Client Success Stories

Port Orford News

The local newspaper in our home town had recently changed hands. The new owner was anxious to present a new look on the Web, and in addition solve the problem of how to keep content updated without a webmaster. This meant eliminating the hands-on process of html editing, ftp uploads, and testing changes.

The solution proposed was to move to a CMS system that would manage and control change to the content. This way a non-technical content provider could make changes in a controlled way without editing html, and ensure the site remained functional during the update cycle.

The site was developed in a LAMP environment configured with Joomla! CMS. Joomla! was chosen because it has achieved ubiquitous status with many hosting providers and is also Open Source, thus keeping the budget reasonable for a small business. In addition, there are many OS Joomla! templates available for download, which simplified the process of matching the client's desired look and feel.

With Joomla! deployed and a template chosen, the next steps were to install extensions to provide additional (weather display and calendar) widgets desired by the client. In addition, the template PHP, HTML, and CSS were modified to re-style various elements. One challenge was the requirement to post articles in PDF format. This was solved through standard file naming and choosing matching html code via the management interface at publish time.

After minimal training the paper's staff could easily update the content without knowledge of html or web hosting through the management interface, while providing a professional and reliable web site for the client. All this within a very reasonable budget. This proved the case for a semi-custom solution where content management was an issue, and was the paper's internet presence for the duration of the client's ownership.