Auto to Auto is a small but effective Website that can easily out perform most CMS driven Websites.

Best page load time possible

Article Writer is unique in that instead of just pulling data from a database and slapping it into a template, this CMS actually creates static files from the composed content at the time the page is saved. This saves a tremendous amount of time when users try to access a webpage.

No robust CMS start-up lag

Because the files are written directly to the server hard drive, there is no time required to start up PHP or much, much worse, a robust CMS like WordPress. Word Press, for example, can take several seconds to retrieve a page. As one of the top 100 search position factors, Google wants the best user experience possible. Waiting 5 seconds for WordPress to boot is far from a good experience and may lead to user hitting the back button and choosing a competitor’s Website instead.

Light weight means even faster load times

The site architecture is designed to be as light weight as possible. There is a minimum of images with the exception of the slider. CSS is used to make the layout – table-less design = less code = faster load time.  No graphics in the layout – this also take more time as those images have to be loaded. Minimal design – the more bells and whistles, the more that will have to be downloaded and the more time it will take.

 Unique articles

Many businesses want to have their products and services listed as the priority of the Web design. This is fine however why would Google place your Website first when there is superior content available elsewhere? How about some unique and useful content to help users get what they are looking for? This is what the search engines want, not prices slapped all over every page, how useful is that?

You will notice that Auto to Auto contains a very simple articles section made up with that lighting fast content creator we talked about above. When a new article is posted, a link to it is created along with an update to the XML site map file. The site map gives the search engines another way of determining how pages on the website are tied together with links.

Article Writer CMS

Again, I used my rather boring black and white one page CMS. This system is very simple compared to many, but it is all that the owner needs to get things accomplished.

In the edit window, you have a set of predefined items like the H1 tag and URL name. Along with this, the meta description tag. It is pretty much useless for SEO but it is the first thing users will see when your website is returned in the search results. This is your chance to convince them to click the link that leads to your site. You can then add and many paragraphs and subheadings as you wish below. There is also a list order that determines which article appears where.

A Website with Writing Power

 

We can assume that WordPress is about the most comfortable CMS to use ever built. Add a world class responsive design capable of being displayed on any browser and you have what might be a perfect Website.

WordPress Power and Plugin Functionality

WordPress is capable of organizing an almost unlimited number of pages, posts , comments, etc. It also has another valuable feature; the ability to add plugins. With this feature, for example, you can install a plugin by the name of Yoast SEO. If you do not know much about writing for the Web and SEO best practices, this plugin can help you write better, more focused articles that will shine in the eyes of both humans and search engines.

Yoast basically complains about anything that could lead to SEO issues. A series of “lights” tell you whether you are on track or need improvement. You can pretty much stop trying to better yourself when the general light on the right turns green however it is not always possible to do this.

 

The second best plugin for SEO is Total Cache, a plugin that decreases load time pf the Website’s pages. I have been able to get load times well under one second and that works out to be about five to ten times faster than WordPress on its own. Short load time means less waiting for the user and less waiting for the user is a large factor in a better user experience and a better user experience is what Google and the other search engines are looking for.

WordPress is not Perfect

WordPress is a powerful writing machine that is also capable of handling huge numbers of pages and media. Unfortunately it has a list of things that could be done better like how it spits out <H1> heading tags all over the page and this leads to confusing the search engines and possibly users, when they try to figure out what is most important on the page.. According to WordPress, the page title, sidebar and post navigation titles are all as important as the actual content on the page. Search engines have gotten very smart but still need those <H> tags to figure out what is more relevant on the page..

To fix this issue, you must dig into the code and change those sidebar and post navigation headings to something more reasonable like <H3>. This effectively tells the search engines that these other areas are less important when compare to the main content; the part that should be the most important!

One Website for Every Device

With and almost unlimited number of shapes and sizes of screens out there, how is a designer supposed to keep up? They really cannot, so instead they adapt to those variations the best that they can and that is what is called responsive design.

You can see this site live by clicking here.

Hint: If you adjust the size of the browser, you will be able to see different modes of displaying the page.

 

When you think of content management systems, you think of how to change images, text, prices, product IDs, but what happens when you have a million, one of a kind items? You can only sell them once, then replaced them with something completely different. Different is good, but no one knows what that one item is like as there is no other like it.

Website general information

This Website is equipped with a home page image slider like few others. The images are loaded and then the equivalent of panning a video camera from one side to the other beeter known as a, “Ken Burns Effect.” The rest of the site has a simple task; displaying images with headings and descriptions.

From a CMS point of view, you can imagine the nightmare that occurs if you have to keep track of all of those individual items, one at a time. Think about covering them all in groups or by collections instead of showing every item and going through all that work of creating and deleting ; just show groups of them. Their Website, and their business is one large collage.  It is hard to describe a group of things that are only generally related.

They have ability to change images, image sizes, border colors or if they even have one, order of display, and many more things; they can even change the default colors of the Website itself without the help of someone like me. 

CMS at it’s best

The CMS back-end is simple; basically black and white. Why waste time and money on something that will never be seen other than by the owner/operator? Now what does have color is the Website color choices. Using a technique I call Dynamic CSS where PHP rewrites the Style sheet with the preferred colors and styles before the page is sent to the browser. This is also fairly easily achieved using JavaScript but JavaScript comes with one really big flaw; it can be disabled or blocked by the browser or the user. PHP makes the changes on the server, before the page is even sent to the browser thus eliminating the dependency on JavaScript. For you PHP programmers out there that are interested in how Dynamic CSS works, please see this article.

 

Basic Website

This simple HTML Website has no content management system, no mobile version, not much of anything special as far as bells and whistles go. What it does have is the positioning needed to get found and to get respect.

Number one in Google

This Website is found for the keywords “wisconsin defense investigator” better than anyone else out there. Go ahead, try it.. This is a phrase that a criminal defense lawyer would type into Google when looking for help with a case. No links, no tricks, just well designed, fast loading site with good content. Nothing beats a static HTML page for load time. Google’s goal is to provide the best user experience possible and a slow loading page is a bad experience. Users do not want to wait and if they do wait, they are likely to hit the back button and click on the competition back in the search results page.

Number one & two in Yahoo & Bing

Why is the Website there for both positions? Because it’s pages have more relative content and value than anything else than that either Yahoo or Bing could find. Think about that for a second; nothing better so they listed a second page from this site.

Function versus beauty

Since this is an article about a Website, you might wonder why I am just now going to start talking about the Website itself this far down in the article? Because this is what design and looks is worth. Tell me, if no one can find the Website, what good is the looks, features and finances put up for it?

Website design

This website design is fairly simple. It has an image slider on the home page to help get the owner’s most valuable topics covered in a hurry. It is important to give the user what they want and quickly or else you get the back button treatment. The only other point worth mentioning about this design is the articles tab. This is simply a few helpful articles posted to the site in the hopes that users will find that information useful and maybe even link to them. Inbound links for free, how good is that?