CMS A TO Z

Recently we have received quite a little bit of interest in Flash-driven sites. People like the movement and the flexibility of the designs. And if they can manage the images, the sounds, and the text that is presented in Flahs - all the better!. And all of that is possible with the latest generations of many CMS systems currently available on the market. The biggest fans of Flash seem to be marketing departments and graphic designers. There is not quite as much evidence that the USERS of these sites are as enthusiastic. And there is always that nagging concern about how the search engines are going to react.

Well, luckily, there are solutions to both user-experience issues and search engine friendliness issues. You just need to be careful about how you go about implementing your site.

The Biggest concerns from users tend to be:

1. The overriding of the browser controls. They "can't use the back button", and then "can just print it out".
2. Bookmarking - many flash-driven sites simply don't let you bet back to where you were by typing something in the browser - you have to follow a set of instructions (or remember just how you got there).

Ultimately, these are both really a problem with usurping control from the browser. Again, many marketing departments and graphic designers are big fans of this, but for the end-user, it is often frustrating and grounds for giving up on the site.

The biggest concerns for search enging friendliness is about the search engines not being able to "see" what is inside the flash presentation. You need eye-balls to do that in many cases. Also - on many flash sites, there is technically only one "page" in the site - so there is no where for the search bots to go.

So what is a CMS to do?

Basically there are 2 options.

Option one - go hybrid.

By this, I mean that you can create a site that is essentially an html-driven site, but it has some of the features that flash affords - maybe that is a neato navigation system, or maybe it is some movement in certain areas of the page. This is a great solution for sites that don't require the kind of strict control that all-flash sites give you. If it really is just the visual impact and the nice animations, then this can be a perfect solution. If provides the end user with the standard browser controls they are accustomed to, and as long as you are presenting the navigation both as flash and either visibly or invisibly as html, then the search engines can get to everything you want them to find.

Option two - built two versions.

This is actually far less daunting than it sounds. However, it only solves the search half of the equation. However - you can get around some of the user-side problems even in this scenerio.

Basically, what you are doing is providing the content of the page in the "background" of the site. This can be done in several ways, and as long as you are using a firm or contractor that knows what they are doing, they should be able to get this working. Some CMS systems (both hosted cms and stand-alone solutions) will have this capability built in. Check with your system to see if it is something that is already built in as an option on the system you are using or evaluating.

When this is done, the search engine bots will crawl the site as if it is a set of links and text just as they do any other site. While your human visitors will view the site through the flash presentation layer.

Further, if the background content and the flash prsentation layer are built correctly, clicking on a page that you find in the search engines will take you to what you would expect to see within the flash movie. Once there, you would then navigate through the site using the flash presentation layer.

Again, this option is a bit more complicated, and will likely require a more sophisticated CMS or a contractor to get it working as expected. But in the end, this option can be quite satisfying (both for the marketing department and for your visitors).