Don't let your IT department choose your CMS - alone

Author:Rebecca Caroe

Getting the right content management system for your business has to be a careful decision. It simple is not enough to let one team specify and select the one that everyone has to use.

The IT team and the web development team are probably both filled with technologically-savvy folk who are interested in the ‘latest’ and the ‘newest’ technologies. These are NOT the people to use to select a CMS.

A Content management system consists of two parts:

• the website and
• the editorial environment

We had a client recently whose marketing team had hired a Contegro Partner to write the content for their website. As the team started uploading articles, they found that the CMS selected had a lot of limitations – the template layout was so narrow that each page became very long, there was no direct HTML editing, inserting new menu items was difficult and, worst of all, the free CMS was no longer being supported by ... Read Full Blog

So you thought you could build your own website!

Author:Vaughan Reed

Website design and functional specification is key to getting a successful online presence for your business. Making money online and integrating the customer’s online and offline touchpoints seamlessly are a vital part of strategic planning for your business. Contegro values the expertise that professional website designers bring to a new site build. WE are firmly on the side of the professionals. Remember our advice from our blog What is the value of working with a professional website designer?

“The best short-cut to a successful online business website is to hire the best, most experienced website design professional that you can afford. “

So if you are going to build your own website, these are the steps that a professional will work through with you as you specify and build your new business website.

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Got the Content Management System blues?

Author:Rebecca Caroe

Finding the right CMS for your business website can be a headache. It’s true that the preferred suppliers list changes over time as some technologies grow obsolete and other new operating systems are developed.

And if you are fretting about how to pick the right web content management system, here are a few tips

1. Befriend your marketing director or chief marketing officer. It’s his team that will be using the CMS – not yours. Make sure they choose the one they want that has the functionality the marketing and sales team needs
2. Check with purchasing or procurement. These guys are going to be specifying and deciding how to select and buy the preferred option. What detail do they need that you and marketing can provide?
3. And lastly, speak to your web developer team – internal or your agency. Check that they have experience in the CMS you want to use and / or are happy to learn a new CMS.

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All a designer needs to ask about Contegro

Author:Vaughan Reed

When we answer the phone, our new prospective Partners often ask similar questions about the Contegro market position and point of difference. The Contegro brand positioning and marketing message is about two things: Complete large scale website projects with ease. Increase your profits and business capabilities

Business websites are rarely simple. Good design looks like a swan – gliding effortlessly across the surface but with hard paddling below the waterline. You know good design when you see it. You know, Apple versus Yahoo websites – it’s very clear when you get it.

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Why we’re stoked this week

Author:Rebecca Caroe

Contegro towers is rattling with cheers from the team and our clients this week. We are delighted to announce that the hard work building Contegro into a reliable content management system for enterprise clients is getting noticed.

The first clue we had was when CMS Focus - the website for all things content management, wrote an article revising its Top 30 CMS ranking.We should explain that this is (almost) the holy grail for CMS developers. Here’s how they describe the Top 30. The content management systems that make up this top 30 are what I consider Web content management "game changers" or "attention getters".

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What's the value of working with a professional website designer?

Author:Vaughan Reed

Website design has come a long way in the past two years – it is cheaper, easier to manage and vastly more complex than it has ever been before. There are more features, more social media integrations and more plug-ins than ever. And it’s not going to get simpler.

What you’ll hear and what’s the truth. In my opinion, the perception about websites being a cheap and easy-to-set-up commodity has grown over the last couple of years. This has come about as a result of a large number of open-source, free, template design solutions being launched onto the market.

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Struggles with open source CMS are part of the pain

Author:Rebecca Caroe

We are a strong supporter of the worldwide CMS ecosystem. By this I mean the range of CMS offerings from large to small that enable you, the web designer, to pick the right one for your clients' needs. Some are free and open source, others are niche for specific needs like video and Contegro fits into the 'mid-sized' enterprise business CMS group.

Last week saw a major 'hissy fit' in the Drupal community. Some called it the Drupal Massacre and all because a committee group decision was needed to revise the structure of “core” modules within the Drupal CMS system.

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Contegro’s website design new business leads

Author:Rebecca Caroe

Contegro firmly believes that our content management system for building and managing websites is an essential tool for web design agencies who want to grow their business.

Why do we say that?

Well, Contegro started from a design agency. Yes, we are a sister company to Labyrinth Solutions a web design agency. Read our back-story about why Contegro was built. Website design agencies who invest in using Contegro as the platform behind their clients' new websites are able to:

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Why Wordpress won’t take over the world any time soon

Author:Rebecca Caroe

Last week there were a flurry of articles about WordPress the open source blogging platform because it released the fabulous statistic that:

• WordPress is now powering 14.7% of the top million websites in the world
• 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress

Both well-designed statements guaranteed to get the "bloggerati" hyped up to re-quote. We picked up David Terrar writing on 'Cloud Ave' who makes six excellent points to counter the assertion that WP will take over the world.

... Read Full Blog