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How to choose your webmaster?

Web design is something between an art and a science. A web designer needs to be both objective and subjective in his objectives, strategies, methodology and evaluation. While the term webmaster is often used (most time inappropriately) web designer is more accurate although the world wide web cannot exactly be crafted by a designer, it really refers to an abbreviation of web site designer but for convenience has been shortened to simply web designer. Other terms used commonly are webmaster, website developer and web site designer.

It really is quite difficult to quantify the talent of web designer because it truly depends on what area of expertise is involved in their related fields. Some web designers specialize in HTML static design, some do multimedia and flash sites while others concentrate their talents on designing and developing CMS dynamic websites. Another problem clients will also have when trying to decide and who to choose to develop their website is the their level of experience. Unfortunately, more often than not clients will be confused and have very little knowledge of the design process. How can you tel if the web designer actually knows what he is talking about? How do you know if he will provide your project with the appropriate technology?

CMS web designers

CMS stands for content management systems. The most popular ones in existence are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. All these software applications are free and what are referred to as web based. This means that the website can be managed online either by the web designer or the client. The site can be designed and developed both online and offline and as is the case with Joomla CMS most of the work offline. All these CMS have their advantages, Drupal and Wordpress are very user friendly but Joomla is a lot more powerfull and expandable and is the platform we will be concentrating on now. As with any other web designer skill that you need to investigate before choosing the webmaster service for your project, check references and portfolio. You Joomla web designer should have expertise and experience in HTML, CSS and PHP. He should be familiar with Dreamweaver, Photoshop (Joomla of course) and a multitude of other website designing applications and platforms. A Joomla site is particularly difficult to develop because the development process in non intuitive unlike a plain HTML site than can be built using WYISYG (what you see is what you get) editors. A Joomla site needs to be created with 3 basic tool sets. Dreamweaver with Joomla extensions, and Apache Joomla stand alone server, Photoshop (Gimp, Paint.net) and Firefox with the Firebug and Chris Pen web developer extensions. Could be an idea to ask you Joomla web designer if he is familiar with any of the applications mentioned above, if not, he might not be who are are looking for.

Basic HTML web designer knowledge and experience

Evaluating your web designer's basic HTML skills. HTML(hypertext markup language) is the basic language used to create websites. It never hurts to do some research on Wikipedia to get familiar with maybe about a dozen HTML basic terms to that you can actually understand the design process and "feel" through some properly asked questions if your web designer actually has some basic knowledge it his field, all web developers should have a minimum of basic HTML skills.

Flash Web designers

Flash animation is a multimedia technology conceptualized by Adobe systems to display animation and movies and sound on website. It is not recommended for most websites as alternative and original technology such as animated gif files or embedded MPEG files are usually more accessible for your audience. Flash animation requires the Adobe plugin and will often cause the website to loose visitors...however, in some cases like movie sites and entertainment websites, Flash can be used (but cautiously). So how do you know if your web designer can develop some nice flash movies for your site? This is even harder to quantify than HTML or CMS web designer skills, after all? Everyone has different taste in movies, book, food and music...the same goes with Flash website module development. So the best way to find out is to check out the portfolio and references, if you like what you see, your web designer probably shares your artistic values and everything should be fine. However, be careful about template work, some webmasters might use some flash templates to do your web site. While this might not be a problem in most cases, it could make you look like a copycat if your visitors recognize the flash template you web developer created for you from another website...

Basic Web Design Guidelines

Try to avoid excessive Flash animation if any Macromedia plugins
Use external style sheets for the .css
Try to have 3 color scheme for the website
A great large banner to give the site style without blotting the code and compromising between SEO and design
Use .CSS instead of regular HTML whenever possible to streamline the code
Use color picker to have a smooth color theme for all website elements

Joomla Web Designer Canada

Joomla Web Site Design and Development

Joomla is an open source content management software platform, opens source means that is it free for anyone to download and install online. Joomla can additionally be used offline as an intranet solution by using tools like Xamp and Joomla Stand alone server. There are a multitude of reasons and advantages for choosing Joomla over other CMS platforms.

1.Joomla has an extensive support community
2.Joomla has over 3600 extensions
3.Joomla uses modular structure
4.Joomla is interactive and "web 2.0"
5.Joomla is highly expandable, customizable and flexible
6.Joomla is constantly "evolving" software
7.Joomla wins best CMS award again

Joomla Extensive Support Community

Developers of Joomla websites contribute information from a very large pool of help Joomla forums and blogs. If a designer or developer has technical problems either in the Joomla website development stage or regular maintenance, he can visit Joomla forums to find answers to his questions. He can also post requests for assistance and other Joomla designers will assist him free of charge to help him find a solution to his problem. In return, he can also answer questions from other developers and try to assist them in return. This is a win win proposition and while other CMS platforms like Word Press or Drupal also share this system, there forums are not nearly as populated as Joomla. Joomla has nearly 10 times the post topics at 1,375,025 versus Word Press and Drupal.

Joomla Has over 3600 extensions

Joomla can be highly specialized yet incredibly versatile. To achieve this a pool of extensions, plugins, mambos, modules and components are necessary. Other CSM platforms lack the variety of functions that Joomla can execute via the broad range of extensions available. A Joomla site can offer these functionality attribute and much, much more. But here is a basic list of the kind of websites Joomla can allow a developer to utilize for his projects:

Magazines and newspapers
Corporate websites or portals
Online commerce
Small business websites
Non-profit and organizational websites
Government applications
Corporate intranets and extra nets
School and church websites
Personal or family homepages
Community-based portals
Corporate websites or portals
Online commerce
Small business websites
Non-profit and organizational websites
Government applications
Corporate intranets and extra nets
School and church websites
Personal or family homepages
Community-based portals
Magazines and newspapers
Dynamic form builders
Business or organizational directories
Document management
image and multimedia galleries
E-commerce and shopping cart engines
Forums and chat software
Calendars
Blogging software
Directory services
Email newsletters
Data collection and reporting tools
Banner advertising systems
Subscription services

Joomla is built around a modular concept

Just like Lego, Joomla is built with "blocks", they are called modules. These can be placed in any imaginable order. The same applies to menus and components. All web elements are interchangeable and movable in Joomla modular skeletal constitution. This allows the Joomla webmaster great flexibility to organize the site layout and structure. The basic Joomla layout consists of the header, left menu, main content pane, right module and footer as demonstrated over here for this Joomla template.

Joomla is highly expandable, customizable and flexible

Other components from other open source and commercial software developers are usually compatible with Joomla. This is not the case for other CMS systems like Os Commerce, Drupal or Word Press where components are usually designed strictly for the native platform. In other words, Joomla can accommodate more extensions from more developers, this makes it high expandable because developers of other software components also contribute the the Joomla opens source project. Another advantage is that with Joomla you developer has not only one but a multitude of choices to fit your website to you exact specifications. A good example of that is the Os Commerce/Joomla integration versus the Virtuemart/Joomla integration. Both extensions basically perform the same functions but they do it in different ways, that level of flexibility is native to Joomla open source CMS.

Joomla is constantly "evolving" software

Joomla versions are constantly changing. This is good to prevent security breaches (hackers don't have time to break the code and cause damage to existing websites) and also great for constant improvements and added features. However, it's always a good idea to wait until the Joomla version gets to the Alpha stage before upgrading. The Alpha stage is the production version while the Beta stage is the prototype. Beta stage is for testing and only recommended for advanced users, Alpha however is stable and tested, most if not all bugs have already been fixed.

Joomla wins best CMS award again

In both 2006 and 2007 Joomla has won the award for best content management software in the world. That is no small achievement, and the sheer amount of members, websites and users will confirm this. Total posts 1379049 • Total topics 312875 • Total members 209145.