CSS, CMS and other Mysteries

We visited with a few high tech companies this week, trying to get help with some of the mysteries of running a website. We would like to move to a Content Management System, so that we can put up our stories the way the big boys do. Newspaper and magazine sites use systems called "CMS" to pour the articles and photos into preset formats. The systems are very much like this blog, which is a gloriously simple operation. But moving to this system, like everything, is easier said than done, so we needed to visit with the gurus to find out how we can do it. Our first stop was a small office in Open Square, an rehabbed old factory building in Holyoke, MA. She was poised and confident and you can tell that she charges big bucks and is worth it.

After we watched what she has done with credit card and bank websites, we were impressed, then we toured her new space across the hall. Fourteen foot ceilings, a gleaming wide board sanded floor; a cavernous space for the absurd rent of $425 a month including utilities. WOW.

Unfortunatly, the price of her CMS was far too rich for us, so we moved on to the more Bohemian Positronic Design, in Florence, MA. We'll see what we can develop as the months move along and we move into our new storefront space in South Deerfield, MA.

CSS is a way of setting up a webpage so that you have more streamlined code and it loads faster. It stands for Cascading style sheets. Now I know you're bored, so I will close.