When I started developing and publishing websites all the way back in 2000, then you have to either code the pages in HTML yourself or use one of the products such as Microsoft FrontPage which did the coding for you. Microsoft FrontPage was deceptively simple and if you could create a Word document you could indeed create a webpage.
FrontPage has now gone out of fashion because the code that it writes is not based around stylesheets (CSS) and so it creates a lot of code for a website and therefore it looks bloated and slow and doesn’t rate very well with Google. (Although some people still use it for simple sites and simple editing)
So we now move on to either mastering Dreamweaver (or some simpler free WYSIWYG editors) or we jump right in with WordPress which we are told is the favourite of Google (all hail Google!) This of course is based on the assumption that we want to rank highly for our SEO endeavours and that you are not driving traffic via other routes.
There are however alternatives to WordPress using similar CMS architecture (content management systems) and one that I have just started to look into is called get simple.
So why do you ask should you be interested in using the open source and therefore free CMS website builder get simple (or any of the other is that are available) well the answer is that get simple is as the name would suggest very simple and therefore whilst it is not as flexible and customisable (if that’s a word) it is very simple and quick to set up it is also very efficient at SEO and the sites it produces load very quickly (obviously important these days when we are all targeting the mobile market).
I have just started to play with get simple and I will update you after I have had chance to have a proper play next week but my initial impression is that the developers claim that it is the simplest use a face does appear to be true in that it seems very intuitive to use and overall it feels like a finished product it also comes with a wide range of templates, plug-ins and all that good stuff.
So my conclusion is that should you be new to Internet marketing and are just looking for a quick and simple setup, if only on a “get you going basis” and this might be worth a look. This is not a blogging tool but suited to general brochure sites. (it can be used as a blog by adding a plugin)
