Why I Ditched Joomla for WordPress

Posted on Aug 23, 2011 by Nate to General

When I discovered Joomla a few years ago, I thought it was the crown jewel of all open-source Content Management Systems. I couldn’t wait to learn it’s inner workings, and show everyone else how awesome it was. At the time I ignored WordPress completely. After all, all it did was blogging. I wanted something that would allow me to manage a website, blog, store, and whatever else I could imagine. Diversity was my main goal, and Joomla provided that for me.

So why did I switch?

Joomla – It’s been a few years, and other than the introduction of a few new features introduced with Joomla 1.6, It has remained the same CMS. It hasn’t included any groundbreaking features that users are looking for. URLs are still the same pain they used to be. The back-end is still just as confusing to end-users at it used to be. In the past, Joomla’s best quality was in it’s simplicity when creating a custom template. One page was all it took to create a design. Nowadays, that one file looks messy and unreadable to anyone but me.

WordPress – On the other hand, WordPress has done nothing but improve it’s feature set. With each new update, we’ve seen things like custom post types, better menu systems, user interface updates, better theme support, and much more. They’ve taken a blogging platform and made it extensible to the point where entire websites can be built around a fully customizable administrator area. Add to that the fact that the WordPress administrator interface is clean, simple, and easy to use for the average Joe, and there is already plenty of reason to make the switch.

WordPress and Joomla are both powerful content management systems, and they both have their place in the web world, but the improvements WordPress has made far outweigh the mediocre progress of Joomla.

Tags: content management systems, web design, Web Development, website usability

THAT Agency Launches Make A Change Today

Posted on Jan 29, 2010 by Michelle to Projects

THAT Agency was contracted to develop the website for Make A Change Today.  In addition to website development, THAT Agency was also asked to perform an indepth analysis of the client competitor websites, and develop a strategy for on-site optimization.

The Make A Change Today website was built around a content management system (CMS), allowing the client complete control over their website’s content and imagery.  Additionally, the website consists of three lenghtly videos, that THAT Agency converted into flash movies, that stream in, allowing for maximum page load, while the video begins playing.

Tags: content management systems, Web Development

THAT Agency Launches Ask Aztec

Posted on Jan 11, 2010 by Bill to Projects

The goal of the website for Aztec Acquisitions was to establish a professional and trustworthy appearance.  During THAT Agency’s discovery process, Aztec Acquisitions was asked to deliver a list of adjectives for use during the design process. THAT Agency turned this exercise around, and utilized the powerful words as a design feature within the header of each page.  THAT Agency took advantage of the primitive nature of the logo and term “Aztec”, to create a color palette that was simplistic, yet added variations and subtle graphical interests with the use of gradients.  With a distinct call-to-action color, each visitor to the site is sure to know where they are, and where they need to go.

In addition to the creative design, the Ask Aztec website is backed by a full Content Management System (CMS) that allows Aztec Acquisitions to have full control of the site.  An additional feature of the website is the system, THAT Agency created, in which a site visitor could elect to receive FREE information via email on a set daily, weekly or monthly interval.

Tags: content management systems, web design, Web Development

THAT Agency Launches Website for American Eagle Packaging

Posted on Oct 10, 2009 by Bill to Projects

THAT Agency designed and developmed American Eagle Packaging’s online presence from scratch.  Never having a space online, required that THAT Agency create not only an aesthetically pleasing site, but also one that was fully-optimized for search engines.

The clean, corporate website was designed utilizing web 2.0 standards of large fonts and clean spacing.  The smooth animated navigational dropdowns were created using jQuery, and the home page features animation via an animated .gif.  The website is backed and completely customizable via a content management system (CMS), allowing American Eagle to have complete control over their website and the content and images therein.

Tags: content management systems, web design, Web Development

Open Source CMS or Creating One

Posted on Sep 10, 2007 by Taylor to Technology Trends

Ok, so I have been teetering with the idea of whether using a open-source CMS (Content Management System) or creating one from scratch. Here at THAT Agency we have many clients that we do constant maintenance for their content, SEO and more. So when do we as developers feel the need to actually create a private label standardized CMS instead of the plethora of open-source one’s currently available on the market.

One place i found with a ton of open source Content Management System applications was ta da www.opensourcecms.com This site breaks down many of today’s CMS applications and shows you their features; even side by side comparisons. But wait one second. What if you can’t find one that meets all your personal needs that you need and you really don’t want to have a developer tweak an open source one? Then obviously the solution is to create your own right?

In my personal developer opinion, I would much rather create my own and use THAT; then tweak an already existing one. Here is why:

1. With tweaking or adding to an already existing project, you run that risk of your changes being screwed up if a patch is developed for something in the actual application.

2. You can have more control of your application if you develop it yourself.

3. It is easier to tweak your own code than tweak someone else’s.

So what to do?

If your plan is to develop a complete system for your clients, why not create your own CMS (Content Management System) and have it ready as an addition to the great work you do!

Tags: cms, content management systems