Self-Administration of Web site content
Self Administration of Web site content is a unique feature that can be included in your web site. It means that after the initial design and publishing of your web site you will be able to update and control certain aspects of your web site yourself. You are able to do this with a unique administration page, to which you have access through a user name and password.
The fact that no web designer, or administrator is involved makes updating your web site faster and more convenient, it also saves you maintenance fees. You can update only certain parts of the web site, which are pre-formatted to post your changes within the design of the web site.
You can update your site no matter where you are. From home or Internet café, all you need is Internet connection - the administration page is basically one of the pages from your web site.
The Applications
Generally this feature is useful for parts of a web site where the content needs to change regularly. For example; news, recent events, photographs, schedules, timetables - anything you want to keep regularly updated.
Computer Knowledge
All you need to use is an Internet browser (Internet Explore, Netscape Navigator), for you to access your web site and administration page. On the administration page you are presented with an easy to use menu that relates to the content of your web site. Even if you are familiar with some web design applications, like HTML, or programs like FrontPage or Dreamweaver, you can still benefit from the use of the administration page, as you don't have to change any codes and don't have to worry about layout and formatting, it's already done for you.
Security
The administration page is accessed through an address looking something like this:
http://www.yourdomainname.com/administration.php
Anyone who types this address in an Internet browser will get to the prompt page requesting a user name and password. Also there is no link from your web site to this administration page - thus not showing the existence of that page to your visitors. The administration page is configured so that most search engines should ignore it. (That of course depends on the search engine)
Design and Layout
The information that is altered through you administration page appears in pre-defined spaces and in a pre-defined format on your web site. This means the design and style of your web site does not suffer. The information you put in will automatically appear within the layout in a set style, in keeping with the rest of your web site. For example, you can have a column on the right side of one or more pages of your web site. The administration page will display this content to you as it appears on the web site and all you do is just modify the text and save it.
Also you can have an option to format your text in a basic form by submitting parts of the text between special characters like * # ^. This is then transformed to pre-defined formatting as shown on the example below, giving you bit more creative touch.
News
Another use of the administration page is as a way to post your news to your visitors. You submit news articles, which are then presented on a 'news page' of your web site. News can be ordered by date or other criteria (you can have a definition of ranking, that you associate with each article). On the administration page you will be able to submit new articles, modify or erase existing ones.
Images
You can be in control of the images on your web site. Probably most conveniently on the 'news page', where you can submit images associated with specific articles. Or you can have built in image album, which you can easily update.
Images are stored in a database along with any other content you control. When you upload an image, the system will automatically create a thumbnail (small copy of the image), which is how it will appear on the web site. The original size can still be viewed on the web site by clicking on the thumbnail. Therefore you don't have to worry about the original size.
Instant update
The content of the web site controlled by you is stored in a database connected to your site. Since the actual web site reads the content from the database every time somebody visits your web site, this content will be presented instantly after your submission of changes to the next visitor.
Because we are not overwriting the entire page/web site on the server (computer, where your web site is stored) we are not disabling the accessibility of your web site. When a web developer/designer overwrites the actual page/web site, the web site is disabled for the duration of this process. This inconvenience is overcome by double storing the web site, which is more complex process and requires knowledge of web technology, making this a job for web developer/designer. Using an administration page for updating database content is a fun job for anybody and leaves you with complete control and no hassle of preparing the content for an administrator (all spelling mistakes are entirely yours!)
Language
If your web site is bi-lingual, you would have every page in both languages, but the content and layout would stay the same. In this case your administration page would have the option to submit both language versions of the text / article, which would then appear accordingly on the appropriate page.
Expense and hosting
The cost of building your administration page varies greatly depending on the amount of features you want to be able to update. However, this will be one off cost and you won't have any ongoing charges for maintenance.
The only ongoing cost is for the hosting for your web site (and possibly domain name registration fee), which you are facing whether you have a static web site or a dynamic site with administration page. I can arrange hosting for a dynamic site for $180Aus/year.