We know that our users value sites that are simple to use and easy to understand. We make sure the technology delivers this. We've chosen our technology stack carefully to include software which we believe is rock-solid, well-written, and evolving well and which we can build upon.
We work pretty much exclusively with open source - it keeps costs down and means we can adapt and change it to our users needs. Our experience suggests that the technologies we work with are mature and amongst the best out there. We work with all and more of the following software:-
A content management solution is one which flexibly stores and provides digital content. In most cases this will be web pages, blogs, forum discussions, user comments and so forth.
Drupal is a phenomenally flexible and well known player in this area. It is used by small and large websites and has the virtue of being well suited to easily keeping a dynamic and professional web presence.
We have a good deal of experience in setting up Drupal for use as a website, and adapting it to meet the design needs of an organisation.
Drupal is managed almost entirely through a web browser, which enables you to keep your website up to date easily and with little experience with HTML (although just a bit is always useful!)
The Apache Web Server (developed and provided by the Apache Foundation) is a fantastically powerful front end for any website. Many of the world's websites run Apache.
In every situation this will be one of the core applications serving up your website.
The Apache Web Server sits in front of your content management application (your website) and any additional functionality such as live chat via the web.
Ubuntu Linux is highly regarded as a secure and exceptionally robust platform for hosting on the web. We use it for all of our websites and have built solid experience with it and the important applications which run on it.
When we set up a website for you, we do it with a hosting provider with an excellent track record in supporting Ubuntu Linux and we manage your server. In some cases you will choose to have your own server (or virtual server) which is dedicated entirely to your organisation. We can manage that for your too.
We don't usually provide email because it's so cheap to get elsewhere. We will help you choose and set-up email if you need to (on a small scale) and we can advise on setting up your own server - we run our own email server for our needs.
We started our development careers programming in Java, so we often use Java based applications when there's something special that's needed. This could be a chat server, a search server or any number of other things. We even run our own voice server (although that's not in Java). It's a good way to keep our hand in with what is happening out there and to help advise our clients the best way we can. We don't just do websites.
