Section Links

Overview

Before considering SiteGlow it is important to set certain expectations:

SiteGlow is not a design tool

Siteglow will not help you create the HTML or CSS of your site. If you are looking for such a tool then consider some of the excellent tools already in the market, including Notepad, Html-Kit, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Alternatively, you can hire the services of a designer/developer to create the design for you; if they are good and professional they will be worth every penny.

In any case, SiteGlow assumes that you, the designer, will be responsible for creating and maintaining the HTML and CSS of the pages that make up your client's website. This is nothing more than you already have to do, only simpler, because SiteGlow only needs one example of each page type. In our experience, most websites can be created with only four or five page types (templates) so the task is actually fairly simple.

SiteGlow is a Content Management System (CMS)

From the point of view of you, the designer, SiteGlow does one thing only: show user-created content through your HTML templates. It is your responsiblity to tell SiteGlow where in the templates this content should go, and how it should be rendered. This is normally trivial and is no different from what you have to do in every content management system.

When to use a hosted CMS like SiteGlow

We are not going to pretend that SiteGlow should be used in every website. Every client and design is different, and in our experience half of the sites can are too simple or static to justify investing in any content management system. The table below summarizes the factors to consider when deciding whether or not to use SiteGlow in a given website:

SiteGlow is most useful when...	SiteGlow is least useful when...
The website is updated regularly. The website has a consistent look and feel among its pages and therefore can be based on common templates. Users want to edit content collaboratively in a workgroup. Users are not familiar with HTML creation, or even if they are, then don't want to deal with HTML details once the initial design is completed. Users want to edit content from any any computer with Internet connection. Users need to easily control who can view and edit certain pages.	The website will not change much after it is first created. The website has very few pages with a common look and feel. Only one user will ever edit the content. The user is familiar with HTML creation and has the time to create pages manualy. The user is always going to be working from the same web development machine. There is no need to control who can view certain pages.

SiteGlow is most useful when...

SiteGlow is least useful when...

The website is updated regularly.
The website has a consistent look and feel among its pages and therefore can be based on common templates.
Users want to edit content collaboratively in a workgroup.
Users are not familiar with HTML creation, or even if they are, then don't want to deal with HTML details once the initial design is completed.
Users want to edit content from any any computer with Internet connection.
Users need to easily control who can view and edit certain pages.

The website will not change much after it is first created.
The website has very few pages with a common look and feel.
Only one user will ever edit the content.
The user is familiar with HTML creation and has the time to create pages manualy.
The user is always going to be working from the same web development machine.
There is no need to control who can view certain pages.

Why choose SiteGlow over other CMS

There are many CMS tools out there, and in fact some are completely free, so why use SiteGlow?

SiteGlow will make you look
Clients will love SiteGlow and will think better of you as a result. It is very simple to use, looks professional, uses Ajax throught for fast interaction, has a powerful text editor, and allows quick site organization with drap and drop functionality. It is also hosted in ThePlanet, one of the safest datacenters in the US, wich 11 GB redundant connections and daily backup of all of the client's data.
SiteGlow gives Flexibility
Most CMS force you stick to their idea of what a page is made up of: Title, Summary, Body and little else. With SiteGlow, you control what makes us a page. For example, you can decide that a website is made of two types of pages: Product pages with Name, Details and Price, and News pages with Title, Summary, Body and Author. When creating new pages in this site, SiteGlow will ask users which of the two types to use, and it will then build a form to get exactly the details required by each page.

Convinced?

If, having read the above, you think SiteGlow can help you or your client, then read on. The documentation has been created with designers in mind and will answer most of the questions you will have when adapting your HTML to our tool.

If there is any question the documentation does not answer, then please send us an email and we answer as quickly and completely as we can. Remeber that we feel very special every time a new designer chooses our platform and will return the trust you put on us by help you harness SiteGlow completely.