A new look for Radical Departures
We've been busy over the last few weeks giving our identity a bit of a refresh and redeveloping our website, including adding many new case studies to our work section - so please take a few minutes to have a look through what we've been up to. We decided to base our new site on an open source Content Management System, or CMS, which could also work very well for your next online project, so we thought we'd take a minute or two to explain the technology.
CMSs are powerful, scalable, database driven websites that allow tight organisation and display of a great deal of information. They also permit more flexible administration as they can be configured to allow content to be added, edited and updated by users with little or no web development experience through a user friendly administration interface, all through a regular web browser. Some example images of an administrator interface are below:
CMSs are closely related to Learning Management Systems or LMSs, and generally the line in functionality is very blurred between the two, with most modern CMS easily configurable to support all the functions you would associate with an off the shelf LMS solution.
There are many CMSs available, and they can be distinguished in several ways - by the programming language they are written in, by the type of web-server they are required to run on, and so on and so forth.
Perhaps the most interesting distinction is that between proprietary and open source CMS. Many companies develop and manage their own nuanced CMS solutions, which they will license, customise, manage and update for you at an agreed price. At Radical we can do all of these things too, but without the large licensing cost implication, because we favour the open source solution.
Open source CMSs are highly developed and secure systems maintained by an active global community of developers which are open to you to utilise and customise ad infinitum. These CMSs more than equal the robustness and functionality of many proprietary solutions, but as they don't formally belong to anyone, your overall development cost is vastly reduced by the lack of licence fees; and as they are maintained and security updated regularly you have the expertise of a global community behind you. So, should you want to add a specific piece of new functionality, there will most likely be someone, somewhere who been there and done that who will be willing to share their work with you for little or no cost. With a proprietary system, you may be looking at several days or even weeks of work.
Our website is based on a widely supported and open source PHP CMS, of which many are available, but we can also work with the many Microsoft- and Java-focussed CMS, or indeed something more exotic should you wish!
Get in touch to discuss your next e-learning or web project, and how a CMS could work for you.
