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Well, the Year of the Pig really is already proving to be my year. Not only was I born in a pig year – but I also finally found the content management system
(CMS) software that answers many of my prayers… ergo, I now look as happy as the little pig you see pictured here to the left. 🙂
Let me explain…
Up until now, I've recommended that affiliates – who have little or no knowledge of HTML – put up a blog on their own domain using the WordPress platform on a cPanel host.
Compared with using an HTML editor to build static pages, blogging with WordPress is a simple and inexpensive web-based site-building method that allows a new webmaster to get their site online very quickly, and requires only a TINY bit of effort to use Fantastico within the cPanel interface to install WordPress. Best of all, blogs are traffic magnets.
WordPress has a few limitations that can be a bit frustrating, however. Although creating categories and sub-categories for posts is simple and straightforward, page (article) categorization is clunky. If you are inclined to make a page for each one of your articles, the list of pages in the interface could just go on and on and ON and a minor ‘clunkiness' could become ‘VERY frustrating' in a big hurry.
To solve this problem, I've been hunting for a better system for more than a year, and am happy to report that after reviewing a great many free and paid content management systems (CMS), I've finally settled on what I think is the very best of the bunch.
That CMS is ArticleLive.
I've been using ArticleLive to build out the article portion of the NPT site (in the background) for awhile now and the more I use it, the more I like it.
Here's a little sneek preview of how things are shaping up so far.
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Because there are SO many articles and newsletters and product reviews on NPT that have to be categorized and input, I estimate it'll be another month before it goes live — but it will be SO worth the work in the end. 🙂
For example, in addition to superior article categorization, ArticleLive users have the ability to order articles and assign related articles.
So, in the “Affiliate Marketing” top-level category, I could place “Can I Really Make Money as an Affiliate Marketer?” at the top of the page, and assign “Top 10 Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer” as the ‘Next' article and “Affiliate Marketing: A Planned Approach” as a ‘Related' article, providing the reader with a natural flow or way to progress through the site.
It's also easy to split articles into more than one page which provides more food for the search engine spiders. And being the gluttonous little devils that they are, the more you feed them, the happier they are and the higher your site will rank.
Speaking of ranking, your search engine rankings will also improve with ArticleLive because it uses static, keyword-rich URL's that the SE's prefer to URL's that show up as a query string with question marks.
In addition to posting articles under categories, you can also create individual pages outside the category system. These are most suitable for pages such as your About Us, Privacy Policy, Testimonial and Disclaimer pages.
While categorization makes it simple for your users to browse through your site,
ArticleLive
also includes 3 different ways to search your site, including smart search, phrase search and word search.
Although I may continue to use my WordPress blog and will have to make a few tweaks to integrate the two systems, new ArticleLive users will appreciate that the program includes both a Blog and a News platform.
Both the Article and the News platforms allow you to create content that can be expired on a certain date. This is a particularly stellar feature when you have time-limited offers to post and don't want to disappoint or frustrate visitors who find the information after the offer expires.
Alternatively, you can Feature articles that you want your visitors to see right away. By default, Featured articles are shown at the top of the homepage with Recent articles right below them.
You may of course choose to display any content you want on the homepage. 🙂
Installing ArticleLive was super easy.
It took only a few minutes to download, unzip, upload to the server and set my variables – many of which (such as the Database Settings) are pre-configured, which makes things easier for non-geeks like myself. 🙂
There are 5 Templates from which to choose, and a variety of color options for each template, all of which can be easily changed after the fact just by selecting another option from the drop-down menu.
So, for example, if you choose the ‘Bright Light' template in blue, you can easily change it to green for St. Patrick's Day, Arbor Day and Earth Day. 🙂
I did encounter a minor glitch when I first installed the program, as the template didn't render correctly. I sent an email to Interspire who determined that there was a small issue with my server configuration. So I emailed my hosting account manager, Steve, who had the ‘problem' resolved in minutes.
The only other minor issue I had was with the Glossary. I had Ed copy each item from the NPT glossary into ArticleLive, but then I couldn't find the entries. My mistake! I really should read the documentation that comes with software! 🙂
Again, the nice folks at Interspire quickly replied to my email and explained that glossary terms are used directly within an article. When an article is being viewed, ArticleLive checks through the contents of that article and any terms you have in your glossary. For any terms found in the article that are in the glossary, a little help description will be added for visitors to your website. It's actually a really cool feature.
Do you want to allow other authors to submit their own articles? You can do that to the extent you are comfortable and at the unique user level.
For example, you can set permissions to allow your trusted friend Jack to create and approve his own articles, whereas loose-lipped Jill could be restricted to posting – but not approving – her articles. You would have to approve her articles before they went public. Your visitors can click on any author's name to view all the articles published by that author. Author pictures may also be displayed.
If you allow it, your users can rate and comment on individual articles. The top 5 most Popular articles are shown in the right sidebar by default… which you can move anywhere else or you can completely delete this display if you prefer.
Your regular visitors will appreciate that they can keep a list of their Favorite articles, as well as print and email article and page content.
ArticleLive also provides you with useful statistics about your site including most viewed pages, popular categories and articles, most discussed articles, and most popular authors. Use the information to find out which subjects your visitors are most interested in and give them even more good information on those topics.
Last but not least, ArticleLive includes a very robust WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor that outshines the one offered by the WordPress interface by a long shot.
Up to this point, I've covered only a fraction of this software's capabilities and benefits. To learn more about the program, visit the ArticleLive site and check out the features, the demo and some of the other testimonials from happy users.
Very reasonably priced at $239, ArticleLive includes free installation and 12 months of support and updates.
Best of all, this program will save you time (which equals money) and frustration in the future as you won't have to transfer your very large collection of articles into a far more robust, easier-to-use system. 🙂
Crank up your site's capabilities ten-fold in minutes – get ArticleLive. today!