You need a website to be in business today, no matter how small you are. It needs to not just look great, but be professionally written - by an adult for adults. Eric Jones bought into those beliefs totally in retaining us to build a new site for his independent brokerage firm, World Yachts Inc.
Jones owns a small business as a sole proprietor. To get major projects done, rather than have permanent employees, he calls on a network of established contractors. This lean setup lets him move quickly, seizing every new opportunity.
That's how Javelin came to work for him. He'd been thinking about spiffing up his online image. The existing website had hiccups and looked like 1999. Push finally came to shove when Jones witnessed friends and associates making big gains through sophisticated e-marketing and social media.
When he pulled the trigger, he did so with his typical decisiveness. We responded in kind, completing the bulk of the construction and the content in about five business days. Tuning and testing took place over the next couple weeks. Then the new site went live.
Www.worldyachts.net is built on top of a newer-model Joomla interface. If you're not familiar with modular web publishing, here's some background. The mature technology has been around for about five years. These are professional tools – not the cheap toys advertised on TV. Because the software is open-source, it's close to free or free outright. No one profits from it on a Bill Gates scale.
Probably the best-known of these new technologies are Joomla and Drupal. They have many similarities. Drupal works great for large sites. We like Joomla for smaller ones, because it's simpler and cleaner. And with some creative trickery it can be adapted to go big.
The starting template we used for the World site didn't have to be extended. It worked fine as was, which will hold true for the vast majority of smaller companies. We customized the look and feel graphically. Some new content had to be totally invented, but quite a bit of information pre-existed; it just needed some professional wordsmithing.
This was a fun and rewarding project for us and the client. I'll end my narrative here, though, because a click says a thousand words. Go!
Doing the World
You need a website to be in business today, no matter how small you are. It needs to not just look great, but be professionally written – by an adult for adults. Eric Jones bought into those beliefs in hiring us to build a new site for his independent boat brokerage, World Yachts Inc.
Jones owns a thriving small business as a sole proprietor. To get major projects done, rather than have permanent employees, he calls on a network of established contractors. This lean setup lets him move quickly, seizing every new opportunity.
That's how Javelin came to work for him. He'd been thinking about upgrading his online image. The existing website looked like 1995 and had terminal hiccups. Push came to shove as Jones witnessed friends and associates making big gains through sophisticated e-marketing and social media.
When he pulled the trigger, he did so with his typical decisiveness. We responded in kind, completing the bulk of the construction and the content in about five business days. Tuning and testing took place over the next couple weeks. Then the new site went live.
Www.worldyachts.net uses a newer-model Joomla interface. If you're not familiar with modular web publishing, here's some background. The mature technology has been around for about five years. These are professional tools – not the toys advertised on TV. Because the software is open-source, it's close to free or free outright. No one profits from it on a Bill Gates scale.
Most popular among the new site-building programs are Joomla and Drupal. They have many commonalities. Drupal works great for large sites. We like Joomla for smaller ones, because it's simpler and cleaner. And with some creative trickery it can be adapted to go big.
The starting template we used for the World site didn't have to be extended. It worked fine as was, which will hold true for the vast majority of smaller companies. We customized the look and feel graphically. Some new content had to be imagined and invented, but quite a bit of information pre-existed; it just needed some professional wordsmithing.
This was a fun and rewarding project for us and the client. I'll end my narrative here, though, because a click says a thousand words. Go!
-Jim Gribble
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Doing the World