In our latest article, we discussed Concrete5 CMS and its benefits. Now, we would like to bring you some more resources from industry specialists discussing the usability matter:

• Concrete5 CMS Review and Commentary
• Concrete5, The Best CMS to Come on the Block in a Long Time
• WordPress v Concrete5
• Concrete5 Powered Sites

Today’s web offers plenty of opportunities when it comes to choosing the perfect Content Management System, and we want you to be aware of many of the choices that are out there for one to consider. In some of our previous blog posts, we talked about WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, ModX, Sitefinity, Expression Engine, Savvy, and Ektron. In today’s post we will explore Concrete5 and some of the features and the advantages of its implementation for your website.

Organizations nowadays need an easy to use tool that allows them to communicate and manage web content quickly, without engaging technical knowledge. If you are one of these companies, then you might consider choosing Concrete5 as your Content Management System.

Concrete5 is a free and open source CMS built on PHP/MySQL. It is best for beginners and technical experts alike because it is a simple, intuitive platform that is also extendable. Concrete5 can be used for a wide range of site applications including personal and business websites, forums, communities, magazines, e-commerce solutions, photography showcases, galleries and much more.

There are a couple of primary reasons why one would want to choose Concrete5 over other CMSs:

• The initial setup and building of page themes is extremely easy. Moreover, you can use more than one theme in your site by simply changing the theme for a page; all new pages you make afterwards will use the new theme.
• The administrative access to add and edit pages is made simple courtesy of a top navigation bar.
• In-context editing – Concrete5’s main feature – allows you to edit website content directly on the page, rather than in an administrative interface.
• A powerful permission system will allow you to control the content editing process. Site wide permissions can be used in one of two modes – Simple Permissions and Advanced Permissions – depending on your requirements.

Once in edit mode, you will also see that Concrete5 offers a complex system where you can improve content and the way it is displayed with features such as page types, advanced style sheets, and version control.

At CodeMyIMAGE, we consider Concrete5 a viable choice and worth investigating if you are in the market for a content management solution for many clients or your client’s websites – it is easy to manage, intuitive, secure and powerful.

PSD to HTML services are increasingly in demand and have proven to be of great benefit to web designers who want to reduce turnaround time, deliver professional code, and produce high quality websites.

After investigating the available PSD to HTML providers on the market and selecting one, the next step for a web designer should be to focus on how to achieve the optimum level of service, quality and efficiency out of the collaboration.

At CodeMyIMAGE, we manage numerous clients and development projects every day, and our focus is to consistently do our part to deliver the most services in support of the collaboration with designers. Having dealt with very different technical requests, we found it necessary to define some best practices guidelines.

We hope that you will find these to be useful tips for you as you move forward with your PSD to HTML outsourcing opportunity:

Communicate clearly your expectations in terms of creative and technical design. As a web designer, you will want your design to keep its essence, so make sure you understand any potential technical limitations and you convey, as accurately as possible, your desired results.

1. If you are pressed by your own deadlines, then make sure the turnaround time committed to by your PSD to HTML provider meets your requirements. Two-way communication during every step of the development process with your provider is a necessity, in order to make improvements and stay efficient.
2. Provide feedback to your markup provider – check the final XHTML/CSS markup and how it matches your design concept.  Be sure and check for any conversion peculiarities and deliver feedback quickly to insure that any edits or fixes can be completed while still maintaining your schedule.
3. Check if your PSD to HTML provider offers further services that might suit your needs! Decide if it makes sense for the website to be integrated onto a CMS platform or if you want to make it compatible with mobile as well.  See if your provider can provide and integrate these services. It will save you time and you will build an even stronger collaboration.

Outsourcing PSD to HTML services is definitely a smart move with many advantages for web designers. And it should be developed using a process built on a solid foundation of communication and technical expectations of the design.

Savvy is an easy-to-use, fully customizable content management system and an excellent solution to having a SEO optimized website. Developed by Savvy Software, it is a powerful tool if you are looking to create a new website or convert an existing one.

The CodeMyIMAGE team has been developing different projects from web design clients requiring Savvy CMS integration. Be assured that our experience with the Savvy CMS has been nothing less than positive due to its powerful capabilities and ease of implementation, some of which we are sharing here:

1. Savvy is an easy-to-use CMS software that is suitable for almost anyone who is non-technical and who may have little or no experience with CMS solutions. Content can be easily added and modified by all contributors.
2. Savvy’s editing tools allow non-technical users not only the ability to update their web pages, but also to make them search engine optimized. The Savvy CMS gives control over meta data which will make both your client and Google happy.
3. Expansion is also a powerful Savvy capability that supports your client’s ability to gain an even higher return on investment. No web content manager will provide everything your client needs, so you need to choose a CMS tool that has the ability to be customized and expanded in order to add a host of functionalities to your client’s website.
4. Savvy is about design flexibility. Content management software should be designer friendly and help you create a desired image on the web.

In other words, Savvy is an excellent solution to resolve the need for customizable, easy-to-use and SEO optimized content management software. Your client will be thrilled to hear of a software solution that requires little integration effort at a reasonable price!

If you are on the lookout for a highly flexible, secure, and functional web management platform, Expression Engine might be the right CMS choice for you or your client. Built around the concept of  “commercial product + open source = perfection”, Expression Engine continues to improve its functionality and capabilities.

While there are many features built in to Expression Engine, here are some that we found exceptional:

1. Expression Engine is a powerful and flexible CMS that can be adapted to any changes according to your website’s requirements. It’s primarily a CMS, but it can easily be converted into a blogging tool.
2. Security is excellent! Expression Engine has the most complete suite of security features of any CMS on the market such as: session management, secure form processing, IP banning, and email banning.
3. Being an open source and a commercial product at the same time, Expression Engine is easily extensible by anyone who is knowledgeable in PHP and is looking to add something new to its functionality.
4. Expression Engine is backed up by both solid quality documentation and an open source network of professionals, designers and developers which a user can look to for advice for just about anything.

At CodeMyIMAGE, we think Expression Engine is easy to implement and an excellent solution for our clients’ websites – it is flexible, secure and easy to manage.