Ecommerce Web Design Blog

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Have you ever seen a website where the product descriptions, introductory text and about us pages all have text in it that looks like this? If so, don't despair. Your web designer has not created your site in a foreign language. Lorem Ipsum is a defined standard of fake text that is used in websites, publishing, graphic designs and in the printing industry to fill up space and show customers what a page would look like once the customer has added their actual wording.

Because Lorem Ipsum text approximates the character distribution of letters in the English language it is a good way of filling a page up when real text is not available.  When we build a website at Osc Works, we put lorem text into the product descriptions, about us pages, shipping information pages, contact us pages and more. Our customers can then change it to suit their business.

Lorem Ipsum text originated from a Latin passage in a book called De finibus bonorum et malorum but the words and sentences are jumbled so do not have actual translations. It came about after a printer in the 1500s took some Latin text and scrambled it up to make a sample font book. Lorem Ipsum became popular in the 1960s and has been added to as the original Latin text did not have some of the letters of the alphabet that are now in use. 

What is a Content Management System (CMS)? How does it work? How could it benefit you?

The system used in information based websites to let you manage your own news, image galleries, blogs, forum or written page content is called a Content Management System, or CMS. The CMS is usually a secure administration section of your website that you log into and from there create and edit menus, configure the titles on pages, decide whether content gets displayed or not, manage users and more.

CMS systems help ensure that your page content does not get out of date, and help you manage the navigation structure easily - as the CMS system keeps track of all the links in your site. This can save you time, reduce error and make you more flexible to change. Such flexibility makes CMS web design systems very popular with large corporate organisations who have a large amount of content. Small business can also benefit because the CMS gives your site a platform to grow and add in new features that would not be possible if you were managing the site yourself with static pages.

The key advantages of CMS systems are:

• Centralised management and content sharing - you can set up administration profiles to determine who edits your site and what they can edit. Multiple people can work on your site.
• Centralised backup - all of your content gets saved in a single database which can be backed up by you or your hosting provider
• Web Design and content separate- your site can have a design skin (or web design template) applied, which enables elements of the design to be updated and modified without affecting your content
• Create written content and multimedia content - insert videos, include photo galleries, add Flash, write content, the choices are varied and flexible with a content management system. Adding directories a forum or a blog is very easy with an information site and CMS system
• Independence - you don't need to contact your web company and/or designers every time you want to make a change to a page on your website. You save yourself time and money programming things like blogs and forums.
• Save money on web developers and in house web skills - if you can use a word processor, you can learn to use a content management system. Most CMS systems are designed so even people with very basic computer skills can quickly learn to be skilled content managers.
• Update information quickly - for news and other written content, a CMS system is outstanding value for money. If implemented well, it can be quickly indexed by search engines as well, building your site's credibility and in many cases rankings too.