Future Developments

Because Websites must rapidly EVOLVE!

It's a fact that you can't stand still in this business. A great looking website will start to look tired and dated almost as soon as it has settled in. Bask in the compliments on the look and feel that you can (and should) expect during the first couple of months - because they're the only ones you'll be getting!

Text should be updated regularly: daily if you can. Weekly if you will. Monthly if you must. But if you can't be bothered to return to your website: how can you expect other people to? And if don't have anything new to say, how can you expect anyone to come back and listen?

A good lifespan for the actual web design itself is two to three years. No, really. (On the other hand, a good minimum duration is eight to twelve months. Anything less looks like panic.) People get tired of seeing the same thing over and over; and the web vernacular itself is constantly changing, leaving unchanged sites looking stodgy.

So, an important question in launching a new site is: how do you protect your investment? Because even if this development was only ever to be a stop-gap - intended to buy you experience as well as time - you still think about the future now. Where do you go from here?

Constant Change

The great benefit of a Tender Soft website is that you can manage it yourself. Add or change text. No problem! Add in hyper-links? Easy! Even upload and place your own pictures.

Tender Soft websites are not rigidly templated: "Page Style 1 gives you two pictures on the right with captions beneath and a big heading and a place for your text and links to all your pages on the left; while Page Style 2 has one big picture on the left..." will give you an obvious plug-in-the-information site that looks like rubbish at its launch.

Instead our web designs have a consistent underlayer of style. What that means is: if you add text or headings, the fonts and colours etc. will automatically follow the customized rules set down for your site, giving you a consistent look and feel without any effort on your part. You just think about the content. The styling will take care of itself.

Our editor makes changes to your website both:

easy to implement (like writing a letter); and
naturally consistent (as if whatever information you add or change had been typeset by the designer on day one).

In practice, its ease of use and effectiveness has made many of our clients very confident "web editors" over the last several years, and we hope that it will give you too the confidence to keep refreshing your site's information in the way that a good web showcase needs.

Radical Change

First, some history: when Tender Soft first launched easy self-managed websites in 2003, the emphasis was on empowering users with limited PC experience to build their own website from scratch in under an hour, and then to manage it from there.

Responding to market demand, we started designing sites for customers too. As the sites became more sophisticated and refined, the ability of customers to give their sites a dramatic new look for themselves declined, because of the expertise and expensive software required to produce these more sophisticated designs.

Now, the Next Steps: The near future should see a return to - and an expansion on - the original concept of having a control-everything facility in the hands of clients; while at the same time retaining and expanding on the flexibility of the new designs that the system is now capable of accommodating.

New features planned for the latter half of 2009 include:

Template reselection - when you get bored of the look of your site, just update its appearance at the touch of a button.
Regular new templates - we hope to produce several a month, keeping up to date with current trends and styles.
Sub-template styling - tune individual aspects of the design (such as link behaviour) to your personal tastes.
Multi-skill-level design support - If you understand Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), access to completely refresh your site's look; while if you don't, a simple to use interface to guide you through some of the most powerful options.
Multi-skill-level construction support - At with CSS, so too with HTML.
Third-party designer access - use your chosen designer; even with no programming skills they should find our systems fully interoperable with their product.
Updated facilities - for example, far more picture options beyond the present single image placement and simple multi-image gallery; multiple menus per page, with better menu edit facilities; improvements to most content edit options.
And many more...

We are currently in discussion with industry and grant-body backers over the funding required to allow this development phase to begin in earnest - but meanwhile you can help us to develop your site's features by recommending our services to friends and colleagues, to boost our customer base and our own ability to invest in improving our clients web experience!