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Content Management Systems AKA (CMS) | Web Design Greenville, SC

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, and DotNetNuke….Oh My!

Which content management system to use? What happens if my site is done in one content management system but my developer quits, takes up another job, or decides not to be a web developer anymore? Then, with some CMS, the developer or the company that created your site you are stuck. Why, you may ask? Well the reason is easy: Most CMSs are fundamentally complex because they are powerful;  require time to learn; and most web hosting companies only know one or two major CMS. Here at Mojoe.net  we have used all of them—at least the four major types– in some form or fashion and we have to say that while some are free to download and use they require the user to navigate risky file downloads from the internet and navigating ‘permissions’ on web server for files and databases.  Here our expertise is critical.

The two main ones that we use and support are WordPress (WP) and DotNetNuke (DNN). We have also used Joomla and Drupal for clients who have required that we use their preferred or ‘legacy’ CMS when deploying or developing their web sites.

WordPress, is a great free CMS that allows anyone to maintain their web site;  WP  includes a blog, e-commerce, videos, slideshow, or 1000s other plugins– a vast majority of them free. WordPress has been around since about 2001 and has grown into a well-supported CMS with themes, plugins, and mobile support. WordPress, can be installed with Apache or IIS Web Server and uses MySQL as the database engine. We recommend this to our clients that would like a small to medium web site that they can grow themselves. We even use the system ourselves for our own blog. We have the ability to customize our clients theme by styling each WordPress via a custom cascading style sheet (CSS); plugins; Google Analytics; tags; categories; and then submit the site to search engines.  You can find out more about WordPress by visiting: http://wordpress.org/about/,

DotNetNuke (DNN) is our premium CMS and is the one that we recommend for clients that are looking for medium to large business web sites. This CMS is based off of ASP.net which is conveniently integrated into other business applications based on Microsoft’s .NET platform. DNN can be installed in IIS and typically uses SQL Server for its database engine. DNN has a free version as well as an enterprise version. We use the enterprise version for our clients which allow for developer support as well as we can customize each web site ‘portal’ to each specific client. This CMS allows the installation of modules which can be added some for free but the majority cost to add to the system. The cost can vary depending upon the type of modules that you wished installed, modules can vary from chat systems, ecommerce, newsletters, email blasting, blogs, video, slideshow rotation, wiki, RSS feed, announcements, Google Analytic, and many more.  The great thing about Mojoe.net is that we can program our own modules, custom design your ‘skin’ (the look, feel, layout, fonts, and colors of your web site), create a custom CSS, optimize your site, add Google Analytics, and then submit the site to search engines. If you would like more information you can visit: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

Drupal. This is a free content management system that is community supported but can be troublesome at time. This system uses PHP and can run on Apache or IIS while using MySQL as its database engine. In the last year,or so though the support and the community have grown a great deal, and the number of themes that are available run in the thousands. Drupal, is a good content management system but to integrate into other business applications without long development times and bugs can be an issue that can cost time and money. To find out more about Drupal please visit: http://drupal.org/

Joomla, this is another free content management system that is community supported and has its bugs.  This CMS can run on Apache or IIS web server and uses MySQL as its database engine. Joomla, is the most recent CMS (2005) from the 4 CMS in this post. We recommend this one the least because of its issues as well as the fact that the support base for this CMS has not grown has fast as the others. This CMS uses PHP and is primarily deployed on Linux-based OS (Operating System) but can be deployed on Windows Servers just like Drupal. To find out more about Joomla please visit: http://www.joomla.org/

Ask Questions, Questions, Questions
So in conclusion, do your homework about what CMS you would like to use, see if your web design company or web developer knows more than one CMS, check and see how difficult or easy it will be to move your site to another hosting company / provider. Find out what platform your web site is using, such as Linux or Windows? What CMS is your web developer using? Do they know more than one CMS? If so what are they?

What about Mac and Magento? – I will save this for another post all unto itself.

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Posted in Content Management Systems, Development, Web Site Design | No Comments »

Are Mood Boards necessary for Web Design?

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

When I first begin designing web site’s over 10 year ago; I did not know what a mood board was or that it would become an essential tool in the design and development of a web site.

Recently, I had a potential customer come to me with a design from another development company. They had been through quite a number of revisions. I was asked to review the revisions and determine what was wrong with the design of the site. There were several issues with the web site; the logo was not very appealing and it did not establish the web site or the company with a strong brand. The font size was extremely small for the main text as well as for the main H1 tags. The main image or hero image on the main page had no reference at all to what services the company actually preformed. The overall colors of the site were not very complimentary to each corresponding color, nor were the hyper-link colors very noticeable as to what was a link and what was not a link.

This could have happened for several reasons; one the client was not very forthcoming with ideas and suggestions, the communications between designer and client was mis-understood, or the client conveyed his/her idea but the designer did not do enough research to produce what the client wanted.

So why use a mood board well the answer is clearly above; the design team above had been through 9 revisions before I reviewed one of the latest design attempts. It is my firm believe that if the design team above had used a mood board initially then they most likely would not have gone through 9 revisions.

So your next question must surely be, “What is a Mood Board?” Well, I am about to let you know. A mood board is a pre-comprised board of images, colors, fonts, and a layout style that you are proposing to your client. There are several industries that use mood boards; such as, fashion designer, landscapers and interior designers. You want to inspire your client by the mood boards that you present to them and not frustrate them in this process. This part of designing a web site can be one of the most frustrating and time intensive parts of developing a web site. So take your time and listen to your client spend time asking questions, about their brand, colors, fonts, and style that they are trying to achieve.

I did not originally create this idea; I got this information from Web Designers Depot. Here are some useful links from Web Designers Depot

Why Mood Boards Matter
Massive Compilation of Designer Tools
Case Study on Virgin Atlantic Airways

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Posted in Design, Development, IT Consultant, Web Site Design | No Comments »

Cascading Style Sheets | Web Design Greenville SC

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

The first time I designed a site about 10 years ago I used tables to do my layout and to construct the web pages of the site. Which for the time it was the latest technology for designing web sites, by putting tables within tables which is called nesting tables but proved to cause the web site to load slowly. This also caused the visitors to see the site differently in different browsers, so if you viewed the site in Internet Explorer it would look a certain way and if you viewed in another it would look completely different. Well, now the only way you should layout a site is using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Why you ask? Well, I am going to let you know. The first and most important thing about CSS is that it is by far more compliant when developing for multiple browsers; you can control not only the web layout that your viewers see in their browser but you can control how a web page is printed, how it is seen in a mobile device, or even how it will be seen on TV.  CSS allows you to control so many aspects of your web site; you can control link color, font types, font sizes, font color, page background color, positioning of columns and positioning of content. These are just a few of the many ways you can control your web page and other web related content.

If you are a beginner and want to know where to start I am going to provide some links below. My recommendation is that you start by just controlling simple content on your site like fonts, link color, and text.   Learn the basics first what can you control and what you cannot control, what will be seen in browsers correctly and what will not. IE (Internet Explorer is notorious for CSS not working correctly and requiring special CSS just for IE to show the web site in the same manner as the other browsers. W3C is a great place to learn the basics and do some tutorials that will teach you the basics as well as more advanced CSS techniques.

One important piece of advice that I can give when designing a web site for a client, customer, or even for yourself is to study as much as possible and do as many tutorials as you can. Here is a list of links that I have used to teach myself as well as links that I referrer back to when designing a site for a client. However, always keep in mind what browsers your site will need to work in; such as, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer and as you become more proficient you will need to decide what level of CSS you are going to do use and whom your audience is going to be.

Recommended Links
Web Designer Depot CSS
CSS Tricks CSS
Layout with CSS
CSS for Beginners

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Posted in Cascading Style Sheet, Design, Development, Web Site Design | No Comments »

The Internet – Copyrights | Web Design Greenville SC

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

My name is Deveren Werne I have worked on web sites and web development for over 10 years. Frequently I get asked questions about the internet, “Is my site copyrighted?”, “Is my domain name protected?” “What do I do if someone copies my web site?”, “What is copyrighted and what is not copyrighted?”, and “What laws are there to protect me from someone stealing the content on my site?” One sec before I continue let me throw out this DISCLAIMER (“I am not an attorney, nor do I play one on TV. I suggest you get your own legal advice when wanting to copyright your web site or web content.”) In the beginning the internet was a wild west of people registering domain names of celebrities, registering domain name for sale, and people copying content, copying design and even there development. Since then though the internet has changed, people can still register domain names and sell them to you but the copyright laws that are present in everyday business now apply to the web site’s. Now these rules and regulations only apply in the United States, they do not apply throughout the entire world. You can file different forms with the US Patent office the forms will protect your text and art. (Once again see the DISCLAIMER)

There is also a book that I recommend highly if you are thinking about designing or developing a web site and you would like to protect the design and content that is presented on your site. The name of the book is called, “This Business of Internet Law: Tools for Navigating the Evolving Business and Legal Landscape of Today’s Internet Environment”. I constantly refer back to this back book. I recommend this book to all of my clients.

I also think you should check out these links when it comes to copyrighting, patents, and other helpful information when thinking about developing a web site and your web content.

Copyright Forms US Goverment
US Patent Office

Another site that I would recommend is the University of Maryland University College

An attorney that I would recommend is Doug Kim with McNair Law Firm

Here is another post from our web site that talks about the 10 Big Myths of Copyrights

 

I will be continuing this post on The Internet on a weekly basis and next post will be on Search Engine Optimization and Registration.

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Posted in Development, Search Engine Registration, Web Site Design | No Comments »

Design Firms | Web Design Greenville SC

Friday, August 13th, 2010

We have recently just signed up for design firms so we could be added to their directory of web desingers. Check out our link Mojoe.net Profile on DesignFirms. Let us know what you think about the site Design Firms

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What’s The Difference? | Web Design Greenville SC

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Recently we had a potential client ask us for a quote on a web site for his business; we have course prepared the quote and spent several hours with our potential client going through our creative questions and we had several meetings as well.

Well, you know how it goes. The customer went and got pricing from other web developers and web designers. Of course all of the quotes that came back at a lower cost than ours. So the customer ask, the Million Dollar Question, “What’s the Difference?”

So I explained to the customer that not all web developers / web designers are created equal nor do they provide an apple to apple comparison and most likely that most of other developers that he received quotes from left quite few things out in their proposals. So the customer asked if I would write a list of all the questions that he could then asked the other developers to see if we were comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges. After about 2 weeks of waiting I finally received a call back from the client and some of the developers had answered all of the questions. Not to my surprise, all of their quotes had gone up considerably and we ended up being the more reasonably priced.

Due to this client interaction we have developed a new page for our web site called Questions where we answer all of the questions that we proposed to the other web developers / designers. We have made this page so that other potential clients whom probably have some of these same questions can get answers straight from our web site.

“Stuff We’re Diggin’ ”

1. Web Designer Depot

2. DaFont

3. Web Page Design for Designers Resources

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Posted in Design, Development, Greenville Web Development | 1 Comment »

Current Projects Web Design Projects

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Mojoe.net is currently working on the following sites; www.bridgeyourlove.com, www.greerpediatricdentalcare.com, www.championstudiosonline.com, and www.teludynetech.com.

We will be posting more information on the blog on, HOW TO DO WEB DESIGN. We will be linking to local companies we like in our area which is Greenville South Carolina, and Alanta Georgia.

One topic that we have been asked to cover is CMS which stands for Content Mangement Systems. There are a number of CMS’s out there and they all range from the very good to the not so very good.  We will go in depth in our next post and highlight some CMS’s that we like and that we use. I will also let you know which ones we passed on becuase they where either complicated or too costly.

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Posted in Design, Development, Greenville Web Development, Resources, Web Site Design | No Comments »

Launch of New Web Sites | Web Design Greenville SC

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Mojoe.net has been incredibly busy lately. We’ve launched the following sites:

http://www.pickapets.com

http://www.kinequip.net

http://www.lindfastgrp.com

http://www.megametric.com

http://www.millenniumgrp.net

These sites utilize all of our skill sets from web site design, logo design, database development, programming, as well as search engine optimization and search engine registration. Each one of these web sites have been custom designed for our clients and is developed with the customer’s goals.

We’re now in the process of creating the majority of our sites in DNN, and we eagerly await the release of DNN 5. That being said we’ve converted some of our previous sites into DNN skins.

http://www.kinequip.net

http://www.kinequip.com

We’re also converting JB Lacher and Elmo Rietschle.

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Posted in Design, Development, Miscellaneous, Site News & Updates, Web Site Design | 5 Comments »

Design and Function | Web Design Greenville SC

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

We have been developing web sites for over ten years, and we feel that the design and function of a web site is one of the most important aspects. To do this  you need the right web  designer.

There are two types of web designers, the designer that is truly an artistic designer, then you have the designer that is a programmer.  I think that every artistic designer longs to be a programmer and every programmer longs to be an artistic designer.  I believe that being a developer with both skills sets makes you the best web designer you can be for your clients.  You can have a very functional web site that looks horrible with bright neon colors, blurred pictures,  improper text, and distorted layout.  On the other hand you can have a beautifully designed web site that has bad function; such as, no hyper-links, forms that don;t work, no deep-links, no alt tags, no title tags, and no SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SER ( Search Engine Registration).

When we develop a web site, we strive to make sure it has the best of both worlds, both design and function. We create each web site as a one of a kind web site. We don’t use templates … ever!

We blend design and function by using certain resources to help deliver the perfect web site for you the client.  Here is part of our process for providing you the perfect web site. We design your site initially in Adobe Photoshop, once the design is completed we will use Adobe Dreamweaver for back-end coding, we also will create a custom CSS page that will control the look and feel of your site. Then we might use Adobe Flash to add some animation to the navigation, animate a logo or we will add a animated intro.  Once this part is concluded we will make sure that all pages are linked and that all the code is validated. We then check your site in all browsers to make sure that the site will function properly so we can eliminate errors. One final thing that we do is make customer error pages that will help trap visiting customers in a page that will allow them to navigate to another page if they have an error.

We finish up by doing the SEO and SER, which alot of web site designers forget to include.  As Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams” is famously told, “if you build it they will come.” Well, when building a web site if you don’t do SEO or SER your site, then no one will come.

That’s all for now. We’ll be back soon with more thoughts on Web design. And now for the good stuff!

Stuff We’re Diggin’:

Color Scheme Designer
Browers Shots
Browser Compatability

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