South Africa has seen a recent boom in the internet and web design industry as more and more companies are waking up to the fact that many of their potential customers are browsing the web and are, in fact, doing most of their product research and purchasing online. Of course, it goes without saying that this increase in demand has led to an explosion of new web design companies each with their own product to sell and calling it different, unique or claiming the use of different tools or services. With all of these options, creating your company website can seem a little overwhelming.

There is no need to worry

Don’t be too daunted by all the supposed options out there. There is no need to waste time trying to figure out what type of website will suit your business. There really are only two different types of websites. The key is to focus on how you want to manage your website and what kind of interaction you would like with your potential customers.

Static vs. Content Managed

Websites basically fall into two categories: Static and Content Managed.

Static Websites

These are websites built using plain HTML, XHTML and CSS although they may have some added features through javascript, flash and php. These websites are usually Brochure websites or sales pages where the content, is fairly static and doesn’t change very often.

The website content (text and images) is contained within the code and HTML editing software (such as Dreamweaver) is usually needed in order for the website to be updated or changed.  Any updates to these websites will usually have to be done by a web designer or webmaster.

Content Managed Websites

Content Managed Websites involve the implementation of Content Management Systems which allow people with admin privileges to make changes to the content of the website whenever necessary. These Content Management Systems act as a framework upon which the website is built. Little or no coding knowledge is needed to update the content of the website and all users are required to do is login to the website with a password in order to make changes. So changes can easily be made anytime from literally anywhere in the world.

There are a number of different Content Management Systems out there such as Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress to name a few of the most popular and they all offer the same basic concept. At Creative Natives, all our websites are built on WordPress  Content Management System. WordPress is our CMS of choice because of its ease of use and abundance of features.

One of the main features of a Content Managed Website is  the ability to incorporate a blog in your website. This is known as a blogsite and it merely is a website that has combination of a website (with pages) and a blog (with posts). Our Creative Natives website (the one you are on right now) is a blogsite. It gives customers the comfort of a typical website structure with the addition of updated articles through the blog.

Blogs have become very popular in recent years because of their great Search Engine Optimisation results and the added ability of businesses to interact with their customers through comments.

Another great feature of Content Managed Websites is their scalability. They can be upgraded to include a blog and a shopping cart within the same framework and using the same system.

We are passionate about WordPress and all it can offer our clients, have a look at our website packages, they are all built on the WordPress system and browse our WordPress websites in our Portfolio to see what we can do.