A lot of acupuncturists have websites, but they have a hard time keeping them updated. Most people who do it themselves have to update pages by hand. Or if you hire a webmaster, they’ll often charge you $25 per page.

There’s a much better way to do it. In fact, I believe I’ve found the best way there is. Use what’s called a Content Management System (CMS) - in particular, the program called WordPress.

Think of a CMS like a 3 ring binder, while a regular web site is like a bound book. If you want to add a page to a CMS, it’s like snapping a new page into the binder, and your binder’s index will be magically updated. If you want to add a page to a bound book, it’ll take a bit more fiddling to jam the page in there, and your index and site map probably need updating too.

The best CMS I’ve found for simple websites is WordPress. WordPress is supposed to be used as a blog software, but most people don’t know it’s a truly excellent CMS.

Adding a web page using Wordpress is usually almost as easy as sending an email. Simply type the page, and click publish. It automatically shows up in the menu, and it’s formatted. You can watch a 6 minute video showing how it works. Usually it doesn’t take anywhere near 6 minutes, but this was a walkthrough.

There are other great features to using WordPress:

• Literally hundreds, if not thousands of themes. Themes allow you to instantly change the look and feel of your website. For example, the website I created is Ithaca Acupuncture, but you can see examples of dozens of themes here. Notice that only the look and feel changes - the web page content is completely preserved.

• Hundreds of plugins. Plugins are used to enhance the features of the website. You can add support for anything from Amazon to YouTube and everything in between.

• WordPress is very well supported, both for free and when you need to pay someone. I’ve tried working with developers of other CMS systems. They’re at least 2x as expensive as WordPress.

So… the prize is a free Wordpress Website and free hosting for a year. You will be provided videos and a quick reference showing how to update your site.

Other prizes so far for the Doer’s Contest:

• Andy Rosenfarb’s Fundamentals of Practice Management Course.
• Kevin Doherty’s Build Your Dream Practice.