WEB DEVELOPMENT
There are two ways to develop a site on the web these days. They are to make a web site static or dynamic. We have experience in developing both, please check out our work and projects page.
Static Sites
A static site means that to make changes you need the services of someone with internet skills: server, html and css skills. Building a site like this usual means that you will not be making changes to the content and therefore don’t need a Content Management Systems.
Dynamic Sites: The Norm
A dynamic site on the other hand allows people without such skills to update a websites content. Dynamic sites take many forms but generally they all run using some sort of Content Management System or CMS for short.
From my experience a CMS is a great way of been able to manage your site’s content. However to use a content management system you will have to invest time in learning how to use it or pay a professional to utilize it to its fullest potential. Generally I would recommend that you have a basic understanding of HTML, however it is not 100% necessary if you have a web professional on call just in case.
There are many CMSs out there from proprietary to open source. I have experience in development and customization of 3 of major open source CMSs.
Word Press
This website is built on the word press, it is a great platform for a blog and or small website, even though you will find some quite large sites out there built on this platform. It great for small community driven websites as it has a registration system built in. You add custom content fields and style them how you like with a little bit of coding knowledge. There are a lot of plugins ready to plug and go.
CMS Made Simple
Is great for small to medium size websites. As the name suggests it is a content management system that is simple. This is true for both a developer with basic php programming skills and the content manager. The backend organizes the site by pages where you can group pages by making them a child of a parent page. The website administrator or webmaster can then build menus from the pages and add these to the templates. Once menus are built then as you add content to different levels the menu are automatically generated. CMSms has its own script or tags based on smarty. This makes it easy to build custom layouts that can then be applied to pages.
Joomla!
With Joomla! you can set up a site fast. However if you want custom layout per page it is harder to achieve. The the upside is there are a lot of extensions and plugins that can make a simple site fast to develop. The organization of pages and menus are completely separate meaning that a user that doesn’t have extensive coding knowledge can set up a menu with no problem. Joomla! is more difficult to get your head around, but if you have a basic knowledge of website development it is quite a powerful platform. If you have extensive programming knowledge Joomla! is a great platform due to its modular concept for content layout and presentation. Joomla! is also great for community driven websites.
Drupal
Drupal, is easier to customize and have custom layouts for each page due to being able to create and manage custom content fields using CCK, however Drupal demands longer development time lines. As with Joomla it is great for community driven websites and also larger sites. We are currently developing our dkdev01.net site with Drupal.
People compare Drupal and Joomla! as they are the 2 major players in the open source world.
All CMS have their pros and cons. If you need help in choosing the best CMS for your application please contact me