Nancy McCord is in Russia for the next several weeks this is a reprint.

Content, style, tone, and message are king on the Web. If you have great content and market your website through a variety of channels you will build web authority as well as website traffic over time. Getting one way inbound links is just one great way to build web authority for your website, but this may take an investment of your own personal time.

White papers are typically researched and documented unique content. Typically one that you or one of your employees has done based on the unique trends of your business or marketplace. It is very difficult for a professional writer to write a whitepaper for you. White papers will usually document data that has been accumulated over months of observation and then savvy analysis that pulls it all together proving a conclusion point. A whitepaper is not a derivative work of data that is available on the web; it should be unique and created about a specific topic.

The time that you invest in researching and writing a whitepaper for your business can turn into a marketing goldmine. At my firm, I will typically write one in-depth whitepaper once a year. I tie a subscription to my monthly newsletter to the whitepaper, meaning that you will need to give me your email address in order to download my free whitepaper. In a short time I have added several hundred names to my e-newsletter subscription list effectively extending my reach. Some white papers I offer free and other websites and web authorities drive traffic to my own website just for this content. One in particular is a paper that I did on how to stop spoofing of your domain name. Internet service providers routinely link victims to my site for our research and commentary on what to do when you are spoofed.

I have found that not only creating white papers on topics that interest me that I would like to learn more about, but by archiving them I am providing very authoritative quality content that not only provides a service to readers, but educates them, is widely discussed on the Web, and adds to my own personal knowledge base. I have never sold access to my white papers but do use them as marketing vehicles and promote them on my website, blog, and e-newsletter.

If you don’t have the time to invest in research and writing of a whitepaper, don’t despair feature articles written by professional writers may be the alternative for you. Check out our post tomorrow for more information on how you can build web authority with this technique written by professional writers.

Nancy McCord is in Russia for the next two weeks. This is a reprint.

It used to be that if you wanted a print friendly page version of each page of your website you made one and blocked the search engines from indexing them as duplicate content by blocking them in your robots.text file, but now you can get your printer friendly page with just a wee bit of CSS code and a print style sheet.

With all custom web sites that we design now, we include the CSS to create a printer friendly page, just by clicking print – no new URLs just smart coding. It’s a fairly simple thing to do and yet so very elegant and much appreciated by readers.

In our print friendly versions, we block out colors, navigation, and sometimes images. If you have a website in design right now, make sure to ask your web designer will they be doing CSS print version pages for you as well.

I have been toying with doing WordPress websites and so have done quite a bit of research on the topic this past week. What I have found is that I do not want to “re-invent the wheel” by creating my own as there are some really great ones out there now. But what I did find was an excellent WordPress website theme that is perfect for my customers.

I highly recommend the Small Biz WordPress website theme. We find that this template has built in resources that help you place on local keywords, have search engine optimization features built in and is very easy to use even for the novice. If you buy from our link we will be paid a small commission, but that is not the reason for our recommendation.

We like this WordPress template for several reasons.

• It is very easy to use and configure for your own personal needs.
• There are numerous videos that illustrate how to customize your WordPress site even how to add videos.
• Built on the back bone of WordPress this website allows you the site owner to add and change content at will with an online control panel.
• The application files are easy to find and not buried in code that is hard to find.
• It is one of the most user-friendly WordPress websites I have found to date.

I highly recommend this WordPress theme to you. If you decide to use it, we can install and configure it for you or just install it for you. The theme is not expensive and is available for $117 plus our hourly charge for installation. You will need to install it on a hosting plan that has PHP and MySQL. We like the Hostway Starter Plan for $168 per year as a very cost efficient resource for hosting for WordPress. Take a look at the Small Biz theme now and see what you think.

I think that you will agree that hands down it is one of the easiest yet robust themes that can be used for a website.

Last week one of our client’s who is hosted at Network Solutions had a huge issue with their website. IE had splashed a huge red warning on the page when his URL was entered. The warning stated that the site had been compromised and included automatic downloading malware. Additionally the Kapersky antivirus program blocked all access to the website.

What I found out was, that one, the FTP access to the website had been changed without notice by Network Solutions earlier in the week, the home page of the client’s website and the index.php page of the blog directory (not the blog itself) had a trojan script installed at the bottom. Clearly if a link had been clicked on the page anywhere a trojan would have been downloaded to the unsuspecting visitors computer.

When I spoke with Network Solutions staff about the problem they said that not only our account had been compromised but others as well. For this particular client, this is the third time his site or blog has been hacked in the last year. He is the only  client we have hosted at Network Solutions and the only one of two that I know of in our list of clients this past year who have had a serious problem with their web host.

When should you consider moving your website? Well I say being hacked three times is reason to move! I can understand a system being compromised once and maybe even twice but the third time warrants a conversation about why new technology and security policies were not put in place after the last big attack.

You can read more about this most recent incident in this article.

What I find particularly interesting is that Network Solutions messaged me on Twitter when I tweeted about the problem and said no, they weren’t hiding, and pointed to a note posted on their website. The note however did not say that their servers had been compromised and trojans installed on websites they host, but rather an innocuous notification that some people may be having trouble FTPing their website.

Although more transparency in this case would definitely lead to a flood of client’s leaving Network Solutions for other web hosts, clearly better customer handling of the situation should have been done. It may behoove Network Solutions to state the new security policies and hardware they are putting in place to offset the amount of bad press this last incident is creating, my own blog post included.

I have reviewed and tested Adobe InContext Editing and felt it was a good product for clients that wanted to update website content themselves. Adobe has recently announced that it is closing the free standing version of Adobe InContext Editing and will now package it as part of the Adobe Business Catalyst solution.

Business Catalyst is much more than a website editing application it is an advanced set up business tools under one umbrella much like HubSpot. Business Catalyst’s strength will be however its significantly lower price when compared to HubSpot.

I have been testing the interface intensively and find the WSIWYG interface annoying to use for a power user such as myself who typically works in code view. To please people such as myself, Business Catalyst does allow full FTP access and can work on sites set up with Dreamweaver templates.

What I find intriguing about Business Catalyst is its arsenal of web widgets and easy to implement advanced features such as recording all form contact submissions into an integrated customer database for use by the sales team and an included e-newsletter application. The system can even set up email drip campaigns. Additionally you can do e-commerce on Business Catalyst as well with a very nice feature of being able to load all your products from an Excel spreadsheet versus having to enter each one manually.

The application allows the business owner to review on on dashboard all activity on their online business and allows sorting of information with an integrated analytics program as well. From my initial review, it looks like a very powerful system with a very low cost. This is a hosted application like HubSpot but instead of charging a monthly fee of $500 for a small site the fees range from $39 to $79 per month and only $16 per month if you only want to use the InContext Editing portion. To me the application has great potential.

One note of warning, the system IS complicated. I have personally decided that the premade templates are not a good fit for my needs, but will be testing my own template next in the application. Although this tool is not a good fit for everyone, it certainly points the way to the future of packaged business solutions. As the team says at Adobe, this is no longer just a website, it is an online business!

Custom website for Allison Pest Control

We’ve just launched a brand new website for the nice people at Allison Pest Control in Farmingdale, New Jersey. The site took over 130 hours to complete and I believe it is one of our best so far.

The site contains 33 custom created pages chock full of interesting well-written content about New Jersey pests. The website contains a variety of navigation styles as well as an integrated site search feature that make finding any topic easy on the site.

Using the greens and logo from the client’s trucks, we created a custom look that pleased the client and looked crisp and clean. The site is built as an authority website and is geared up to place well organically on local search terms.

With additional service areas created in the new site, both commercial and residential clients will find topics of interest and service information. Adding numerous client testimonials in both the home and business areas helps readers and prospects to better understand the type of services the client, who has been in business since 1917, offers.

The client has already started to get outstanding feedback and is already planning on adding a blog to the website in the next several weeks. We invite you to check out this new website and see what you think at www.AllisonPest.com.

The answer is unequivocally YES you should have a privacy policy on your website.

There are several reasons why every business owner should make sure that this is one of the pages they include in their website.

1. If you advertise on any Pay Per Click platform, the spiders which measure quality score will be reviewing your website looking for this file.
2. If you link out to any websites from your website, you need to cover yourself legally and make sure that visitors know you cannot control what those other sites do from installing malware, to showing photos you may not approve of, or sharing comments or points of view you don’t share.
3. In our litigious society, it is unfortunate that you have to also cover your proverbial “butt” by having that hated legalese language that makes you “law suit resistant”.
4. Additionally it also helps your readers to know what you do with their email addresses and information. Do you share the information to third parties, do you sell their email to spammers? It is by far better to be transparent in regards to what you do to build confidence and a relationship built on trust with your readers.

So, if you don’t have a privacy policy, here is mine as an example for you to review. You may want to consider creating one that is similar to help keep your business “covered”.

That’s right we do actually turn prospects away. We are simply not a good match for every prospect’s needs. What we do do, we do great. That being said in a nutshell, we have a passion for small to medium sized business owners who typically have a brick and mortar operation. We are typically also working with the business owner directly and not a corporate chain of command.

It bear repeating, but we do not work or provide any of our services for these business sectors:

Adult Content

Any site that has adult themes such as dating sites, soft core pornography, images of partially clothed women that are used to sell your products, lingerie, any sexual aids or products, we just do not provide services for regardless of whether it is blogging or even Google AdWords.

Stock Brokers, Day Traders, Forex Traders and Their Management Software

In this case we have simply found that the nature of your business is so complicated that the time it takes us to learn and be effective for you is just not cost effective for us. In many cases you are additionally governed by regulations making even blog writing a difficult operation.

E-Books and Products Sold by Squeeze Pages in Multi-Level Marketing Programs

We typically do not supply services for products that are e-books or online how to guides. Although you can still be successful with these approaches, we simply do not have a passion for working with products that are typically sold using these vehicles. This would cover e-books on how to make money in real estate, sell or trade stocks or use the forex, or how to sell multi-level marketing products.

No one likes to hear no, but it is by far better for you to find a supplier that has a true passion for what you do and what you sell. We can help many businesses, but just not all.

This past month Google has been talking about website page load speed. They have been chatting up the topic in forums and have even recommended a Firefox browser plugin that runs a website speed clocker that provides recommendations for improvement.

The chatter in the forums and blogs is that Google is going to be considering page load speed as one part of their organic algorithm. Remember however that there are about 100 factors that Google considers for organic placement so although this may be an important one, it is not the one that will make or break your website’s organic placement.

My recommendation is that if you are redesigning your website this year a snappy page load should be a design consideration. If you have an existing website, do what you can to improve page load time, but don’t get so spun up that it becomes your only concern.

For existing websites, there are many important factors that you can still very easily control now such as content freshness, authority of your content, readability, search friendly navigation, good site architecture and cross linking between pages that will help you right now even without tweaking your page load speed.

I have tested this concept myself for a full year. My main website is here www.McCordWeb.com. I created a spin off site just on the topic of custom web design and our templated Quick Launch web design services here www.McCordWebDesign.com.

For a year I monitored placement and trying out several search engine optimization techniques.  What I have found is that my spin off site has never really quite gotten the placement that I thought it would even though it was very focused and on topic. I was careful to not have duplicate content for the site so as to rule out that issue as a factor for organic placement.

Here’s a real world search example:

on www.Google.com search for custom web design Maryland. My main website is #1 out of 304,000. My spin off site is #80 out of 100 results. Although this is an incredibly small sample, when client’s come to me to say let’s do a two page spin off site – like a doorway page, I simply will not do it. It is far better to develop and work on making your main website the best it can be than to fragment your message and try to scam the organic results. Clearly my own test proves that a spin off site, no matter how optimized will not beat your original main well-developed website.

The first time you visit a website for a firm that you are considering purchasing products or services from, you will typically check to see if they have reviews or testimonials. This is a great place to see what others who have worked with the firm have said about their experience.

Testimonials are worth their weight in gold when it comes to establishing consumer confidence in your product or abilities. I strongly recommend that every business work hard to solicit testimonies from existing and past clients. I routinely hear from clients, “what if someone says something bad what should I do?” My first response is, if the comment is bad wouldn’t you want to know about it so you could fix the problem and then change how you are doing something to be better?

Here is an example of a 4.5 star rating comment we received that we posted on our website as we felt that the testimony created legitimacy for the other 5 star ratings on the page for our writing service.

“The quality has slowly improved over time as our writer has gained experience with the topic. Our suggestions and criticism were taken well and understood perfectly. Some of the articles are quite inspired, and the embedded YouTube videos and images really make the blog stand out. Overall, it’s really better than I expected.  I will be using your service for another project/website very soon.”

Although this testimony appears possibly not glowing look carefully it addresses that we took criticism and improved to cater to the customer’s needs that they are already considering using our services for other projects. By not editing the comment, we give legitimacy to other 5 star comments on the same page.

“I’ve had a wonderful experience with you. I am really excited to check out my new blog postings. They have helped my sites search engine rankings within 2 weeks. I love how organized you are and how efficient your system is set up. I feel very taken care of and I don’t feel that I have to worry about much.”

Remember however, when it comes to testimonies, you are choosing to show them on your website or not. If you get a bad comment, I would contact the customer immediately to work actively to repair the problem and relationship. I would not place a negative comment on my own website. Sometimes a comment after the resolution of a problem can be even more valuable to your business.

That being said, if you sanitize your comments and edit wording, the comments you place on your website appear fake. For me, I post customer testimonies warts and all. When I post a testimony that is not a perfect score of five stars it gives legitimacy to the other ratings on the page. I will however never publish on my own site a negative rating that hurts confidence in my abilities. That being said I have never gotten a negative rating from a clients – I work very closely with them and work hard to provide exceptional service. I use my rating system as a double check of my service to make sure I am staying on course and focused on my customer’s needs.

You can view all our ratings pages here to get an idea of how you may want to use ratings for your own website:

Blog Writing Ratings

Google AdWords Service Ratings

Web Design Service Ratings

You’ve seen it the gobbledy gook on the form that comes to your inbox from your website contact form. There is literally no way to stop this new generation of spam short of introducing a captcha field on your contact form. 

A captcha field is one of those auto generated boxes filled with a combination of letters jumbled together. Only people can read them not spam robots, so they defeat the use of your online contact form by robo spammers. One of the biggest issues that real users have with sites that use captcha is that sometimes the letters and numbers are not easily readable and can create problems especially for those that are visually disabled. Case in point is the captcha used on many Google pages. If you can read it let me know. Worse yet is the audio link that tells you what the captcha says. The speaker has a very heavy Indian accent which makes understanding what the letters and number are impossible.

The bottom line is this is you use a contact form on your website, you will probably get robo spam. It is not an issue of a poor web host or a problem with your spam filter, it is simply the new generation of spam that gets to you because it uses your website’s contact form script to send you the spam thereby getting past ISP filters.

Moving to a new web host is never easy. In fact it can be downright hard and fraught with problems depending on the type of technology that your website is using behind the scenes. You should never feel that your website files are held hostage by your web host, but it is important to consider moving to a new host only to solve serious problems.

When Should You Consider Moving to a New Web Host?

Many of the reasons I have heard why a client wants to change web hosts typically have to do with issues that are truthfully not the original web host’s fault. Here are a few tips when you should consider moving and when you should not.

You should move to a new web host if…

• Your IP address block is linked to a blacklisted spammer and all of your mail is blocked literally shutting down your business.
• If your web host does not offer the technology that you really need to run your website. For example if your host does not have Windows servers and your brand new website is all done in .asp, you will have to move.
• If your website or e-commerce store has suffered significant service outages due to either high server load and the use of older technology by your host and they cannot accommodate your website traffic.
• If your website has been taken down by a virus spread from another user on your shared server because your host did not have the proper security or firewalls in place causing your website files to be trashed.

You should NOT move to a new web host if…

• If you have had a spam problem in your inboxes. Unfortunately poor mailbox management is not your host’s problem, but is rather an issue that you are not attending to that is impacting your mail delivery. You will continue to have these same problems where ever you go. You should change your procedures and not your host.
• If you think you can save money on hosting fees. You may eat up any savings from the money to bring your website or e-commerce store back online. Make sure to read the rest of this article for why.
• You have had one incident of poor customer service. Be patient when you have a problem, get another service rep to help you and try to be courteous in helping them to help you. There can always be a one time incident where someone (you or them) has simply had a bad day and not reacted well. Give support another go before you decide you must move.

Cautions About Moving Web Hosts

If you have decided that you absolutely must move to a new web host please be aware that you cannot simply set up a new account and upload your website files and everything will just magically work. In fact everything will break when you move to a new web host!

Database connections, if you have them for e-commerce, as well as the database itself will need to be reset up and the new connection code syntax embedded in all pages when you move to a new web host. Contact forms will need to be scripted again using the new hosts scripting and cgi-bin address, PHP websites will need to have PHP re-enabled and possibly PHP.ini settings updated on the new host to make the site work, and of course all email accounts will need to be set up again and passwords added.

Moving to a new web host is highly complicated for many sites. Even for a simple HTML website, new contact form scripting, and time to set up email accounts and then update the settings on your computers to be able to download your mail again takes time and creates an expense.

In fact, you may find that to move your site will cost you more in expenses for set up, reconfiguration and down time than you had ever even expected. If you feel that you really must move make sure that you are carefully analyzing what the costs actually will be.

Our Top Picks For Web Hosts

We have two recommendations for hosts and use both of them for our business websites and so have real world experience with both. Our top preferred host is Hostway. The majority of our business clients as well as our largest website (500+ pages), are hosted by Hostway. I like Hostway as their control panel is intuitive, easy for clients to use without my involvement, online performance is excellent, and they offer Urchin website statistics.

Our second choice is Network Solutions. (Get a free domain with annual hosting.) For some clients this may be the preferred solution however the control panel, and email application is more difficult to use and I do not consider their control panel intuitive. Unfortunately, they do not provide a good website statistics analytics package. However, they do have a WordPress auto installer that makes setting up a WordPress blog super easy and integrates easily onto your server. I have found website database integration to be more problematic at Network Solutions.

The bottom line is when it comes to wanting to change web hosts, make sure you are changing for the right reason and that you are selecting a new host that will be a better long term choice than your previous one.

We've really checked it out!

Over the past several months I have really been running Adobe InContext Editing through its paces. I wanted to share with you my thoughts on this new product from my real world use and client testing.

First, Adobe InContext Editing is now ready for client implementation. This is an excellent and exciting new product. It is one that I think, after you read my review, that you may want to consider implementing on your own website.

What does Adobe InContext Editing Do?

This is new online service allows website owners to update their own website content without a webmaster. It is not for everyone, but for some clients it will be an excellent new tool. If you make regular content and image changes to your website, want to have total control over your wording, change your wording when it suits you, or if you want to save money on webmaster services for routine changes, Adobe InContext Editing is perfect for you. At this time, the service is free for developers, but we do expect that in the near future this will change. Your web developer may bill you about $20 per month or so for access to this online application. Set up fees are typically billed by the hour and most sites, that are not over 25 pages, will run about one hour or so to set up the code to allow you to do your own edits. Allow about 15 to 30 minutes for online training to be ready to take over doing your own future webmaster updates.

What can you do to your site with InContext Editing?

You can add, copy, change or delete text on a page at will. You can add images and in general make all of your own website content updates yourself with Adobe InContext Editing.

If you want to add or delete rows in a table (that holds data or images) on your website you have that option.

Additionally, based on the editable region set-up done by your web developer ahead of time, font colors, styles and font sizes can now be under your control as well. 

You can also easily install images by browsing your computer, your website, or the web and insert them on the fly. Resizing your image within the application is easy too.

How is InContext Editing Implemented on My Website?

For developers, set up is pretty straight forward. You configure access in the InContext Editing control panel as you do a typical site for FTP access. The client’s website pages need to be modified to allow for editing. As the developer you can assign editable regions, repeating regions. Font style settings can be detailed for each region. These editable regions are similar yet different to regular Dreamweaver template sections. These special regions carry a special InContext Editing descriptor and a special JavaScript script is installed on your page as well to allow the application to make changes to the page.

I have found that it is best to use Dreamweaver CS4 for setting up the editable regions. You can still hand code in the needed elements in Dreamweaver CS3 but Dreamweaver CS4 makes it much easier and allows you to edit these editable regions you have set up from with in Dreamweaver when changes need to be made. For me, this was worth the $199 upgrade from Dreamweaver CS3 to CS4.

Anything else I need to know?

Adding images does require the end user to understand that they need to click “Advanced” or “Additional Options” on the top right to add a vspace, hspace, no border and an align attribute to make the image look good with in the text.

I have found that the application is easy to use by clients but a bit of online training is needed to help them feel fully comfortable with the interface. That being said, the application is easy to use, intuitive, and for many clients the perfect solution for their webmaster needs.

It is important to know that the end user does not have HTML source code access to the page that they edit inside InContext Editing. If they want to install a snippet of JavaScript they will still need a regular webmaster to install these elements for them into the HTML source code. Additionally, many developers will not allow the client to edit layout items, navigation or other page elements. The developer decides which elements the client can safely edit on the page in advance preventing the website from being inadvertently broken by the client while doing an online edit.

Who should NOT use Adobe InContext Editing?

That is hard to say, most template driven websites that do not allow a developer access to the source code or hosting server would be precluded from using this application. If a developer can access the source code files and can access the server using FTP just about any website can use this product.

Conclusion

My overall impression is that this is an excellent new product and one that will be a “game changer” for webmasters, web developers, and clients. Clients want to save money, they want control over their website and now web developers and designers can make it easy for clients to have the appropriate access.

This application allows for a custom designed website to have many of the features of a online template driven website or the ease of use of a site with a content management system installed without the programming headaches. There will always be reasons for a client to have a webmaster make a special change on their site, but with Adobe InContext Editing easy text updates will be at the client’s fingertips now using their own browser.

From a web designer viewpoint, designing for InContext Editing use does require a bit of a refocus but not a major change. Editable sections need to be set up and enclosed in div tags with unique IDs. 

On one ending note, I have to say that as Adobe has tested this product it has done a remarkable job in its contact with developers and in their support forum. This unparalleled level of participation with the professional community to create a product that will help developers and consumers alike is most unusual and a mark of Adobe’s level of service excellence in the creation of web applications. I believe that Adobe InContext Editing deserves your careful consideration.

Well over this past week I have really been running Adobe InContext Editing through its paces. I wanted to update my post of yesterday which I wrote over seven days ago with my thoughts on InContext Editing from real world use.

First, it is not ready for major client implementation yet. There are too many bugs and issues yet to be worked out for web developers to widely recommend this new product at this point. But, the possibilities are certainly there, and I will be watching very closely. For now these are my thoughts.

1. If you have a website using PHP includes or for that matter any site that uses a header and footer include you will have difficulties in implementing InContext Editing at this point. If you have a plain vanilla website in html you will be fine. I have done testing on both standard html pages and PHP include pages. To make my page editable with PHP includes I had to hard code in the InContext Editing script and special div tag identifiers as when I tried to define the editable div tags online using the interface I triggered a repeating error that refused to set up permissions to allow the page to be edited. This is problematic for Adobe for widespread use, but I am sure they will be working to resolve this as this is an issue for any large website that wants to use their service.

2. If you want to add rows or cells to a table (that hold data not layout tables) on your editable page you do not have that option yet. At this stage the application really only works best for simple wording changes and formatting in text. You can install an image but there is no image preview so unless you know what your image name is ahead of time it is difficult for you to clearly know what image you are adding to your page as you edit. You can not browse and see a thumbnail while you are in the application.

3. Set up of the server is problematic. I understand paths and routinely set up FTP access in several applications and I had trouble setting up the access between InContext Editing and the web server. From my experience, don’t follow the tips in the control panel, follow the online instructions. I achieved a successful set up by not entering www. or ftp in front of my domain name as the instruction stated. Also just set up access for the root, not to a subdirectory as anything other than the root set up will trigger an error. The application wants root access and will not proceed unless you give it that. This may be an issue for testing if you are setting up a client test and don’t want them to have full access to their site. At this time you cannot control what they have access to and do not. Because of this make sure you have a backup before you give any client access to the site through InContext Editing.

4. Adding images does require the client to understand that they need to click Advanced or Additional options on the top right to add a vspace, hspace, no border and an align attribute to make the image look good in the text. It took me a while where to find this. Adobe should make it this like WordPress where you click on the image and then right click to add these attributes not add a link above the content editing field. Many clients write their own blogs so to have it simple like WordPress would be very practical.

5. Web developers should be prepared to pay a subscription fee for this service eventually although it is free for now. Adobe is stating that fees will be $10 to $20 per month for about 5 client websites. If you as the developer then in turn charge $10 to $20 per month per client for access this actually becomes a profit center. I have to say the fee is a non-issue for me. The money that clients will save on paying a webmaster (me included) by doing their own content editing will by far out weigh the very small monthly expense in their eyes. With my minimum charge being $8, to do small updates yourself just twice, you have paid for your access for the month. For small do-it-yourself clients this is a huge money and time saver. Some web designers/developers may consider this an issue of losing income and yes, that is certainly the case for some, but from the client’s stand point it is a money saving feature. Therefore implementation of the service at initial design concept may be a possible closing point.

6. One thing that I think the application would benefit from is a tree view of the site to allow the client to understand the site architecture and to be able to navigate to files easily. The current way you navigate to the page you want to edit is to use the website’s navigation and then click control + E to show the page edit button. For some sites we work on where navigation is to mid pages using anchors this can create a world of confusion for the client who wants to update their own site but not allowing a visual menu of the pages in the site.

My overall impression is that this is an excellent potential new product that will be a game changing for webmasters, web developers, and clients. I am not afraid of it but rather ready to embrace it. Clients want to save money, they want control over their website. This application allows for a custom designed website to have features of a online template website. There will always be reasons for a client to have a webmaster make a special change on their site, but with Adobe InContext Editing easy text updates will be at the client’s fingertips in their browser.

From a web designer viewpoint, designing for InContext Editing use does require a bit of a refocus but not a major change. Editable sections need to be set up enclosed in div tags with unique IDs. It could be a very strong selling point to allow client access to update their content at will as part of selling custom website using this new application as a “bridge”.

I will be watching the product very closely to see when we can include clients in expanded testing and start offering implementation as part of our own web design services.

One quick footnote, I have to say that the forum and support staff for this new product is excellent. They are on the ball, active in the forum, really concerned about the user experience and total code geeks – that’s a good thing, as roll out of this product really depends on the web designer/web developer acceptance of this new product. Way to go Adobe a great new product but one still in the works.