As we develop more and more partnerships with third party designers, we are opening up our platform to give designers greater control over every aspect of a website. We are excited to announce the new Design File Editor which is now live and available to any Admin account with the "Design" access key.

The new code editor enables any professional designer with knowledge of HTML and CSS, to customize the code for any design file, for any content type, on any website. You can grant access to an in-house designer or any third party designer you trust, and you can easily edit every element of your website. You can rearrange the order of elements on the page, add new elements, change css classes, edit CSS, make your design mobile friendly and responsive, implement Twitter Bootstrap, or whatever you want!

This is a powerful new feature which makes Gutensite a great platform for third-party design partners to develop websites for their own clients.

To learn more about your how it works, as well as tips for basic and advanced customizations, head over to our How-To article about customizing your website design files.

This is just the first step, but let us know if you have any feedback or ideas for improvement!

We are excited to release a new feature for the Control Panel that lets you visualize your entire website and add content all from one page. The page shows you the main sections of your website, along with the sub links under each section. You can drag sections and pages around, or add new pages and links to your menu. The lists are editable if you want to change the name, quickly toggle a link on/off, or delete a link. You can add new links or pages directly to a section so that the CMS already knows what section the new page belongs to.

We hope this is a helpful tool for all our experienced users, and also a great interface to help new users get active with building their website. Let us know what you think!

Two days ago, we spoke with a client that called to cancel their Gutensite because the Control Panel was too difficult for them to use. This represents a failure on our part. Our robust platform has grown to meet your advanced needs, but we know it has a learning curve that is not immediately intuitive to many people. And many of you are still on grandfathered packages that didn’t previously include proactive support, so you may feel like you can’t ask for help. But we have learned that proactive support is one of the most valuable things you need. Which is why we now provide unlimited free support to every paid package.

Switch to the New Package

We hope that you will consider the benefits of switching to our new packages, which include unlimited email and phone support. And we really hope that if you are having any difficulties you will please call us and let us help you, no matter what package you’re currently on. Making sure you are thrilled with your Gutensite is the most important thing for us.

Simple vs. Powerful

There is a balance that must be maintained between making things simple and making things powerful, because everyone is at a different skill level and needs different features. Fortunately, with our support team available to help you at every step, we are sure you can have the best of both worlds (if you let us help). Making our CMS easier to use is a huge priority, and we are now embarking on a total overhaul. But in the meantime, even with the learning curve of Gutensite 1.0, you can still be sure that you are using one of the best CMS on the market for managing a full featured website that looks great to your visitors.

Separating Professional Design from Content Management

Our approach to website management has always been to separate content creation from design. We do this because the number one goal is to make sure that you have a powerful and beautiful website that represents you professionally to the world. This makes Gutensite 1.0 a bit old fashioned, compared to many of the new visual editors that encourage everyone (whether or not they are qualified to make design decisions) to get “creative” with their layouts. But we still believe that the result of our strategy is that it's easier to delegate content management roles to anyone on your team, and you get a consistently better looking website.

But we know that’s not enough, and we aren’t resting there. We know you want the control panel to be easier to use, more drag and drop, easier to edit content visually, and more intuitive to add content and organize your website structure. So hang in there while we build something amazing.

We're excited to announce our recent Design Partnership with Mazzarello Media and Arts! Gutensite has just put the finishing touches on Mazzarello's latest design, DiggityDog.com, the premier pet sitting/walking company in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mazzarello's design is as brilliantly cute as it is functional. We are proud to be able to support talented designers like Mazzarello Media and Arts and are glad to help businesses get the most ROI from their website.

If you're a designer and are interested in joining a partnership, powered by one of the industry's leading Content Management Systems, check out the details of our Designer Partnership Program here!

This article is part of a series Comparing CMS Platforms through the Lifecycle of a Website.

A successful website should lead to growth in your business. You can start with a simple site if you are on a budget, and then add features as you learn how to optimize your website for conversions and integrate your website into important business processes that save you money and improve customer satisfaction.

Flexible, Customizable and Scalable

Once you reach this point, you have already exceeded the limitations of Squarespace, Wix and Weebly. These platforms are not flexible and do not allow any customization of functionality. They will not grow with you. Wordpress is an open source platform that is flexible enough that you can hire third party developers to help you extend the CMS to meet your needs, but at its core it is still a blogging platform and you’ll need to hire and manage a team of contractors (hopefully they come well recommended).

Gutensite is designed from the ground up to make it easy and affordable to customize design and functionality from day one. The platform is built to scale. Customization is where it sets itself apart from all the other popular platforms. So when you build a simple site on Gutensite, you can know that it will grow with you.

Data Liberation & Vendor Lock-In

No platform is perfect for every website requirement. If your website outgrows the current platform, you need to think about how easy it is to migrate to a new platform. If you have a simple 5 page website, it’s not a big deal to recreate it. But if you have written one hundred blogs, and uploaded hundreds of documents and thousands of images, this is an important factor.

It is very important that you are not ever stuck with any vendor, in case your needs change or your relationship sours. Gutensite is committed to supporting you throughout the entire lifecycle of your website, because we want to see you successful, regardless if you use our platform forever. If you get to a point where Gutensite’s hosted platform is not sufficient to meet your needs, you have several options. Gutensite can port over your website to an independent dedicated server where you can continue (if desired) getting updates to the core platform and/or work with third party developers to continue growing your website on your own. Or we will export all your data, and files so that you can take your website content with you wherever you go.

Summary

So when you are trying to choose the best platform, look beyond the initial build phase and be sure to consider the entire lifecycle of your website. Remember that having a great platform only matters if you end up with a great final website. Think big, and make sure you build a website that accomplishes your goals and adds real value to your business or nonprofit. Also remember that the team that builds and helps you maintain your website is just as important as the tool you use. We would love to talk to you about your goals and offer expert suggestions about how to accomplish those goals. So if you want help, please call us!

This article is part of a series Comparing CMS Platforms through the Lifecycle of a Website.

Before asking Gutensite to help them build a website, many of our clients also look at platforms like Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix and Weebly. So although building the website is only one small part of the website's lifecycle, we will compare these platforms and the results they produce.

Control Panels

Wix and Weebly are essentially WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editors for building static websites. They take a visual drag and drop approach to help beginners create a simple website with limited functionality. If your goal is to be actively involved in building a basic website, and you want to show the world your creative talent, these platforms allow you to move stuff around and express yourself. They have an impressive collection of settings and options (sometimes five or more levels deep that are easy to get lost in). These platforms are so visual, in fact, they actually make you layout the page yourself, figure what size image looks good with the text, what colors to use, etc. If your goal is to create a professional website, and you are not a designer, you will probably find that these platforms are too empowering. From our experience, it’s highly unlikely that an average user on these platforms will end up with a website that accomplishes their goals.

Squarespace takes a similar approach to visual building, but it has a much more appealing interface and does a better job of protecting the design from your misplaced “creativity”. They have received a lot of well deserved praise, and have become a popular choice for portfolios and other photography focused websites. But they also have a pretty steep learning curve and the potential to mess up. In the hands of a good designer, this is a great tool that can make a beautiful website (albeit simple, with emphasis on photos and limited content).

Wordpress and Gutensite are not "visual website builders" but classic Content Management Systems with a friendly list-based interfaces that separate content management from design roles. So rather than editing the website visually and laying out pages yourself, the building phase focuses on creating content through simple forms that let you enter a friendly URL, page title, various information related to the content type and selecting images and other media to include on the page. The CMS takes this data and creates a beautiful page based on the layout for that content type. Then you organize your pages in a menu hierarchy and create additional modules that appear on the home page, sidebars or content areas.

This approach has a learning curve as well, since you need to think abstractly about content records in a list, instead of seeing it directly on the page. But there is a lot of freedom when you can focus on content without worrying about the design. It also enables delegation of content management roles to anyone on a team, regardless of their design qualifications. And perhaps most importantly, the final website is much more beautiful because it remains looking as beautiful as the day it was professionally designed.

Tools vs. Team

These website building platforms have all created a way to make “online publishing” accessible to the masses, who may or may not have technical HTML skills. In fact, even though technical people can build pure HTML websites from scratch, they appreciate true content management systems more than anyone else, because they understand the power of dynamic, organized, editable database driven content (particularly when it separates content and design and makes it easy to scale).

Because building a website has become so easy and accessible to everyone, people mistakenly think “building a website” equals “building a good website that brings value to your company.” But all these platforms are just tools. Like any tool, the quality of the websites produced on the platform depends on the team that employs the tool. Very few businesses or nonprofits have staff that are qualified to plan, design, and build a website on their own. And yet that is what these instant website builder platforms are asking people to do.

Gutensite has created a platform that is easy to learn and use, which makes it possible to setup a beautiful website that looks professional, all on your own. But we have learned over the years that even with the best tools most people need help figuring out what their goals are, how to organize content, what features are important, how to optimize traffic flow for conversions, how to do good SEO, etc.

The platform must meet the basic requirements for your website project, but having a qualified team create your website will make all the difference in the world. You do not have the time to become an expert in every aspect of website design and marketing. So you need to choose a platform and a team that will help you. Gutensite will consult with you and help you find a solution that meets your budget. Just call and talk to a dedicated project manager to discuss your goals and your options. The best technical tools in the world, can’t replace a talented team.

Read more about the next phase in the lifecycle of a website: Managing a Website.

Building a paper airplane is cheap, easy and fun! But it won’t fly you to your destination. When choosing which platform is best for your website, sometimes what seems like the easiest option ends up being just a waste of time.

There are three phases in every website’s life. Unfortunately when most people choose which website platform is best for their project, they only think about the first “Build” phase. As a result, CMS platforms that have instant visual appeal usually get a lot of attention and praise. But when the sugar rush wears off, sometimes you realize that the platform doesn’t work well for the long run.

Before you commit to a website platform, measure how it will perform for the full cycle of it’s life:

1. Build. A great website must first be planned so that it brings you the most value, it must be designed to look professional and optimize conversions, and it must be built to support your functionality requirements.
2. Manage. A website needs new content that is SEO optimized to attract more visitors. Analytics need to be tracked to see how your visitors are behaving and if they are doing what you want them to do. And along the way you will need a lot of support from experts to help you use all the features of your website and make tweaks if necessary.
3. Grow. As your business or nonprofit grows, you will have new ideas about how to reach a new audience, or how to serve your customers better and increase retention. The current platform will need to be upgraded to meet your changing needs or you will have to export your content to a new platform that can get the job done.

In this series we will explore each of these phases in detail, and compare how some of our competitors compare. Read on to learn more about Building a Website.

Our tireless creative department has just released another free design skin. A creamy French menu layout called the French 75 with subtle color accents and a tasty combination of serif and sans-serif fonts. This design comes in Provencial Blue, Crème Brûlée, Rooftop Grey and a Petit Café version that includes striped awnings and a chalkboard side menu. The French 75 pairs well with any Bordeaux or full bodied red. But then what doesn't?

Our designers have created a new free design template-- "Seven & Seven" is ready for use! Elegant, polished and smart, this design offers a highly visual way to engage with your audience. Great for retail, growing churches, portfolios, or anyone who wants to make a great impression from the start. Seven & Seven also has some new features such as a site map in the footer and a full width promotional image area with large dynamic text overlay that makes your site both professional and extra engaging.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Much Gutenlove,

The Gutensite Team