Netcera Datasite - Next Generation Website/Web Application Development & Management
Now you can host your website with our unique website content management system and Web application framework. Unlike other content management systems, the Datasite offers complete flexibility for the site designer, who can set up a custom interface for the site owner with as much or as little access to content as needed, while still providing excellent ease of use for end users.
There is a very clear dividing line on the Web between the haves and the have nots - whether you are still working with static web pages, or if your site is database-driven. Yes, there are many other issues, there's a lot more to having a successful site than whether the information for your site is sitting in a file or in a database, but there are very clear, very compelling benefits to database-driven websites (DDW's) that, all else being equal, will improve your site, impress your visitors, lower your costs, reduce mistakes, and speed up both site development and information revisions.
The problem is, as a rule DDW's are far more expensive to build and maintain because you have to license the software as well as hire a webmaster who is trained in using the software. In addition, most of these programs either have to be built around your site, or they impose constraints on what is possible. And adding any more functionality, like a search function, a shopping cart, or custom forms is just more expense. So the "big boys" get to have a DDW, you get to hire a designer every time you need to make a change. How often are you going to make changes to your site if you know that every time you do, it takes money out of your pocket?
The Netcera Datasite changes all that. You can have a DDW for about the same price as a regular website, and the software is so well designed that it imposes virtually no limitations on the web designer while making it easy to design a custom interface for you. Changing site content is simple, quick, and secure. Here are a few of the ways that the Datasite will help you.
Who's running your site?
There's no question: the more often your site content changes, the more repeat visitors you will have. If you provide timely information and new, fresh content, people will come back. If they know that the site will look the same every time they visit, they won't.
With static, file-based websites, every change needs to be made by someone who has been trained in either HTML or an HTML editor like Dreamweaver™ or Frontpage™ (and no matter what the ads say, these are not simple programs to use). The process is time consuming and can be error prone if the person making the changes is not the same person who wanted the changes.
In traditional static web page design, the designer is the bottleneck - if you have ten people who want changes made, it's going to take a while. And then everyone has to go onto the site to see what mistakes the designer made that need to be fixed, generating another round of changes and possible mistakes.
With the Datasite, your people can be trained in basic content management in about ten minutes, rather than many hours for Frontpage™ or many weeks for HTML. Even the ones who can't seem to remember how to spell check can make changes quickly and easily. All content can be added and edited securely by non-skilled personnel from anywhere there's a web browser attached to the Internet, and still allow the administrator of the site to preview the changes before they are "published" to the Web. Have someone who wants to manage your "what's new" page but they wouldn't know a hyperlink from a hypodermic? No problem. See a typo while you're away from the office? It's gone in the time it would take you to compose the email to your webmaster. Found some new information that fits perfectly into your site? Add it and link it in the time it would take to load the HTML editor and find the page file.
Technology Trials and Human Error
How many of you can afford the time and money to hire or train an on-staff webmaster, raise your hands? I thought not. In "regular" web design or webmastering, all changes need to be handled from the same set of "master" files or risk having different versions of pages on different computers, which means the files have to be on the same computer or network that the webmaster is on. You decide on some changes you need, you email them to the webmaster who is in the middle of a huge project and can't get to it till later this week, they make the changes and let you know it's all set and they'll send you the bill, you go on the site and discover that they replaced the wrong paragraph with the right text...now, where was the original text?
Or you train yourself in Frontpage™ -- "it's so easy!" say all the ads. You spend an evening making a "web" on your computer at home with all of your website's files on it and you think, "Yes, I'm all set now!" You make your first few edits just fine. (Well, you did have to re-upload that one page three times when you discovered that it didn't look right in Netscape Navigator, and you did spend an extra 45 minutes trying to figure out why your uploaded page still has all the errors as the old page before you realized that you didn't hold down the shift key when you hit refresh so you were still looking at the old page, and there was that time that you realized three weeks later that you had set the text to Arial but not Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif so it looked like doo-doo to all the non-Windows people who visited the site.) Inevitably something goes wrong - your computer can't connect with the webserver, you overwrite the wrong file, your images aren't uploaded - anyone who works with websites knows how often something doesn't work the way it's supposed to. And you suddenly realize you're spending your free time working on your website. Or not, in which case your site isn't getting updated.
The Datasite eliminates all of this, because the overall formatting is already built into the page. And the built-in HTML editor (for Windows/IE users) acts just like a simple word processor, making formatting of text and images simple. For custom formatting of text, design elements forms etc., you can insert little "tags" that were set up by your designer to match your site. And you and everyone else in your company, in your carpool, or in Cairo, can see exactly what the changes will look like before you publish it to the world.
Would you like to save time and money? Yes?
One of the areas in which the Datasite excels is cutting the time it takes to develop a site. The usual process--you and your partners meet with the designer and agree on a design concept, they develop it and come back and you make suggestions and revisions, they make the changes and come back and you agree on the design and start feeding them content. They start putting pages together, setting up links, inserting buttons and graphics, then they're ready for some more content. You, meanwhile, decide you don't like the way certain parts of the first batch of content look once they're on the pages and you all begin making notes, which need to be fed through one person before being sent to the designer. The designer makes the changes, and one of your partners convinces you that their original wording was, in fact, better, so you send off some more revisions to the designer, which all slows down the process of setting up the next set of pages...you get the idea.
Now, here's how it looks when you're designing on the Datasite. You meet with the designer and agree on a basic site design, they implement a single template on the Datasite and you start entering content. You see how your content looks on the page and make suggestions, the designer implements them and meanwhile you've set up sixty pages. Once the template is changed, you instantly see the new look and agree to more design changes. If you don't like how the text works with the design, you can change it yourself, experiment until you get it right. At all points, you're able to see your content within a design which is relatively close to the final product, and getting closer all the time. While the designer is designing, you are filling the site up, and as soon as they've completed the final design they can start going through the pages, suggesting editing changes (that you can make yourself) and easily adding design elements to bring the pages to life. No bottlenecks, no guessing, much faster, much cheaper, more accurate. What a concept.
Redesign your site in an afternoon
Okay, it's two years later and the design that once looked so fresh and alive when it was new is starting to look like it was designed by a high school student. It's time for a redesign. If your site is a "normal" site, you haven't edited it enough so you need to make lots of changes to the content as well as have someone make a new design and stick all the content in new pages, link it all, and then you need to go through and figure out what got missed or what's in the wrong place. Lots of time, lots of money.
If you hosted on the Datasite originally, you would have kept all your content updated easily so you wouldn't need to make a lot of changes. The designer can take their finished design templates and implement them in about twenty minutes on your private site. You decide that you want to move pages around because it works better with the new design - move the pages and readjust the links in a few minutes--you can do it yourself. Get twenty people to go browse the private site ("Hey, Tom, can you do me a favor?") until you're sure the content is perfect and there are no surprises, then click the Publish link and your new site is live, instantly.
And that's only the beginning...
Upload, rename, preview, align and place images...upload, rename, and place files...create, edit and place forms that sends the submitter a confirmation, sends you a notification, and submits the record to the online database...create multiple password-protected areas, then set which users can access any or all of them...create signup forms, login forms, and password reminder forms...set up a catalog with a powerful search function...integrate the optional, highly flexible shopping cart module with your catalog...create a form that creates a new page...set up a subdomain like http://cool.mysite.com and point it to any page...and much more.
Read all about the different capabilities of the Datasite on our Datasite Concept & Features page.
