Creating Dance Websites and Blogs - The Main Options
In this post, I describe the five main approaches that you can take to creating dance websites and blogs.
In most instances, I would recommend open-source content management systems (#3 below) and blogs (#2).
5 Approaches to Creating Your Website & Blog:
1) Do-It-Yourself: There are a number of website builder applications that require no technical or design knowledge, and allow you to create a website or blog with drag-and-drop ease. Once you sign-up, you create your site, choose templates, add content and publish. Explore: SnapPages, Synthasite, Weebly and Wix.
2) Blogs: A blog can serve as your main website or as an addition to it. You can create a blog on Blogger, TypePad, or with WordPress or with one of the many companies that host WordPress. Or, you can install Movable Type or WordPress on your own server.
3) Content Management Systems (CMS): A popular approach to creating websites is to use open-source content management systems such as Drupal or Joomla. There are a large number of developers, modules/extensions and themes for these CMSs.
4) Adobe Contribute: A web developer creates a template-driven website with Dreamweaver. Within each web page editable regions are created that a non-technical person can then edit. Using the Contribute software, a user connects to their website and adds and edits content without having to know HTML.
5) Customized Websites: Websites can also be designed and developed from the ground-up with customized databases and proprietary CMS systems. This approach will almost always be more expensive than any of the other web-development paths described above.
Posted by
Doug Fox on March 23, 2009 5:15 AM
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://greatdance.com/mtadmin/mt-tb.cgi/3083
7 Comments
I'm curious - what are the readers of GreatDance.com using to build + manage their websites? Do you have a site and a separate blog?
We at Merseyside Dance and Drama Centre are relative newcomers ro the internet and have chosen a custom website with built in content management and blog, a separate blog site and a twitter account.
Although Twitter isn't as dance oriented as hoped there is potential for growth. The separate sites gives the option of different voices, great for reaching different audiences.
Would love to know anyone's thoughts on http://www.mddcdance.co.uk and http://www.mddcdance.wordpress.com
An open plug for my baby here, but along with Synthasite and the other do-it-yourself options there's also webeden.co.uk. The design tools are unmatched - have a play, its free. Not much good for ecommerce however. Since its on a .co.uk domain, its probably better for just your UK readers.
I think you should also add Tumblr.com to the blogging platforms, modx and expression engine to the CMS list and iWeb and RapidWeaver to the section on Adobe Contribute. Those are all tools that I use when building custom sites for arts clients because they are either free or very affordable.
I go with Danciti there. Expression Engine is a great back office tool and affordable too. Allows us to easily and quickly update information on the http://www.mddcdance.co.uk website. Different modules can be added for blogs etc.
Thanks for recommendations about different applications that can be used to build websites and blogs.
For a 2 year old (and still ongoing + lively) discussion on what a webdesign should cost in terms of resources, read this post and discussion, which was posted on a design blog: http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/06/how_much_should_a_design_cost.php
Leave a Comment