Brent Creative…

A business blog is built upon a database generated site architecture. Unlike the average brochure-style, static websites, a database generated site separates the design of the user interface (your site’s look and feel), the content that is stored on the database, and the site’s functionality into separate parts. The advantage of this is that your site is going to be easy to update, and even change the look without having to go to your web developer every time you need to adjust to your ever changing business logic. This means your site can always be current, common and relevant to your market for the same price of the old fashioned static site that was the staple of the early web.

The Structural parts of your business blog are:

• The User-Interface: this is the way your site is visually branded and the functionality your client interacts with.
• The Site’s Functionality: this is the way your site handles requests for information. Our sites use over 100 scripts to handle how information is stored in the database, how it should be displayed in the user-interface, and how user’s can use your site.
• The Back-end: this is the part of the site that allows for administration of your website’s content. Also, the place to make choices for how your site should function.
• The Database: the database is used to store your content and is the registry of all your choices on how your site should function. Because this is all stored in a database, other aspects of your site can be changed over the years without affecting the content. This allows for growth and change without requiring a complete rework of your site.

Let’s discuss this further…

So let’s talk frank about the User-Interface:

“Stop thinking of it as ‘Web-Design” start thinking of it as developing a business tool.”

At a minimum we think of our websites as a tool to promote our brand. But, they are so much more. If a user comes to your website and they can not get what they are searching for, or they get lost in your navigation, because it is over designed then your design has failed. I mean this whole heartedly, over designed sites, sites that try to be too flashy and cool, very often fail the business logic. They too easily become stale and don’t focus on the content that the user has come to get from your site. On the other hand, content oriented sites (which include blog-style sites) never go stale as long as your site has current content.

Typically sites designed with a graphic design centric interface get in the way of getting at the content. These are sites where the brand’s character is made the most important aspect of the design, As well, sites that are over designed tend to hide a weakness in the content. Keep in mind, the Internet (http://) was designed to share content between any operating system on any machine. Not, be an electronic brochure. Sure the e-brochure can be part of the content, but it never should be the site.

Blog-Style sites allow for the skin (you may call it the site’s design) to be separate of the other parts of the site. This way the look doesn’t get in the way of how a site operates. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t represent your brand on the web. It just means, keep the design of the User-Interface to the header and the font color. Let your site user’s memory of your brand be about their experience on the site, not how cool it looks. Let them get at the information they came to get and get on, knowing that they will come back for more. They trust they’ll find it on your site. Again, Blog-Style sites support this mission better than any other type of site on the Internet.

The Site’s Functionality is Key:

With Blog-Style sites we are able to separate the functionality of the site from the way a site looks. This means that if you need to change the site’s look and feel down the road, you can do so, without going back to the drawing board. You simply design a new skin and incorporate that into the functionality.

All My Blogs and Blog Style Sites have a full-featured Back-end:

“You don’t need to have old content that doesn’t reflect the very latest of your business process.”

You as the site’s owner will be able to add and update content and even configure the way your site operates. You’ll have complete control over how your user’s are able to use your site. This allows for graduated campaigns that only show and allow a level of functionality as it is necessary. This allows you too see that your users are keying in on a certain kind of content. You can then adjust to meet their most current needs.

The tasks that you can do via the back-end are:

- Write and Manage your blog posts.

- Write and Mange new pages and change the content on old pages.

- Create and Manage the categories of your blog posts. It’s good practice to use the categories and the blog for your ever changing content while keeping the pages for your more permanent content. See how we do it on this site.

- Change the layout of your site, and add functionality to the layout of your site.

- Add, and Manage Users. Manager what the users can do on your site, from self registering to moderating comments.

- Manage Galleries, Forums, e-stores, and Audio and Video.

There are many more tasks one can do with the back-end of their site.

In Summary:

If your site isn’t an integral part of your business process, then you are missing what the web is doing for many people today. Order my consultation and learn what you can do today. The consultation is not a pitch, you will learn what you can do and I will refund the fee if you don’t come away more informed about how to use the Internet to accomplish your business goals.

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