Services

WordPress

Using WordPress to manage your website

We believe that WordPress is the ideal web content management system for most websites. It is easy to use, flexible in the way that it can be used (e.g. for standard websites, for blogs, and so on), and because of its overwhelming popularity, it is reliably supported with regular updates, and has 1000′s of plug-ins available if you need something extra.

We have been working with WordPress for over 10 years, and now a majority of the websites we create are in WordPress. Sometimes these are new websites, and other times these are existing websites that our customers want moved into WordPress so that the website will be more reliable, or easier to edit.

The 2 main reasons that we have chosen WordPress are that:

  • our customers find that they can edit their WordPress website without too much trouble, and
  • it is so flexible that we are yet to come across a website design or requirement that we haven’t been able to implement using WordPress – with varying degrees of customisation being required.

WordPress Themes

The “look” of a WordPress website is controlled by its theme. We can create a customised WordPress theme for your website. This might be based on a design that we create for you or on a design that you supply. For example, you might have already employed a graphic designer to design the look of your website along with your other marketing material, or you might want to re-use the design of a website that you want converted into a WordPress website.

All of the themes we develop are responsive – meaning that the layout and sizing automatically adjusts to work well on different screens – smartphones, tablets, laptops.

WordPress Plug-in development

And if you need more than the standard WordPress functionality, WordPress plug-ins can be installed to add in extra functionality. Plug-ins can be used to achieve simple things such providing a contact form, or more complex applications such as e-commerce systems or booking systems.

We can evaluate and install existing WordPress plug-ins to see if any meet your requirements. And if none can be found that do exactly what you want, we can create a new plug-in for you.

To give you an idea of the huge range of things that can be achieved with plug-ins, the following is a list of some of the plug-ins we have developed:

  • a customised photo gallery
  • a booking system to handle the advertising and bookings for cycle tours and bike rentals
  • a shopping cart
  • an application that allows customers to purchase and download an automatically-created, personalised PDFs.
  • an application that shows the profile of personal trainers in consistent layout
  • an application that displays course details and allows members to enroll for courses.
  • a questionnaire that asks a series of questions and displays results customised based on the answers given.
  • a widget that queries Skype to find out if the website manager is online, and displays that status along with the current NZ time on the website.
  • an application that displays a customised page and list of available files for each client once they log in.
  • an application that allows the website editor to set up “snippets” of content that can then be added to multiple pages.
  • flashcards – to help new entrants learn to read their first words.
  • a form that customers fill in to be automatically emailed a personalised trial voucher.
  • class timetable – classes and times are entered into the admin area, and are displayed in a nicely formatted table with pop-up information panels in the website.
  • parallax – allows editors to create sections of content to be combined into one scrolling page using the “parallax” effect.

Web Applications

What is a Web Application?

A majority of website content consists of static text and images for your visitors to view. Such content is a cost-effective and appropriate way of providing information.

However, there are other ways that websites can be used:

  • to provide dynamic content – content that is automatically updated to show “live” data (for example, showing the current weather, or the availability of hotel rooms), or that is automatically customised for the person who is viewing it (showing the weather in the visitor’s home town, or showing prices in the visitor’s currency for example)
  • to help people communicate with each other (with discussion forums, visitor comments…)
  • to help people perform tasks, such as paying a bill, purchasing a book, or making a reservation.

Whenever the Internet is used in one of these ways, a web application is required.

Web applications can be used to accomplish simple or complex requirements. They can be generic, or can be custom-built to match your exact requirements.

Generic Web Applications

Because many websites need to provide the same sorts of functionality, there are a lot of generic web applications out there for you to use in your website. Some of these are free-to-use, open source applications, and some need to be purchased. Generic solutions are often used for things like:

  • Shopping carts
  • Discussion forums
  • Email forms
  • Blogs
  • Guestbooks
  • Image galleries
  • Surveys
  • Calendars

We can help you with:

  • deciding what sort of a web application might be useful for your website,
  • evaluating the available, ready-to-use solutions to find out which best meets your needs,
  • customising an open-source solution so that it integrates well with the rest of your website
  • adding or modifying functionality in an open-source solution to match it exactly with your requirements,
  • installing and configuring the web application

Custom-built Web Applications

If you can’t find a generic solution to match your requirements, which is often the case if your web application is closely related to the running of your business, then you may need a custom-built solution.

If you need a web application built, or if you have a web application that needs some changes, then we can help you with that too.