Picking a Web Master
- In: Business Info
- 15Feb2011
- By Scott See
There are five questions to ask a prospective web master. 1) What successes have you had getting web sites on the first page of Google? 2) What are the pros / cons of using Dreamweaver, Wordpress, Joomla, or other CMS? 3) For Dreamweaver sites, show me how you use templates to make future maintenance easy. 4) Show me how CSS works. 5) What's your favorite book on web site usability? A good web master will jump on the opportunity to explain all this to you. They should have some web sites in top positions in Google. If they stumble on any of these questions, consider shopping around.
1) What successes have you had getting web sites on the first page of Google?
This is pretty obvious. So many web sites are designed by graphic artists that really don't care about and certainly don't know anything about SEO (search engine optimization). I've seen way too many sites that I call, "Search Engine Proof." That means Google can't index them. The site may be gorgeous, but if Google can't read it, you're wasting your time.
2) What are the pros / cons of using Dreamweaver, WordPress, Joomla, or other CMS?
Any web master should be able to give a clear explanation of the pros /cons of Dreamweaver, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
3) For Dreamweaver sites, show me how you use templates to make future maintenance easy.
Dreamweaver offers template functionality which let you edit the constant parts of a page via one template instead of having to edit each and every page individually. If they can't show you an example of this, get ready to pay much more for maintenance in the long run.
4) Show me how CSS works.
<p class="style11" align="center">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...</p>
<p><font size="5" face="arial" color="red">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...</font></p>
Show this to your prospective web master and let them explain why this code is not good.
5) What's your favorite book on web site usability?
Personally, mine is Don't Make Me Think, by Steve Krug
