The CMS Solution

For Small to Medium Size Organizations

Content Management Systems (CMS) started appearing in the Open Source world a little over twelve years ago. We would characterize them - at the time - as rather stodgy, rather boxy, rather ugly miracles. What was amazing about them, was that they made dynamic content possible for mere mortals. Yes, it looked horrible, but it generally worked if you didn't push it too hard - and it was free. Anything remotely close would have cost in the 100's of thousands of dollars.

What really started people paying attention, was the utilization of CMS's for the Howard Dean (and much later, the Barack Obama) political campaign. It was at that point when the world began to take them more seriously.

They were still ugly, but they could be really practical for certain applications.

During these early days, we stumbled upon several platforms that were at the top of the game - ie: the ones that had a tested base, a large number of developers and a community that supported the trend of making incremental improvements.

There were two finalists - Drupal and Mambo (later renamed to Joomla).

We selected Joomla/Mambo at the time, because we (rightly) thought that their system would be more understandable to people with a non-technical background.

Oh what a difference 8 years makes.

Today, the Joomla system enjoys the largest community of users of any of the CMS systems, has thousands of developers, and has been rewritten from scratch a total of three times.

Visionsound has actively used the Joomla system since it was in mid version Mambo, more than eight years ago. We really know this system, and have created lots of sites that use it. In that time we have discovered ways of optimizing the core system (the pure Joomla core without extensions), such that it runs the way it is supposed to run. Using our templates and approach, it is as close to bulletproof as these systems can be.

Pricing:

While typical installations of CMS systems run in the $2500 and up range, Visionsound is able to deliver a fully functional CMS system for substantially less. This includes the optimized template, it's setup in a cloud hosting environment, the customization and loading of static content, integration with social media and email marketing, and the configuration and training required for your organization to take on the day-to-day dynamic content: calendar updates, file news stories, blog posts, Facebook and Twitter feeds, etc.

While this is a templated solution, there is considerable flexibility in the template to place content and function modules in context-sensitive locations.

Next Steps...

If you are interested in creating a site that truly addresses your needs, you can download our "white paper" on the Website Design Process, by clicking below:

Download Website Process Overview

We are very excited about our new Templated Solutions, and we think that it is the most powerful platform we've ever worked with. Please take a look at some of the sites using this template (including this one).

You will be glad you did.

If you have any questions, please CONTACT US, so we can help you towards your best option.