It is managed by a ‘web’ based CMS application, with small snippets of code made available for modification – like the food menu’s.

The Brief was to create a ‘brand’ based website, that matched the identity of the Restaurant menu’s, and style of the establishment. The only requirement for a CMS is to enable small snippets of content available for modification. No need for a database.

The View Restaurant – http://www.theviewfolkestone.info/

We work very hard with local restaurants and venues to provide them with beautifully designed placemats free of charge.  These mats are used to promote other local businesses and local events.  Each venue will run 4 Placemat programmes a year and we will offer a free advertising space to a non-profit organisation or local charity of their choice.  The other spaces are sold to non-competing businesses.  Helping non-profit organisations and providing free placemats to restaurants means everyone is happy!
Placemat Me is a small local business and we try and keep our money in the Community.  Design and print of all our placemats is by local companies.  Take a browse through our site and our Social Network and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us  Monday-Friday 9-5pm.

Click here to visit site  www.placemat.me.uk

Slinky Music Social is a ‘free’ unique and powerful social networking site commissioned to work with or without our service ‘Slinky Music’  for the promotion of any kind of musical artist. We are a ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘international’ network of music industry members; including musicians, bands & orchestras, professionals & amateurs, and products & services providers in live music – like booking agents, recording studio’s, instruments & equipment suppliers, music schools, media, theatres, etc. For all musicians, from beginners to professionals, all instruments, and all music styles.

Slinky Music Social provides a forum for musicians and technologists providing unlimited tools and applications to help the portfolio of its members. These services enable musicians, bands, fans, event organisers to ‘click together’, and build a community profiting everyone!

The primary benefit of moving your static HTML site to the WordPress platform is that you can update, maintenance and add to your site yourself. No code required. No more e-mailing your “webmaster” for simple text changes or additions. This is something I’ve been asked for the ability to do almost on a daily basis by my clients since I started my business 15 years ago.

Today I’ll share with you the benefits of moving your site to the WordPress platform.

BENEFITS OF USING WORDPRESS AS A CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

• Customizing your chosen theme is as simple as integrating your logo or header graphic.
• Easy integration of Flash Slide Shows (that are very expensive to have developed and integrated into a static HTML site) without you having to learn a lick of Flash.
• Customizing the color scheme or fonts are simple too. Just modify the global CSS file.
• Adding subscribe chicklets and feed links so visitors can easily add you to their list and get your updates delivered to their inboxes.
• Create logical categories and subcategories to keep your site intuitively organized and positioned for growth.
• Add or modify content by logging in and typing away — no code of FTP knowledge required!
• Easily add videos to your site/Blog.
• Include your promos or AdSense in the sidebar of every page.
• Reflect number of readers or sites linking to your site for site visitors to view.
• Easily add CAPTCHA (a type of challenge-response test used in to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer) to minimize form and comment spam.
• Integrate Social Networking widget(s) so your post can be easily exposed to popular networks.
• Integrate Google Site Map creation.
• Integrate additional SEO tools to enhance your pages and posts with search engines.
• Automatically post your updates to Twitter as a Tweet, Facebook, LinkedIn.
• A wide variety of themes are available to cater to your business personality and culture.

The list goes on… There are literally hundreds of WordPress plugins that can be integrated to enhance and increase the performance and features of your site.

The next thing I get asked is how to choose a the best theme for your site. Themes are the outside “skin” of WordPress and come in many designs, colorschemes, layouts and personalities. You want to find a theme that best fits how you want to display your site’s content while presenting your business visually in a professional manner. Ask yourself what do you want to focus on and what information do you want to feature most within your site. Knowing this will help you to spot the right theme for your business.

The neat thing about many premium themes is that they auto-propagate the top page of your site with your most recent updates. That means each time a site visitor returns to your site they have new fresh information available to them from your top page.

What is a premium theme? That my friends is the “get what you pay for” theme. Yes, there a literally thousands of free WordPress themes available online. But free themes can have several areas of concern. Remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

FREE WORDPRESS THEME CONCERNS

• You do not know the developer or their ethics in keeping that free theme up to date when WordPress updates. Premium theme developers back up their themes with support forums and services. When WordPress updates, premium theme developers review their themes and offer new updates or releases if necessary to ensure their themes continue to work with the latest version of WordPress. Good luck with that when it comes to many free themes!
• Quality is a huge issue! I’ve worked with many free themes that weren’t worth the trouble due to messy CSS files and sloppy code. Very few incorporate cross browser compatiblity allowing the theme to dipsly well in all the top browsers which is very important for your new site. With free themes you cannot count on the developer to address those problems and any possible exploits in a timely basis — if at all. Think about it from this perspective; how wise is it to download files to be used for your site when you don’t know who developed them or what their motives for doing so are?Yes, many of these developers are credible and only trying to promote their services by example, but as with anything free online, there will be those with selfish and nefarious intent. If you see a free theme that you just have to use, check out the developer’s site. See if the site is constantly updated with recently dated posts. Review comments on their Blog or that particular theme’s page for other users comments and questions.
• Free themes tend to have links in the Footer, or bottom of the page, that link to the developer’s Web site. That is standard and customary – giving credit where credit is due. But, some developers also include numerous encrypted links that cannot be removed that display their own affiliate sites or sites whose content is not what you would like to see linked to at the bottom of every page of your site.

Being quality premium themes tend to run in the $20 – $79 range there really is no reason to take the risks mentioned above.

Next, you can’t talk about WordPress without discussing the benefits of having a Blog.

BENEFITS OF HAVING A BLOG?

• Post daily tips and information for your customers (and those still deciding if they will do business with you).
• Use your Blog as a product or service update center where customers know to check in for status.
• Share your expertise and become a hub for useful posts on your product/service/market.
• Search Engines love Blogs because the content is fresh and constantly updated!
• Bunches of directories catering to Blogs only! And, once you post, you can “Ping” the directories to reflect you just added new content!
• You can have a subscribe option so that interested visitors can get notified when you post.
• Use Revenue Ads to get residual income from PPC targeted advertisers.
• Offer RSS feeds and Podcast feeds of your postings in a few simple steps.
• Easily add links to your Web site’s important information and other sites of value.
• Interactive nature allows visitors to post comments on each post. A great way to get feedback on what your next move should be!

I have worked on sites and Blogs on numerous platforms; Blogger, TypePad, Joomla and WordPress. By far the platform I have found the easiest, most intuitive, user friendly and most versatile for my clients Web sites is WordPress.

With WordPress being inherently search engine friendly and giving site owners the power to run their own sites and be involved in all the Web 2.0 technology that a static HTML site simply cannot embrace adequately, the choice seems clear.

Instead of asking “Why switch my site over to WordPress?” How about coming up with reasons not to? Then, I am sure you will find those very answers are not excuses you would hear from successful online competitive business owners.

Why WordPress? Why Not!