Last year we made a conscious decision to become proficient in an open CMS platform so that we could leverage our knowledge and efficiency to provide economical websites for clients.  After launching and working with clients across multiple platforms—Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress—we landed on WordPress as the most flexible, well supported platform.  Plus it was easier for our clients to manage and update content, a critical piece of the cost-benefit equation.  As much as we’d like to do everything for our clients—they really don’t want to depend on us for simple website change.  And they shouldn’t have to.

We recently launched two more sites on WordPress.  One had been a custom site and the transition to and open CMS was amazing smooth (www.highlandtowers.com ).  The other is a non-profit site with PayPal donation and event registration integrated into the functionality (www.redswhitesgreens.com ).  Both have SEO plugins—removing some of the mystery and work around search optimization.  The broad array of WordPress themes and plugins makes this platform a fantastic solution for the vast majority of our clients.  Implementation timing is relatively short and the installation of WordPress in various hosting environments consists of a few button clicks.  This is a match made in heaven for a virtual agency such as ours and for the next generation of nimble agency models.

Still, there are new options emerging daily.  Right now we’re interested in the Concrete 5 platform—the user editing tools are terrific!  These and other open/free services leveraged to support client work, are important pieces of the “next generation agency” value proposition and are becoming more prevalent in the mix of solutions for clients big and small.  We hope the communities around these products and services continues to drive innovation and we welcome the opportunity to try new platforms—our clients recognize these benefits and yours will too.