5 Non-Negotiable Principles of a Well-Designed Website

Sometimes a few straightforward website design changes can make an enormous difference, whatever your business goals may be. Do you want to establish yourself as a thought leader? Sell products? Generate leads? Receive donations? Regardless of your immediate or long-term goals, certain design principles remain consistent at all stages of the game. Maybe you’ll think this list is entirely obvious.  In fact, we hope you do.  Smart design should... Read More

Best-of-Breed vs. All-in-One Software

You are going to create a new website for your organization. You want to have some pretty great functionality – a wiki, forums, an internal search engine, a blog. Maybe some e-commerce too. You want a CMS so you can update content yourself. But you also want different people to manage different sections, and editors should be limited in what they can edit. And, obviously, the website’s design should be consistent throughout. You get proposals... Read More

Open Source vs. Build-Your-Own Software

In response to our article on the benefits of open source software, Twitter user Plato Hieronimus wrote to us: “What’s your take on customized open source vs. pure custom builds. When should an organization go with one or the other?” It’s a great question. After all, if you build it yourself, won’t it be exactly what you want? Read More  Read More

You Need A Content Management System. Why Not Open Source?

In 2007, DISCOVER Magazine, the leading popular science magazine in the US, hired us to design and develop a new website that would be more compelling to its community and subscribers. This high-traffic site (more than 5 million page views per month) was developed on a sophisticated open source content management system (Plone), and contains every article of every issue since 1992, categorized, tagged, interrelated and searchable. The platform allows... Read More