Structuring Content for a CMS

Here’s some advice on how to start thinking about structuring and organising your website content.

A ‘Content Management System’, is about organising your website content. This means you have to think about your website in terms of the content structure, rather than the end result (the web pages). The actual‘look and feel’, or theme of your website is completely separate from the content – the colours, fonts, alignment, positioning, etc. are all governed by the template you apply rather than being built-in to your content.

How to choose a successful domain name.

More than 50 million domain names have been registered worldwide and thousands new ones are added per day. It might be hard for you then to get the name that you really like for your website. Do not get discouraged from that fact, but rather try to be creative.

Remember that you can use a combination of almost all characters (letters, numbers, hyphens) for your domain. The length of a domain name can vary, but generally speaking it should be a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 67 characters.

Here are some tips how to choose a successful domain name:

The simple answer: You're looking at one now.

There are two main choices when selecting how to publish your content to the web:

1. The traditional way is to have someone write the HTML code and publish it. This leaves you very dependent on the web master for all aspects of your site.
2. The more efficient way is by use of a Content Management System.

A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information. It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving. It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users.

What is needed to host and maintain a website?

There are 4 basic requirements for establishing and maintaining a website

1. Domain Name: http://www.youdomain.com.au
2. The domain must have a Domain Name Server (DNS) pointer. This tells the internet where to look in order to find where your website is hosted.
3. An Internet Protocol (IP) Address. That which is pointed to by the DNS pointer. Your site’s home on the World Wide Web.
4. A server or hosting company that holds the files to the website.

The domain name must be purchased. This is done either through an authorized domain registrar or through a third party re-seller of domain names. In Australia,DNS Pointers and IP address are set up when the domain is purchased. The DNS pointer can then be changed if the hosting company is different from where the domain was purchased.