If you're in the market for a new website, you doubtlessly have many questions on your mind. While issues of price and functionality may be at the top of your list, there's another item which often goes overlooked, but which is worth your serious consideration. You need to ask yourself, "How will I keep my website up-to-date?"

Sure, it's great to have a brand-new website. But a month or more down the road, you'll probably find yourself wanting to change some of the content. Maybe your prices have changed. Maybe you've discontinued a certain service. Maybe your contact information has changed. In whatever case, it's easy to see that you'll either need to hire someone who understands web-design to do your updates (a webmaster), or you'll need to learn to do it yourself.

Until recently, updating a website usually took some basic understanding of HTML, as well as some knowledge of client/server interactions, and usually required the ability to use an FTP-client to upload files. With a modern database-driven Dynamic Website, this kind of knowledge is no longer required. Using a simple, intuitive interface, you can update and edit your website as easily as you'd write an email. In fact, you can even update your website through email if you prefer!

• Edit the text on your website.
• Add new GIF or JPEG images to your webpages.
• Modify the layout of any page.
• Customize the color-scheme and style of any indiivdual webpage.
• Update prices easily and quickly.
• Send e-mail newsletters to customers on your mailing list.
• View statistics regarding hte number of visitors to your website, search-engine referrals, and click-stream analysis.

It doesn't stop there. A Dynamic Website is, as the name implies, a far more flexible type of website than your standard run-of-the-mill HTML site. If you want, you can have certain content on your website change automatically, every time a user returns, or on a cyclical basis. Run a retail site? How about having a "Today's Special" box on your homepage, which automatically updates every day to feature a different product? The possibilities are almost endless -- and the best part is, our content-management utility makes it so easy to update and manage content, anyone in your company will be able to do it!

Regular websites (and KMET Solutions Brochure Websites) consist of static HTML or XML documents, which do not change unless you, or your webmaster, updates them. Dynamic Websites consist of PHP documents, which resemble HTML or XML documents, but which refer to CSS stylesheets for color, font, and layout information, and which draw any or all of your website's content from a MySQL database.

Because your website's content is stored in a database, it can be categorized, re-categorized, added-to, edited, and searched on a whim. Because your layout, font, and color information is all stored in one or more Cascading Stylesheet, the layout for your entire site, or for a single page, can be changed quickly and easily.

To be honest, this information is all a bit technical, and in the real world, you won't need to know a PHP document from an HTML document, or know the first thing about MySQL. As an owner of a Dynamic Website, you'll only need to possess basic web-surfing skills, and the ability to create text and pictures suitable for your website.

It's easy. We'll give you a web-address, something like "www.yourdomainname.com/login." When you want to make changes to your website, you'll open your web-browser (Internet Explorer, for example), and you'll go to the web-address we've provided for you. You'll log-in with a username and password. Then, you'll see a control-panel for managing the content of your site.

If you want to edit the content of a page, you'll click on the appropriate link, and you'll see all the existing content for that page, arranged in an easy-to-read table. To edit an existing entry, you'll click on the "edit" link beside the appropriate entry. This will take you to a text-editor window, which works much like Microsoft Word. There, you can re-write your content and apply formatting just as you would in any word-processor or email program.

If you want to add a new entry, add a new page, or delete an old page, the procedure is just as simple. If you want to add pictures to your website, it's really the same basic process. Our control panel makes it so easy to make changes to your website, even your CEO might be tempted to give it a try!

Of course, it depends on the project. In general, a dynamic website costs a bit more than a typical "static" HTML/XML website, because it requires more work on our end. But in the long run, you'll save time and money because a dynamic website is so easy to maintain.

If you're interested in a Dynamic Website, please contact us. We'll find a solution which fits your budget.