so when you design sites for people, what do you then tell them by way of maintenance for that site?

i doubt yall are the ones that update the site everytime it needs updating, so who do you pass it onto?

do you tell them what program you used and let them know so they can do it on their own?

oh and speaking of design, what program is most used to design websites?

and how do you deliver the finished product to them? do you upload it yourself?

Well it depends if the person designing the site is also going to do updates.

If the client will do updates, I would expect to give them a training session about how to update the site.

It really doesnt matter what program, as long as its an html editor. I would say the most common html editor is Dreamweaver.

In my experience, usually you just upload the site to their server.


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i'm actually just getting into them - i used to hand-code sites in Dreamweaver and sit down with the client to give a mini-tutorial on how to update. but, inevitably, they would call me a couple days later with problems. and that's the absolute LAST thing you want - to be considered free 24/7 technical support for someone.

so anyway, i'm starting to use CMS to drive the content of my websites and it's worlds easier - you create different user accounts and each user can login through a web interface and update the site's contents without having to worry about HTML or messing up the design.

depending on the complexity of the site, you could probably get away with using Wordpress. There's also Drupal and Expression Engine.

CMS solutions mos definitely. Learn your way around a good open-source CMS. They'll pay more up front for the site because you'll spend considerable time integrating the CMS. The payoff for the client is they have complete control of what goes onto and off of the site and their costs are flat going forward.

Otherwise, you want to
1) bill them hourly per request;
or
2) work out retainer terms (per year, per month, per quarter, whatever) and be on call as they need updates.

joomla/mambo is a pretty full featured and the learning curve ain't all that bad. the message boards usually get enough traffic that you can get support from other users as you learn your way around. It's a search engine friendly CMS too. you'll also find the available templates reasonably attractive and customizable (if you're comfortable with CSS layout designs).

What hurdles do you usually encounter?

>CMS solutions mos definitely. Learn your way around a good
>open-source CMS. They'll pay more up front for the site
>because you'll spend considerable time integrating the CMS.
>The payoff for the client is they have complete control of
>what goes onto and off of the site and their costs are flat
>going forward.
>
>Otherwise, you want to
>1) bill them hourly per request;
>or
>2) work out retainer terms (per year, per month, per quarter,
>whatever) and be on call as they need updates.

i just cant get into any of the 'real' ones
i keep trying but its way too much