Questions & Answers

It's not exactly a 'how long is a piece of string' situation, but it does depend on exactly what you require. To give you an idea, if I was to do the basic 'initial set up' then you would only be looking at a week from start to finish. Depending on what extras you may require would dictate how much longer it would take. At the time of enquiry I would estimate how long it would take before I could start the job. And when an order is placed I will be able to give you a definite start and finish date.

All my sites are built with a content management system (CMS) at its core. There are many benefits of using a CMS, here is a summary:

1. Save time
   Sites using CMS can be updated quickly and easily. A simple process of logging in to your site with a username and password, navigating to a particularly page which you edit in a ‘Word’ like environment and saving your changes is all you need to do to update your web page content.
2. Multiple administrators
   If your website is a reasonable size you can share the management of it between as many people as you like. You might want to assign someone to keep your calendar up to date or maybe another to write a blog. You can also give administrators different access levels.
3. Amend your site from anywhere
   Administrators can access the site from any computer with an internet connection. This means users can update the site at the same time from any location in the world.
4. No web designer fees
   You don’t have to have know your 'html' from your 'php' with a content management system, as it’s all user friendly. That means you can do it all yourself without having to pay your web designer minimum charge just to change a few words on your site.
5. Separate design and content
   The design of the site template is separate from the content. This allows you to completely change the design of your site without affecting any of the content.
6. Add functionality as well as manage content
   The backend administration panel not only provides the ability to add content but also to add functionality such as polls, banners, forums, shopping applications, news management and menus.
7. Schedule content updates
   When you update a page, whether it be a news item, blog or press release, you can schedule it to appear automatically at any future point in time. Handy for time sensitive information or if you are going to be away from the internet for a period of time.

Yes, the content management system, Joomla, not only gives you the ability to 'manage the content', but to 'manage the security' on your site. Basically this entails keeping the extensions on your site up to date. The reason for this is that there are people (and automated programs) crawling the Internet seeking to exploit vulnerable sites (yes there are a certain type of people who get a kick out of breaking into sites - some for fun, some intent to steal information from sites).

Everyone is vulnerable to attack. A seasoned professional programmer may try and hack into an international organistaion's site just as much as a geeky university student with too much time on his hands may try and exploit a personal blog site. Thankfully though, with all your sites extensions up to date the chances of infection are extremely low.

The most important thing to update is Joomla itself, this can easily be done by a few clicks from the back-end of your site using a special extension called 'Admin Tools'. Some other extensions have automatic update links within them, others rely on you downloading the latest updates from the developers websites and then uploading them to your site. Either way, it's something well worth investing your time in, in case the worst happens and you lose everything.

Of course, the next best thing to do would be to take regular back-ups of your site, so in the event that your site did get hacked, you could always reload a backed up version.