DesignB Studios

Solutions

In its simplest form, there are two initial steps that most clients seeking a new site or site re-design must think of. One, design a dynamic looking, engaing and functional website which will create interaction. Two, build the site on an easy to use Content Management System (CMS).

#1 Dynamic and Functional Design

Please go to our Gallary to find screenshots of projects our CEO, Creative Director and Designers have been involved with.

Our Portfolio

#2 Content Management System (CMS)

What every website should have...but few do.

Your organization is growing and so is the work load associated with updating the content on your website. Keeping web content up-to-date and fresh is crucial for many reasons. It keeps your visitors & members informed about events, how to contact you, feeling like they are a part of you relationally, connected when not able to attend, etc. An out of date or unattended website is like an abandoned property. It can give the impression of lack of care about your ministry & its constituents, poor leadership, disorganization, etc. You think to yourself, “With all this other work that needs to be done; how can we possibly keep everything on the website up-to-date? Hiring a professional web designer full time is just not economically feasible and we don’t have anyone that could volunteer that much time with the skills needed to do it.”

The Answer - An Easy To Use Content Management System (CMS)

A good website CMS provides tools where users with little or no knowledge of programming languages & markup languages (HTML) can create and manage website content relatively easy.

A CMS is software that creates and manages the text, graphics, audio, video, and other content on your website. It facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential website maintenance functions.

Most CMS’s use a database to store content and then when a website visitor views a page, the content is retrieved from the database and presented on the web page.

A website CMS provides the following key features

Easily editable content: Your content is separate from the visual presentation of your site, therefore, it becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most CMS software include WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content.
Scalable feature sets: Most CMS’s have plug-ins or modules that can be easily installed to extend an existing site's functionality. For example, the CMS may have user-defined database-driven content including calendars, photo galleries, people directories, recently updated pages, announcements, podcasting, and RSS.
Web standards upgrades: Active CMS solutions usually receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards.
Workflow management: Workflow is the establishing of how an update goes from being created to going live on the website. For example, a content creator submits an update but it is not published on the website until someone else approves it.
Document management: Managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. Some CMS’s provide the ability to rollback to a previous version of a web page.
User-defined security permissions: Establishing editors each assigned with specific editing privileges.

Benefits of using a website CMS

There are a wide range of benefits that can be realized by implementing a CMS, including:

minimal computer knowledge required
increased user creation and updating capability
streamlined content authoring process
faster turnaround time to create new pages and make changes
greater consistency
improved site navigation
increased site flexibility
support for decentralized authoring
increased security
reduced duplication of information
greater capacity for growth
reduced site maintenance costs

Beyond these, the greatest benefit the CMS can provide is to support your goals & strategies while at the same time helping to improve efficiency, increase user satisfaction, and assist in communicating with your community (outreach), and whether spoken or unspoken, increase income, revenue or donorship.

Wrap Up

So, if your organization is at the point where updating its website is becoming too overwhelming, a CMS can be your answer to prayer. Freeing up your time to effectively do what you were called to do, reach the lost and minister to the hurting.

Our Personal Choice For the designB studios Site

When we were looking for a CMS platform to categorize as the "main" CMS we suggest to client, a great deal of thought and testing went into the decision. Collectively, we have worked with most of the popular CRM platforms; Vignette and Red Dot to WordPress, Drupal, Joomla; difficult to use, to blogging platforms.

First, we wanted an open source platform where you, our client, will own the code and technology as an asset to your organization (opposed to being held hostage by paying monthly for propriatory system). Second, we wanted a CMS that was profoundly easy to use, operated as easily as MS Word, and with minor training, could allow our client's staff, whether is be a web or communications manager or a receptionist, the potential for full control. To that note, we also wanted access control and workflow along with a CMS that had staging ability so you could see a draft site, exactly the way it will look and function online, prior to going live. We found all of this and more with a CMS called SilverStrip. This is not to say that we would refrain from using other platforms, yet SilverStrip meets the needs of 95% of our potential client base. As a testiment to our belief, the designb studios site utilizes SilverStrip CMS and is used to demo its ability and ease of use to our clients.

One of the most compelling aspects of this CMS is the backing of its creaters, an actual company in support as well as a vibrant open source community of developers. This gives the platform a true advantage as its creators are on-hand. Moreover, this company also captured the attention of the CMS Awards as a top 5 finalist and the attention of Google, being awarded 10 programmers to further enhance the platform throught their Summer of Code program in 2007.

Screen shot of the SilverStripe CRM

(True Drag-N-Drop Page Manager, WYSIWYG Content Editor, Image/Gallery Loader with Editor)

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Currently In Development - Open source designBPress

We are also highly specialized in WordPress and are in the process of creating designBPress, a customized and highly applicable version of the WordPress platform as a full CMS.

designB studios is a full service web design firm and interactive agency. Our mission is to create captivating interactive experiences that change the behavior of our clients' target audience; to enhance and accelerate our client's mission, creating and converting calls-to-action and make your audience feel, think and act in a predetermined manner... (Find Out More)