Web site management has changed a lot since the mid-90s heyday of the solitary webmaster. Even modestly sized organizations have long since replaced the “Web Guy” with “Web folks.” So, who are the Web folks, and how many of them do you need to be successful?

If you’re assembling a Web team, I’d recommend that you make sure that these four critical disciplines are going to be covered:

- Content
- Design
- Coding
- Usability

You’re not going to find a single person who is strong in all four of those areas, so forget the webmaster model. But if you’re a small organization, you can get the job done effectively with three talented individuals: A writer, a designer and programmer. There’s a good chance that one or two of them will also have user-interface skills, too, so you’re covered across the board.

Personally, my dream Web team for is comprised of four members:

1. Content person (Writer/editor extraordinaire)
2. Designer (CSS/XHTML/graphics expert)
3. Coder (PHP, Database guru)
4. Project Manager (All-purpose team/project leader)

What’s your ideal web team look like?

You’ve probably heard this one before: People don’t read online. They scan, browse and click–but they don’t read.

Well, it turns out that’s not true. In fact, a recent study by the Poynter Institute reveals that people read a larger percentage of stories online (77%) than they do in print broadsheets (62%) or tabloids (57%). In addition, nearly two-thirds of online readers digest ALL of the text of an online story once they begin reading it.

While debunking the myth that people don’t read online, the research supports established Web-writing best practices. Researchers confirmed that many users scan articles online before reading them, and readers were more attracted to stories with prominent headlines and large photos… so keep chunking your Web copy!

I worked with a private college recently that has adopted an interesting CMS solution: Customized WordPress templates. The college’s Web team has deployed WordPress pages for academic and administrative departments, and even for high-level admissions and gateway pages. I was skeptical about the approach at first (for reasons that I’ll share below), but I have to admit that the pages look great, and this minimalist solution appears to be meeting the institution’s needs pretty well.

WordPress is undeniably the King of the Blogging Services. Nobody matches WordPress for blogging flexibility, aesthetics and ease of use. But as its feature set has grown over the past couple years, WordPress has become a legitimate Web publishing system that can handle a lot more than personal blogs. So, should cash-strapped non profits consider building entire sites on the WordPress framework? I think it merits consideration; Continue reading to find out why.

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I’ve noticed over the past year that one-page Web sites are becoming more and more popular. One-page sites are particularly well suited for creative portfolios, but I wonder if they might also prove useful for higher education.

When done well, a single-page site can be quite satisfying in its zen-like simplicity. No drilling into sub pages or clicking on the back button; no risk of missing any critical content, because it all unveils in front of you with the flick of the scroll wheel. There’s also a Web 2.0 appeal to these sites; when clicking is needed, AJAX can be used so that content is revealed dynamically, rather than loading a new page — this site is a perfect example.

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