My website: With or without an admin panel?

I spend rather a long time explaining to customers the benefits of having your website built with an admin management panel so I thought I'd write a short blog post about it.

An admin panel will allow certain areas of your website to be managed by yourself or your colleagues/employees. For example, if you wanted to modify the content of a page within your website or change an image, you could quite easily just log in to your admin panel, select the page you wish to edit and make the changes. It's as easy as using Microsoft Word as our admin panels come with a browser based content editor - so you can style your text however you wish.

If your website has a blog (like mine) or a latest news section, having an admin panel makes it easy for you to post articles, delete old/irrelevant ones or edit existing ones.

Going back to the content editor, we do recommend that you don't copy & paste directly into it from programs such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works or Publisher etc. Doing this will result in the content editor trying its best to match every little bit of formatting. For example, supposing Microsoft Word has a different line spacing than your website. When you paste content into the content editor, it will add lots of on-page styling to try and match that. You will find that the content you add isn't in-keeping with the rest of your website.

Our advice is to copy & paste via good old Notepad. To find this program click on your Start menu in Windows, then go to Programs >> Accessories and you should see it listed there (along with good old Paint!).By doing this, Notepad will remove all the unwanted formatting and styling and will simply display old fashioned text and line breaks. When you copy & paste from Notepad into your content editor, you can then style the content exactly how you want it using the provided functions.

The content editor we use is called ckEditor and is open source. Anyone can use it! It is freely available from www.ckeditor.com. Click here for an overview.

Images can even be uploaded within the ckEditor window and placed in situ as desired. The ckEditor window can even be re-sized (in case you are struggling to visualise everything).

So back to the point... Having an admin panel means you don't have to wait for your web designer to get round to making your changes. It means you have FULL CONTROL over your website.

If you aren't very computer savvy, you might be surprised at how simple an admin panel is to use. If you can use Google, and if you can use Microsoft Word, then you will more than likely find having an admin panel a breeze. If you can't even turn your computer on, then maybe you are better letting your web designer continue to make the changes.

I hope this answers a few questions! Please contact us if you require more information.