New Website Format – Why
It’s been over a week now that the new WARC website has been active. The last one was designed over 15 years ago and became somewhat stale and bloated. Technologies changed the way people look at the site so an update was long overdue.
Here are the advantages of the new website:
1. Search engines love this design. Sites using this CMS (content management system) will be indexed in the search engines much faster than traditional static websites you’ll have traffic coming to our site sooner rather than later.
2. We are using WordPress which has an unlimited number of plug-ins or add-ons that have been developed to perform everything from shopping carts to contact forms. These are updated and upgraded constantly so you’ll always have the latest technology and innovations at your fingertips.
3. It’s usually considerably cheaper to have a website developed with WordPress than any other website. The available plug-ins are generally one-click installations.
4. WordPress has a great deal of SEO (search engine optimization) built right in. This enables you to rank well in the search engines.
5. The site is totally produced online on our server without using a costly local program. WordPress is easy for anyone without coding skills to maintain on their own. This will allow authorized members to make updates from any computer or smartphone and “spread the load” of doing website updates with a few more members.
6. WordPress has a built in RSS feed. This means that we have the ability to syndicate our content. This makes it a very useful traffic-grabbing tool from the ARRL and other new sources. The site will never be stale.
7. WordPress is a responsive web design, able to be easily read on all modern platforms from desktop computers to smartphones. How they do it is by re-sizing to fit the screen. You can try it on your desktop by making your browser screen tall and skinny and note how everything moves from side to side to up and down.
8. And to beat all, WordPress is basically free. You might pay for some of the plugins for extra features but these are generally a one time reasonable charge.
Here are the disadvantages of the new website:
- The site will not display well with older operating systems and browsers. (i.e. XP, IE8 and older) Everyone should be on a newer system anyway due to security concerns and better functionality.
- Responsive (WordPress) websites tend to look alike. It’s a product of how they need to work with all the different platforms. Get used to it. Everyone is forced to go this way.
Any questions, I’ll try to address them. The site is still in a state of design so thing may change, hopefully for the better.
Al WI3Z
Feel free to contact me through the form below.