A Developer's Blog

What We Do

We specialize in Open Source software solutions. Our services include:

Web Design and Development
Graphical User Interface Creation
Usability Studies
Search Engine Optimization
Project Management

Contact us to inquire about any of these services.

Our Development Philosophy
We believe that the best websites are ones that work and provide valuable resources and information to visitors. This seems obvious to us. Unfortunately, sense is not a common commodity.

We rely on open source solutions as a foundation for many of our projects. Open source software can be modified to fit a user's particular needs with the modifications and any unique adaptations in turn made available for others to use or learn from in the future. It is for this very reason that open source software is successful, and why it works. By using open source software, our clients get well tested and full featured web sites faster, and with less expense.

Below are several open source projects that we use ourselves and would highly recommend to others. You may also like to view our Development Process.

Our Development Process

After building websites for more than a decade and being involved with projects that are small and simple (and thus hard to keep simple!), as well as large and complex, we've seen what works in terms of a process. There have been many hard lessons learned along the way, too. Simply put, we believe a process is what guides the project to a best case solution - one shouldn't cut corners and hope for luck. In our view, form always follows function.

Joomla!

Joomla! Joomla! is the model of what an open source project can become; a feature rich, intuitive web application with a thriving support and development community. Joomla is our preferred Content Management System and web building tool.

It is also what is running this website!

"Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable."

osCommerce

When it comes to ecomerce solutions, very little comes close to what osCommerce has to offer. We can also now install a Joomla Component version of osCommerce allowing you to have all of the power of osCommerce and Joomla together.

Zen Cart - the art of e-commerce

Zen Cart started as a fork of the osCommerce project and we tried it early on and, well, didn't like it. However, much has changed since then and we would now recommend Zen Cart as an excellent choice for many of our clients.

"Zen Cart™ truly is the art of e-commerce; a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently." - Zen-Cart.com

Gallery 2

"Gallery is a web based software product that lets you manage your photos on your own website...

With Gallery you can easily create and maintain albums of photos via an intuitive interface. Photo management includes automatic thumbnail creation, image resizing, rotation, ordering, captioning, searching and more. Albums can have read, write and caption permissions per individual authenticated user for an additional level of privacy. Give accounts to your friends and family and let them upload and manage their own photos on your website!"
- gallery.menalto.com

WordPress

Want a state of the art blogging tool? WordPress is one fo the most popular projects on the Internet, and with good reason. It's easy to use, has many options and available templates and is easy to customize. We also have experience with the Multiuser version of WordPress. Also, if you want to consider using WordPress within Joomla, we highly recommend MojoBlog . (It's what we use on our site.)
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phpCollab

We have used phpCollab for many years and can't image running a project without it. It is the tool that runs our Client Extranet.
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Giving Back

We donate a portion of all of our sales to environmental causes. Learn more about how we give back and use our work for a better world.

Our Clients

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Testimonials

“Drew designed custom journals for DivaTribe.com, taking into account both the look and the functionality for both journal users and journal administrators. He also installed DivaTribe's osCommerce store and customized it in many ways, making it fit right into the look and feel of DivaTribe.

Thank you for our new store. We are thrilled with how it looks and runs, and we could not have done it without your help."

- DivaTribe

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Current Projects

- Improve and update Ghost Ranch's Intranet tools
- Ning.com website for Grassroots Organizer's Conference
- Improvements to Advocacy 2.0
- Building an iCal Export tool for phpCollab's calendar
- Beta testing Joomla 1.5

Site Summary

The Design Mission are web developers specializing in Open Source software, particularly Joomla, osCommerce, phpCollab and Gallery2. We can also create custom solutions upon request.

Other areas of expertise include search engine optimization, newsletter marketing, graphical user interface (GUI) design and information architecture.

The Design Mission's web design and development process will make the Internet work for you.

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