Cambridgeshire Webdesign and Online Marketing

Joomla is the CMS (Content Management System) that we use to make our sites. It allows the average man to add content to their own web site. Yes it is a bit more complex than using facebook but with some guidance you will be adding pages and new menu items with ease. Even if it is beyond you it allows us to add things remotely to your site. Yes you can add things from your mobile phone or tablet even. You just need a browser and internet connection.

How does it work ?

A database stores the content of the site and various options, this data can be added and changed by the CMS so it updates itself. You can choose to save and not publish immediately items and you have access to advance ACL so you can set a piece to be able to be read by certain people for example subscribers who pay a monthly fee to you Joomla ACL will recognise the logged in user has the correct privileges and will show the item for that user or group only.

Joomla has been developed by many individuals using the Open Source Idea which allows the use as given in its license http://opensourcematters.org/index.php.

Advantages to using Joomla far outweigh the disadvantages
Advantages:

• Scalability (we would use this to build a really small basic site so that the user has the option to add later with no loss of economy due to poor planning)
• Some things are easy to do like add a new article
• Add components such as Forum, Blog, Reviews, Shopping Cart...etc the list goes on see the extensions website to get more of an idea.
• Custom look and feel is entirely possible. Indeed 3rd part templates allow a highly professional look that can be tailored to fit in your colour scheme and branding.
• The limits are just the individual,
• and many more... 

Disadvantages:

• A learning curve that can be beyond some individuals who don't have the time to get to grips with it.
• It can take some time to solve conflicts that occur from 3rd party components playing together. Our considerable experience allows us to solve any that might happen quickly.
• It can be slightly time consuming to make a really small 4 or less page site, experience allows us to do this and create our 200 pounder package !

10. http://www.mazebackpackers.com/ A nice social enabled website that gets the message across for a youth hostel based in Sydney. What's really nice is that they are handling their own booking fees and recognising the fact that they don't need the likes of hostel bookers who take a hefty 10% from the booking fee. I like the layout and the design - its very young and well to be frank I would want to stay there (If I were young again..).

9. http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/ A great blog at the root domain but for anyone interested in the cutting edge of javascript and the NEW htm5 tag canvas these examples really impress ! CRAZY !!!

8. http://tympanus.net/codrops/2011/03/09/animated-content-menu/ A deep link to a tutorial for some nifty JQuery. I have had some discussions lately about knowing javascript and knowing JQuery - you need to know both I guess but there was an undercurrent from the geeks who dont like JQuery because it makes what they do available to the masses. Boo Hoo to you. JQuery rocks. Beautiful women have baggage cest la vie !

7. We Own ! Interesting branding and they slap a non SEO friendly video right on the front of their homepage just in case you dont know what they are about.

6. (ze merde ! long way to go !) Examples of Beautiful Typography from 3.7 designs What is nice is that you can take the html straight from their page just like I did for one of mine here ! An ad for the Olympics and BP

5. Ryan Scherf http://www.ryanscherf.net/

Some nice no excellent visual examples of colour and font usage in Ryan's work here. He works in Minneapolis by the looks of things.

4. http://www.rebeccahendin.com/

This a flash gallery site showcasing some very talented work by Rebecca Hendin. Its easy to use and allows her readers to get in contact easily with her. The only problem will be for her to rank in the search engines as though Google does have the ability to see some content that exists within a swf file the majority won't able to be crawled and hence Google wont know much about this site. Also the flash problem of not being viewable by Apple devices ! But there are some very inspiring images , sorry illustrations here.

3. http://www.csslayout.com/

Check out the nice harmony of cool colours sorry 'colors' ! But don't miss the nice way it displays depending on different screen resolutions and looks great on the iPhone. It's not all good news as the site is a bit on the small side and there are some interactions which annoy me like the popout slightly on roll over of some items ! I guess he is busy ? But also the graphic in the top right has a poor sharpness.

2. http://www.useit.com/

This is a resource about useability in mobile and the larger media market. Its a blog that doesn't really look like a blog. Its graphically barren and in my opinion though great at a point in time is now overshadowed by hidden ads to buy books on the subject ! If you take a look you will find yourself wanting to get a book not getting the info you thought you might from the site itself - that's why I'm not linking to it as it is an example of a guy making some money from a website. Very clever; when your product is information you have to box like this.

1. http://benthebodyguard.com

Ben the bodyguard is an app for the iPhone that protects your data like photos and contacts or even stored passwords. The site is great for it's non use of flash this is DHTML at its best IMO. Click the link and scroll down to  appreciate the idea.

I thought I would get the blog started off with a posting promoting what I (we) do (I will edit this to come up with an ever improving mission statement) :
Design and build and potentially manage your multimedia solutions. Using 15 years of high level multimedia and web design and development experience in finding the best solution for your requirements.