When it comes to web development these days, there seems to be two big camps. In one camp you have the high end proprietary CMS. Large design firms and Ad agencies will often use these, and the advantage is usually that the software does just what you tell it. No more, no less. Training is simply because the interfaces are often customize for the client or market and simplified. The problem is the cost and the control. Because each company offers it’s own specialized CMS, it’s hard to know what you are getting for you money. And even if money is no object, sometimes these systems are not easy to customize to an extent and beyond cost, there is only one company you can go to for requesting modifications.

In the other camp you have what I like to call, systems integrators. The truth is, in the modern web world, we don’t write new programs as often anymore, because so much is already written. Why re-invent the wheel? We take advantage of a variety of software packages and free or inexpensive web based tools to get the job done much cheaper with cutting edge tools containing more features then the client will probably need. The down side to this is that the client is going to have to understand that they are using a variety of tools, and become comfortable with each and understand what each tool does for them. This is asking a lot of some people, but with the amount of money you save, it is worth it to most people to face the learning curve. We utilize open source software that is not usually written by one company but a result of contributions from a large group of developers who usually volunteer their efforts for the cause. Open source projects are usually free and intended to always stay free. The web has been running on Open Source technology since it’s inception but now that website management has become standard there is a variety of open source CMS’s available. WordPress is by far the most popular web site CMS for it’s SEO and ease of use. And with such a large base of users it receives a large amount of contribution to it’s functionality through add-ons called plugins which enhance it to do and offer more to the users. Other software that is used to piece meal these projects together are things like Google Web Applications, such as gmail, Google Calendar, and other Google Labs software. Twitter and Facebook do a lot to take the complexity of some functionality off of your website and onto those social networks. Ustream and YouTube for video and live streaming. There is a lot of resources out there that allows a business to accomplish a technology level that would have cost tens of thousands to develop on a private system, but by taking advantage of a variety of tools it can be integrated together for a fraction of that cost. And the great thing about it is that most of it can be done by a novice computer user. So you can choose your level of involvement and how much you want to spend or save by how much you can learn to do yourself.

That is the goal of the Edmond Technology Cooperative, is to teach people how to use this available software and give them an easy way to integrate these solutions in a way that puts the best of the internet to work for their business or organization.

Here are some links to some of the software packages that we work with to build low cost cutting edge websites.

• WordPress.org
• wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
• Google.com/analytics
• calendar.google.com
• gmail.com
• youtube.com
• ustream.tv
• jquery.com