Maintaining Your Website - Web Page Editors

It is very important to keep your website up-to-date with current and new information. This will help to keep your rankings high in the search engines and will provide reasons for current visitors to return.

So how do you go about maintaining your website? You basically have 2 options. Do it yourself or hire someone to do it. There are advantages and disadvantages to both:

Hiring a Professional

Advantages

• Will maintain the professionalism of the site
• Once hired, your time is free to do your own business and not spent learning a new software program or html and not spent inputting the changes

Disadvantages

• Time spent finding a reliable web designer to make the changes
• Could be more costly than if you did it yourself

Doing it yourself

Advantages

• May be less expensive.

Disadvantages

• May not look at nice as a professional doing the site
• May take a long time to determine which editor to use
• May take a lot of your valuable time learning new software/learning html or inputting the changes
• No one to consult in case the look you want to accomplish is not achieved

If you are going to do it yourself, just like a lot of things, there are many choices you have in which to accomplish this task. Depending on your level of skill and knowledge, your budget and the time you have available for making changes will determine what you choose. Some web hosting companies offer do-it-yourself content management packages, such as www.jammicron.com.

Types of web page editors

• Converters and wizards

• WYSIWYG editors

• Code-based editors

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Converters and Wizards

Wizards are applications that guide you through a process. If you've used any of the popular Windows word processors, chances are you've encountered wizards on a number of occasions.

Nowadays, wizards are not a popular way of updating websites. You can also get programs that convert RTF, text, and word processor formats to HTML. Wizards and converters are great for people with little or no knowledge of HTML. They're often easy to use, require little in the way of systems resources, and are inexpensive.

The major drawback of converters and wizards is lack of control. Most don't let you add complex formatting like frames and tables. On top of that, the coding created may not conform to HTML standards which may not render well in all browsers.

WYSIWYG Editors

WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get”. When you input your contents, the document more or less appears on the screen as it would in a Web browser. WYSIWYG editors have a word processor-like interface in which you type text and insert graphics. They're easy to use -- if you can use a word processor, you can use one.

However, some WYSIWYG editors (like FrontPage, HoTMetaL, and PageMill) are big, requiring large amounts of memory and systems resources. Most WYSIWYG editors allow you to manipulate the underlying HTML code, but they do strange things with what you enter at the code level. FrontPage, for example, uses some non-standard tags that may not render well in all browsers.

Code-Based Editors

These require you to know HTML. You don't have to be an expert, but in order to use a code-based editor you must have some basic knowledge of HTML tags. Some will even have built-in previewers so that you can see what your coding looks like.

With most HTML editors, you don't have to manually enter the necessary tags. Usually, when a program is started it will automatically set up the page's skeleton. From there, you type your text. To insert tags, simply highlight some text and click a button or select an option from a menu. Many are loaded with wizards, that automatically create tables, frames and lists, and insert links and graphics.

Factors to Consider When Deciding Upon Choosing An Editor

• Do you want one that is strictly an HTML editor, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor or one that does both

• Your budget - web page editors can run anywhere from free to hundreds of dollars

• Whether the web page editor will publish (upload to your web hosting company( your pages for you

• Whether you can try it before you buy it

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Below is a list of different editors, compiled by Linda Roeder, a longtime HTML enthusiast and consultant with a broad knowledge of Web content., on the www.about.com website.

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