We believe the best way to learn is to do. Thus we have done a variety of web sites for small businesses, non profits, and sourceforge.net projects. The most extensive is very dynamic, using php and mysql. The users can maintain it themselves, but it shows the latest events and product. Another involved extensive changes to a WordPress theme, which in hindsight, may not have been a good idea.
We began with using Dreamweaver, but when we went to Mac, did not want to have to use it in Parallels or Bootcamp, and did not want to pay the hefty fee for a new version. So, we have been using Komodo for PHP, and doing it by hand. Then we tried Rapidweaver. But finally, we are going back to the standard WordPress with custom developed plugins using NetBeans for the plugin editor. So many wonderful changes to WordPress have been made recently! For example, we just discovered you can add YouTube videos by just listing the url. How simple is that! And then we discovered row level security for customizing capabilities.
We also spend quite a bit of time looking for very low cost solutions for small companies that want to get on the web in a small way, with a small budget. The no-cost way is to use Google Places, Yelp, and Bing Local Listings. You don’t even need a web page!!
Finally, we have spent a lot of time studying search engine optimization. We have worked with several companies that do optimization, and have learned a small amount and had some big successes.
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