The Philosophy behind the Webonizer CMS

Webonizer was developed by Shawn Olson, a photojournalist who turned to web development. The core structure was developed to feed Olson’s needs as he developed his personal site—it needed to handle his wide range of interests that included photography, writing and art. As his projects branched out into other sites that included multi-user environments, he found it necessary to develop a core system to handle them all. Thus Webonizer was formed.

Unlike many Content Management Systems, Webonizer is designed to force high content standards that lead to higher traffic and authority. Below is a list of the standards and philosophies that are behind Webonizer development, functionality and features. The philosophies below stem from Olson’s pursuit of creating a site that now reaches thousands of people every day and a system that can help anyone build a successful online presence.

Content Moves the World

If your site doesn’t have anything on it, why would anyone come to it? More importantly, if there isn’t anything there, why would anyone ever come back? The whole purpose anyone is going to come to your site is because they want to get something from it—either information, entertainment, media or a product. Because content can be delivered in so many formats (textual, visual, audio, etc) it is best to have tools that allow you to share your content in as many ways as you can.

To create a standard, Webonizer has designated Textual Content as the primary form of content. This is done for many reasons. First of all, textual information is the only form of content that is assured to be accessible to any human or search engine—both blind humans and search engines can understand text, but both may have trouble understanding a photo, video or other non-textual content.

This is why Webonizer is designed around three text-heavy constructs—Articles, Users and Events. When adding new content, you always input the textual information. Adding other forms of content (media) is optional. In Webonizer, you write about a topic in an article and then attach photos, art, video and other media to the article.

Focus is Mandatory

The core idea of Webonizer is that each page has a specific and identifiable purpose. A calendar page shows calendar information; a profile shows information about a user; a login page shows a form to login. Some of this focus is programmatically part of the framework. But Webonizer cannot force users to keep focus in their organization and presentation of content.

To help make focus simpler Webonizer allows users to divide their sites up into Areas. From a programmatic viewpoint, Areas are generic documents that allow the site to store static content to be used in specific places. For example, one Area is called “Home”, which contains static content to be displayed on the site’s home page. More important from the user’s perspective is that each area has the ability to appear as a main page of the site and can be broken into topics that pertain to that area. Those topics can then have articles attached to them. Thus, a site could be broken up into Areas such as “Writing”, “Photography” and “Art”; then topics such as “Essay”, “Poetry” and “Fiction” could be topics belonging to Writing, etc. This allows users to post articles into those topics. This will help the site keep all “Poetry” documents in one place—which helps Search Engines and visitors know that the content is about the focus of the page.

Webonizer creates this framework. But it is still up to the user to create the structure of the Areas and Topics, not to mention keeping each new article focused on the general Topic and specific subject of a given article.

While some pages may not have an immediately discernable focus, there should always be some kind of focus on a page. If the focus is not a specific topic, then it may be something else. For example, Webonizer sites come preinstalled with a function to display new articles on the front page regardless of their topic. In this case, the focus is not the topic but on the freshness of content on the site.

Once you have read this page, you should learn about Site Pages (Areas) and Topics.

Organization Induces Focus

A well organized site will benefit your visitors as well as yourself. Organization allows your visitors to get to the content they seek—which will increase the likelihood that a visitor will come back to your site. This, in turn, benefits you as it makes your site viable. The default installation of Webonizer creates navigation menus that help take visitors to areas of your site that follow the organizational structure you create via Areas and Topics.

As you organize your site into the structure that best suits your needs, you should become more cognizant of your choice in placing new content. A new article should always go into the proper topic because that is the most likely place visitors will look to find it. Each new article in a topic reinforces the focus of that topic in the eyes of visitors and search engines.

Blogs are Cool but Publications are Better

Over the last few years the world of blogging has exploded. The average blogger has turned their own ideas and thoughts into their personal commentary outlet that, potentially, has greater coverage than traditional media. The ease and power of blogging is exciting and enticing. At the same time, blogs are easier to abuse than traditional publications.

Webonizer can be used as a traditional blogging system. At the very least, Webonizer should be considered a Power Blog System rather than a simple blog system. But it is intended to be used more as a publication system rather than a blog. The reason for this is tied to the next philosophy behind Webonizer, which is about quality.

Many blogs fall into the category of posting random thoughts every day that seem more like journal/diary entries than informational content. While such entries can and do help boost traffic via search engines (search engines love sites that add a lot of new content), they do little for the long-term viability of a site. Most people are not going to come back and read an entry from last year if all the entries are mundane and of little informational value.

If you view your site as a publication, you will be more apt to take the effort to create quality content because you are not trying to share temporal and random thoughts but offer valuable content that will be useful not only today but also a week, month, year or decade down the road. If you are offering this type of content, your site will gain respect and trust with readers and subscribers. Blogging itself can help you gain notice among a small circle of friends and fans, but running your site like a publication can help you turn your site, brand or name into an authority.

Quality

The main reason anyone would ever come back to your site is because of the quality of the content. For some sites, that content may be music. For others it may be products. For others it may be ideas and information.

Making sure that quality is at the forefront of your site is essential to success in the online world. The quality of the framework of your site is the job of Webonizer.

Webonizer strives to be the purest CMS by using XHTML, CSS and cross-browser dynamic JavaScript that are optimized for accessibility and customization. Whereas many CMS systems use deprecated HTML with inline CSS and JavaScript, Webonizer reaches W3C standards compliance in most situations by utilizing standards such as valid XHTML, external JavaScripts and external CSS. The Webonizer core adds appropriate tags, attributes and values to most of the items your site will display before you even know they are required.

While Webonizer handles the quality of the Framework, it is up to you to enforce the quality of the content. Webonizer gives you the tools to present your content in a high-quality frame—it is up to you to paint the picture. Just keep in mind the principles that move your own online browsing habits—you probably don’t bookmark and return to sites with poor content.

Some key points in maintaining quality content actually go against the grain of what many sites do—especially sites hired by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms. In an effort to create search engine traffic, many sites employ tactics to stuff their pages full of phrases and words intended specifically to bring in search engine traffic. But such content is often unbearable to read.

Generally speaking, you should apply all of the rules above when evaluating the quality of the content on a page. If your page is about panda bears but you include a paragraph about the best Italian restaurants in your neighborhood, you are not staying focused on your subject and are reducing the quality of your page and site. The same holds true not only with content but linking. If your page is about the Grand Canyon but you put a link to a business selling ball bearings in New York City, you have reduced the quality of your page. (Such linking campaigns are done every day on sites as they trade links with other sites to increase search engine traffic. If you do partake in such schemes, you should be careful to logically divide the content on a page from the external and irrelevant links.)

Form Follows Function

Webonizer is a Framework. It is a system that allows you to share your ideas, information and products with the world. Understanding how the system works for you is key in making your site successful. Getting your site to visually present itself in the form that best suits your specific needs, desires and goals may take a little time. But as you learn the tools that Webonizer offers, you will find that getting the form you want is a process that is like a journey whose travel is often more valuable than the destination.

Never Stop Growing

As a system, Webonizer never ceases its development. New features and ways to share content are always being developed. When Webonizer was first conceived, it was a tool to load articles, photos and events to a website. Now it includes multiple users accounts with advanced permission controls; handles several media formats; is highly customizable and extensible; integrates with external systems such as Google Adsensetm, Google Maps, MapQuest, Yahoo Maps and other systems; presents content via XHTML as well as XML and RSS; the list goes on. And it will continue to grow.

Webonizer handles the growth of your site from a functionality point of view. It is up to you to cultivate the growth of your content and subscribers. Webonizer gives you new tools to accomplish growth… now it is up to you to apply your mind and passion.