The world of web development has changed dramatically over the last 2-3 years. Historically, html programmers would have to hand-write all their own code. This required highly trained professionals with processes that were costly, time consuming and possibly full of bugs. Functionality often came at the cost of design, as programmers tend to make horrible "designers" and vice versa.
Today, there are great opportunities utilizing open-source programming tools that enable extremely powerful applications available in down-loadable code sets. If you can think of a requirement, it is likely ready for immediate download for installation and configuration into your site. Once installed, the standard code-set can be edited to meet your style and process needs in a few minutes or hours instead of weeks of development and de-bugging.
The Advent of Open-Source Content Management Systems (CMS):
Open-Source meansdescribes code that is {open to the public and available without any licensing fees|free code that is open to the world wide web community]. Most Open-Source code has been utilized on at least a handful of other sites (could be thousands), providing us with field-proven reliability and a world-wide forum of support. Content Management Systems have really matured in the last few years. Today, CMS topologies are extremely popular and offer practically unlimited support resources locally and internationally.
CMS systems facilitate the organization and display of content utilizing user interfaces much like a software program. Access is managed in two ways, through the site itself with integral editor function (front end) and through an administrator panel (back end). There are hundreds of CMS topologies currently available, some of the most common being Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Mambo, Nuke, Sharepoint, OpenCMS, Tango, Django, Fusion and lots more. The typical CMS offers a handful of generic functions to manage pages, contact forms and news articles among other standard requirements. Additional modules can be installed as needed. These "Plug-Ins" are developed by the world-wide-web community and opened up to the public top share and contribute ideas, additional code and general improvements.
CMS has revolutionized design by providing standardized programming tools that interact readily with thousands of available plug-in modules. So what used to cost many thousands of dollars and months of development, can now be downloaded and installed in a matter of a few hours. The only reason to work with a professional web developer is to accommodate customization of code and graphics to meet your specific style and process requirements.
Why we use Joomla:
We started working with CMS Systems about 4 years ago and had the luxury of time to research which topology would best suit our long-term needs. We chose Joomla as our primary CMS tool because it was quickly growing to be the most popular topology with the largest community and quantity of plug-in modules. Additionally, Joomla is not limited by it's existing capabilities or framework. Joomla allows outside "widgets"/ programming / functionalities to work within it's framework, meaning we can integrate any "Non-Joomla" programming widget into it's framework. As of Early 2010, Joomla offers >4,500 plug-in modules and has surpassed our expectations in every way.
So what if your needs change? Joomla is designed to accommodate change so that you can implement new templates and functionalities while keeping all your content intact. This will end the common need to "re-design" a site every few years because it has grown stale. You will never again have to sacrifice your investment into web design for a fresh look or new functionality.
Why we use WordPress:
Wordpress is another type of CMS tool which is one of the best tools for design blog type web sites. Wordpress tends to have less functionality than Joomla, for that reason it also tends to have less code that Search Engine Spiders must wade through to read your content. For this reason WordPress blogs will typically rank a little higher than an identical Blog published on a Joomla Installation.
What about Custom Programming?
Joomla and Wordpress typically eliminate the need to write custom code, but, we maintain our advanced programming skills so that we can more easily modify existing code to meet specific process requirements. These skills also come into play when we need to create a function that may not be readily available in Joomla. We have both the skill and experience in all types of programming topologies including HTML / CSS / SHTML / XML / Flash / Java / PHP / MySQL / ASP and more ensuring we can accommodate any needs you have with the lowest costs possible.
Open-Source / Standards-Based code minimize costs and issues related to programming from scratch.
Save your limited budget for content / graphics / optimization for best-in-class ROI.
