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What program should I use for a website?

Many VAs on forums are found to be asking about what programs they should be using to develop websites. As beginners they frequently don’t have the funding to pay someone to do it for them, but also they feel that they should be learning about things like that themselves so they can advise clients about what’s available, even if they don’t end up providing that service.

I often recommend WordPress these days. It provides a great CMS (Content Management System) type website with static pages and still allows you to have a blog component if you wish.

In fact, most of the recent websites I’ve developed for clients, and for myself has been done with WordPress. There are thousands of templates out there (and I mean thousands upon thousands) and often you can modify them to change background colours, font types, and add in your own images or logos, or you can pay someone to create a new header or template for you – which is often cheaper than getting a whole website designed.

For my clients, many want the ability to log in and make changes to text and images themselves, without having to pay for constant updates and this type of site suits them well.

Here are some examples of how this works:

Sites for authors:

www.chrissysiggee.com
www.worth-more-than-rubies.com
www.out-of-the-shadows.com.au

Bridal wear designer:

www.melanie-jane.com

Author/Speaker:

www.kathiethomas.com

Webhosting services:

www.acs-webhosting.com

Kathie Thomas

Kathie is the former owner of VA Directory and is former past President of the Australian VA Association. She founded the Virtual Assistant industry in Australia in the mid 90s, having already been operating a home-based secretarial service. Today the VA industry covers a multitude of office-based services for clients worldwide.

Comments

  1. Laurie/Halo Secretarial says

    29 July 2008 at 12:33 am

    WordPress was certainly my choice (especially after seeing examples like yours!) I did pay someone to help me set it up, although I’m planning to learn more about doing it myself. I love how easy it is for me to work with and manipulate though, even with no programmer knowledge.

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  2. Katie Baird says

    29 July 2008 at 3:38 am

    Kathie,

    I’ve been going in the WordPress direction with client websites lately, too, after many years of designing with a combination of hand-coding and wysiwyg software.

    In fact, I’ve turned some clients in that direction so they can build their own sites without using a designer at all initially (unless they reach the point of wanting their CSS or art customized down the line).

    A couple of snafus I have encountered since taking the WordPress route have potential to be really devastating to those without any web development skills to fall back on:

    1. hackers
    2. managing your database tables

    With the potential for security breaches what it is today, a client may fall victim without even knowing it. Figuring out how to respond in emergency mode is stressful enough for those of us who have a sense of what steps to take to restore a site that has been compromised, or to restore our hard-earned rankings in Google.

    Consequently, as more people opt for blogs as their actual biz sites, I foresee a new VA specialty in the area of damage control.

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  3. virtualass says

    1 August 2008 at 11:36 am

    I was introduced to the world of virtual assistants services just a couple of days ago…imagine- a couple of days ago and boy, have I realized I missed out a lot. I was introduced to WordPress as well to begin sessions…Now I know, given ample time, I can be a good virtual assistant myself.

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  4. Kathie Thomas says

    1 August 2008 at 3:24 pm

    Amazing you’ve just found out about our industry! But it is true that people are finding out about us daily, although we’ve been around for many years now. I expect there are other professions I don’t know exist either.

    So glad you could drop by. Make sure you read the info for new VAs in my menu on the right.

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VA Directory was established in March 1994 by Kathie M. Thomas.

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