reasonable amount of customization.

Some of the simpler versions are provided by web host companies when you sign up for a hosting account.  You may hear web host provider refer their “free website templates”.  Well these are CMS sites, just in a one size fits all arrangement that allows you to get your basic message up quickly,  literally in minutes [sometimes].  GoDaddy and many others offer this option.

However the one drawback is, ahh yes, that word again…scalability.  These sites are often limited to a handful of pages and options.  In short they’re pretty basic.  But they offer a good place to start and get familiar with the concepts of what you can do with CMS.

But let’s say you want to raise the bar and develop a slick website with video, slide shows, audio content like podcasting , add an online store and more.   Here is an example of a high-octane CMS site for an international ministry called Samritan’s Purse.  Today’s audience has grown accustomed and expects more and more of these characteristics in web content.

In fact this website is a CMS based site.

LET MANGO HELP YOU

We have built, customized and developed dozens of CMS sites and have the expertise to make your organization shine with this incredible tool.

Contact us today to find out if the features and benefits of CMS fit your needs.

This is one of the most fundamental questions you need to be asking yourself.

Why? Websites are like anything else, say cars for instance.  A Four Runner and a Ferrari will both get you from point A to point B, but what is your need?  If the terrain is rough then a Four Runner may work.  If the terrain is a wide asphalt motorway like the Autobahn then a Ferrari might be a better choice.

Do you have the knowledge/skill set, software, hardware and the staff to handle site development and on-going maintenance?  Do you understand SEO?  Who is your audience; local, regional, national or international? What about backing up my site? Statistics? Multi-media capability? The list goes on and on.

Mango can help you discover what you need and how to flesh out that answer into a solution that works.  Contact us today for a free evaluation.