WordPress as a Web Content Management System (CMS)

Sample Sites Developed by Digital West Media, Inc.

Web development is shifting away from traditional HTML-based web sites, and towards web content management systems (CMS). Marketing professionals and corporate clients want to be able to post on web sites without having to constantly interact with a webmaster or developer.  CMS systems save money, and most importantly in today’s fast-paced internet, allow users direct control of the timing of content publication.

What is a web CMS (Content Management System)?
A web CMS is a group of pre-programmed components, usually including an administrative module, designed to simplify the publication of web-based content to a web site or to mobile devices. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are examples of CMS systems.  WordPress is generally considered to be the most user-friendly of the three platforms, and the easiest to learn quickly.  No HTML knowledge is needed to publish text, images or video in WordPress, making web publishing fast, easy and affordable.

WordPress Installations and Hosting

Is WordPress easy to use?
The process of adding or publishing content to a WordPress website is similar to sending an email with an attached photo or document.  You insert a title, copy and paste text into the body of the page, and insert one or more images.  You select where on the web site you want the page to appear, and then click the “publish” button.  It is that easy.

How much does a Web CMS cost?
WordPress is a free CMS. If you don’t want to set it up yourself, you will need to pay a web host or web developer to install and customize WordPress on the server where you host your web site. They can insert graphics and customize a template to create a unique design for your website.  The cost will vary between developers.  Digital West Media typically charges between $500 – $1000 for a standard WordPress installation and customization.  The cost will vary depending on which template you choose, how much customization is needed to give the template the look and feel you desire, and the amount of content that you have Digital West Media insert for you.

Is WordPress the right choice for your business?
WordPress is the perfect solution for a company looking for an inexpensive web site that they can update themselves.  The time required for set-up and customization of a WordPress site is a fraction of the time necessary for designing and building an HTML-based web site.  Thousands of  WordPress templates are available to choose from, and all of them can be customized to give your web site a distinctive look that reflects your company’s business style.

If you want a web developer or webmaster to manage the content for you, WordPress is still a good choice for your website.  It takes less time to insert content into WordPress vs. building a traditional HTML-based web page.  Links, categories and an underlying database help organize and archive content automatically for easy reading and retrieval.  Style and menu updates are much simpler as well.

Web Sites We’ve Designed In WordPress
Digital West Media, Inc. has helped many small- and medium-sized businesses transition their web sites into WordPress.  Following are a few sample web sites that we have recently built or converted into WordPress.

http://www.californiadesertart.com

California Desert Art is a new web site project that Digital West Media, Inc. built for a freelance author who wanted to start her own online art publication.   The project cost was about $700, which included web site set-up in WordPress, customization of a template to meet the design requirements of the project, and insertion of some content into the system.  Customization of the WordPress template on this project was more extensive.

Poway Arena Polo Club had a free web site hosted on Tripod.  They decided to convert their existing web site into a WordPress-based site.  The process took less than two days.  The cost of this project was about $500. The cost included installation and set-up of WordPress, registration of a domain name, new site design and the insertion of some content from the old site to the new site.  Customization on this project was minimal.

http://www.poloblogs.com/powaypolo/

For other samples of WordPress-based web sites that Digital West Media, Inc. has installed, set up and customized, please visit the links below …

Desert Road Trippin’
Lara’s Lane
Shutterbug 101
Desert Denizen’s
Desert News
Desert CADDIE
PoloZONE
Polo 101

For more information about WordPress and web site development, please contact Lynn Bremner at Digital West Media, Inc.  Tel. 760-619-2401 or email lynn@dwmi.com.