Websites can be created in a number of different ways.  When Light Bulb Web Design launched in 2013, we brought over 17 years of experience with us in using one of the longest standing content management systems available.

Rather than create static HTML websites, we wanted to be sure that our clients were given a platform that could grow and expand easily as their business needs changed.

A content management system, often shortened to CMS, is a website platform such as Joomla that uses a database-driven solution to allow both myself as a web designer and you, the client, a structured and standardised way to create, maintain and extend your website as technology and your business move forward.

Whilst not all websites end up needing much or any content updates, web technology itself moves on and new and often faster technologies are developed to make your website load faster and add compatibility with newer devices and browsers.  At launch, we were one of the few local web design companies exclusively creating responsive, mobile friendly websites.  Our first website wasn't actually released as a responsive design, but due to the CMS we were using, it was quickly and easily updated to ensure it worked well on mobile phones and tablets.  As we keep your website CMS software up to date, you receive support automatically for many of these changes and this all forms part of your support from ourselves.

This was one of the first benefits we found due to our choice to use a CMS at all times - because your website pages and content are in a database, and not held in static, manually created HTML files, both redesigns and expansion of your website can all be done with much less time and complication.  Moving from a non-responsive design to a new, mobile friendly style can again be accomplished easily, wrapping the new design around the existing content instead of having to start all over again.

Many of our clients have, over the years, looked to add not only additional website pages, but also additional features such as integrated galleries, blogs, e-commerce, membership and subscription platforms and much more.  To add these to a HTML-based website can be difficult, if not impossible, frequently requiring the web designer to re-create your website again, quite likely moving it to a CMS-based solution.  The time and potential costs required to do this end up either costing the client more money or costing the web designer an awful lot of time.

Our decision to use a CMS platform from the outset has continued to be one of our best, and even recently we have completed additions to existing websites for e-commerce, blogs and this week, integration of an online training solution linked to existing membership-based subscription provision.  Try doing all of that with a static HTML website!

Light Bulb Web Design in Carlisle has always tried to maintain awareness of future web requirements, ensuring that our clients and possible future clients, are always provided with websites which meet or exceed these changes.  From our CMS base, our dual-firewall protected websites, local and cloud backups of all websites, to our recent implementation of SSL-based hosting for all websites, you can be sure that with our website design services are safe, secure, affordable and above all, friendly :)