Simplified Website Design Approach
From Web Smart Newsletter: Designing for SelectEdit
Originally published June 2004 - Updated July 2006. By Eric Holter.
Originally published June 2004 - Updated July 2006. By Eric Holter.
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Overview of the four key differences between Newfangled and SelectEdit
1. Site-wide administrator access. A custom Newfangled site has the capability of providing limited administrative access to certain areas of the site. For example, you might assign one administrator access only to the press release section, while other administrators might be able to edit the whole site. SelectEdit, on the other hand, does not break up administrative access. While you can have as many site administrators as you wish, each of them will have full administrative access to the entire site.
2. Limited NewfangledCMS applications. Custom Newfangled sites have at their disposal all of our advanced NewfangledCMS applications. SelectEdit's list of available components is much shorter (currently calendar of events and simple password protection). Additionally, while custom NewfangledCMS applications can themselves be customized to fit a wide variety of applications, SelectEdit components have fewer customizable properties. For example, our calendar of events component is available for both custom NewfangledCMS sites and SelectEdit, but while a custom site implementation of this component like on www.pbn.com/calendar can be filtered by various event categories. A SelectEdit implementation of the calendar component would not be filterable.
How a custom NewfangledCMS editing screen differs from a SelectEdit editing screen.
SelectEdit uses the same editing screens for every page on the site. Among the fields on this screen are the page's title, the content abstract, and the main content field for the body of the page. Additionally these screens contain two image uploads and two document uploads with corresponding caption fields. Every page of a SelectEdit site uses these same fields, albeit each page uses them in a different way. A main section overview page would use the title field for the page's title, and the content field for the main body of the page. An FAQ page would use the title as the question and the content field as the answer.
Compare how you might edit a press release page using a custom NewfangledCMS site verses how you might do it with SelectEdit. A custom NewfangledCMS site would have custom field definitions created and labeled according to their use on the press release page. It would have a field for the date, by-line, press contact name, email, phone number, etc.). Based on these fields the customized press release template would display each part of the page with the appropriate formatting embedded. The press contact's email address, for example, would automatically display itself as a clickable email link. A SelectEdit press release page, on the other hand, would add the contact information manually within the main content field and use built in formatting tools to apply details such making a name bold or adding an email link.
3. Site editing screens use a common page definition. This is the key conceptual difference between SelectEdit and custom Newfangled sites. Custom NewfangledCMS sites include custom editing screens for every kind of page. Every field on these content editing screens match the exact content for the page. This makes custom NewfangledCMS sites extraordinarily intuitive to maintain. SelectEdit however uses a common content definition for every page of every site. While this takes a little bit more training than a custom NewfangledCMS site does, it is still very easy. So far we have found that while it usually takes less than an hour to train a client how to use a custom NewfangledCMS site, it takes about an hour and a half to train them on a SelectEdit site. The significance of this limitation increases or decreases based on how detailed or complex a website's content needs to be. Because SelectEdit is intended as a starting site for small companies, this limitation is rarely problematic.SelectEdit uses the same editing screens for every page on the site. Among the fields on this screen are the page's title, the content abstract, and the main content field for the body of the page. Additionally these screens contain two image uploads and two document uploads with corresponding caption fields. Every page of a SelectEdit site uses these same fields, albeit each page uses them in a different way. A main section overview page would use the title field for the page's title, and the content field for the main body of the page. An FAQ page would use the title as the question and the content field as the answer.
Compare how you might edit a press release page using a custom NewfangledCMS site verses how you might do it with SelectEdit. A custom NewfangledCMS site would have custom field definitions created and labeled according to their use on the press release page. It would have a field for the date, by-line, press contact name, email, phone number, etc.). Based on these fields the customized press release template would display each part of the page with the appropriate formatting embedded. The press contact's email address, for example, would automatically display itself as a clickable email link. A SelectEdit press release page, on the other hand, would add the contact information manually within the main content field and use built in formatting tools to apply details such making a name bold or adding an email link.
4. Design limitations. While there are design limitations to SelectEdit, it does not require clients to pick from pre-designed sets of templates. Each SelectEdit site is custom designed for each client. However, SelectEdit sites do share an underlying site structure. Although SelectEdit only supports certain structural elements, the SelectEdit structure is based on best practices that Newfangled has developed over the years. It is also based on the most compliant web coding standards so that SelectEdit sites are compatible with a broad range of browsers and platforms. By pre-building and pre-testing SelectEdit page structure we are able to minimize development and design implementation time, thereby keeping costs to a minimum. Nevertheless, within the adopted SelectEdit site structure, each element's design parameters are actually quite broad. Each design element can be custom designed. next >
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