A web site is an essential marketing tool of a business. These days, especially in the Seattle area, people will check out your web site before doing business with you. The work you do with a graphic designer like Peter Mckinnon can have a big impact when someone decides whether you're the right fit for what they're looking to buy.

Just having a web site, however, does nothing to get customers beating down your doors. People need to find your web site somehow, amidst the millions of other web sites out there. For small, local businesses, they don't find your web site online--they find it from your business card, a sign on your car, word-of-mouth, or all the rest of the traditional ways people market their business.

We've been getting a lot of questions lately about exactly what services Freelock provides. So here's a quick breakdown of our three core services:

1. Open Source consulting
2. Custom LAMP web application development
3. Linux server administration and maintenance

We think business solutions, even commercial offerings, are a long ways from delivering what businesses really need. And since all technology comes with a steep learning curve, we advocate setting aside a technology budget of money and time to learn and develop human processes to make the best use of computers as tools to help you get your work done, rather than leaving you hanging trying to figure out how to use that expensive ERP system you just bought. We aim to become technology partners for small businesses, the designated IT expert much like they would have a CPA and an attorney.

Read on for more detail, and in coming weeks we'll get this site reorganized to make our services more clear! 

What's a content management system? The term means different things to different people. We define it to be simply a web site that helps you manage content.

When you go to a typical web designer to get a web site, you get something that works like a brochure: snazzy, branded to fit your business, and static. Very expensive to change--you need to go back to the designer to make the slightest change. 

Basic web sites work in a similar way. Most web designers use tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, or Microsoft FrontPage to manage your entire site. To change anything, you need to get your designer to open up your site and do the editing. You may be able to purchase tools that allow you to make these changes, too, but then you need to install them and learn to use them.

There is a better way. A content management system allows you to  make changes to your own site, without going back to your web designer. You type in your username and password, and click a link to edit virtually any page in the site. Special links allow you to add new pages, or manage other parts of your site.

At Freelock Computing, content management systems are among our most popular products. We convert static web sites into content management systems, often making them look identical to the way they looked before. We can implement a new design from your designer, create a custom template, install add-ons, provide training, hosting, software administration, and support. If you need a custom add-on to one of these systems, we can develop it, and we regularly integrate these systems into other parts of your business system, such as capturing a lead for your sales team to follow up.

Read on for our favorites, and not-so-favorites.