Klik now uses Drupal

Since I founded crematic early this year together with 2 other friends, I used Drupal for all of our projects. The decision we've made was difficult and critical as we have closed deals with 2 e-commerce projects and there were plenty of CMS competitors which are more easy to use and implement. Klik CMS was even the closest candidate since there was almost no time to explore.

We did a lot of research and comparison for a week and ended with Drupal for its flexibility and power. Drupal was known for having a fairly steep learning curve, intimidating and cryptic administration interface. Thanks for the video trainings and ebooks, learning Drupal was a breeze.

A lot of debate as to which is superior between Drupal and Joomla. From what I see, Drupal always comes out the victor. And for months of development, we were very much satisfied with our results.

How to determine a successful website

Every time I meet with new clients, the most difficult part to do is to justify the cost and quality of work. This is simply because clients don't know how to look at the difference between a good and bad design. I have to justify why my cost is a bit higher and assure them that they would be getting far better results that is worthy of their investment. Surely I’m not the only web developer my client is looking at and a lot of them, I’m sure, provides really cheap cost which is the primary subject for decision making.

And so I always ask myself what are these people looking for in a website? How do they determine between a good and bad design? Below are the top 3 characteristics that directly impact the users the moment they are on the site.

1. Visual Impact. Like what they say, websites only have less than 10 seconds to impress their users. Most of the clients don’t know what a good website is. They could be more attracted with nice looking websites even though it doesn't give them what they need. That is because around 80% of the communication appeals to only one sense - our eyes. Visual impact is indeed a really powerful factor that affects a user’s impression or emotion. Like to people we don't know, we always look at their personality first before going further.
   
   
2. User Experience. Users go to a website not by chance, but because they are the site's intended audience. They are looking for something in it which they hope they could find. If the website don't have it, then that's the end of their experience. And looking for content should not be very difficult. That is why in today's web development processes, there is what we call User Experience Design (UxD), which impact the user's perception of a website - how it is perceived, learned, and used. It plays a key role in the overall success of a website because it is specifically designed for them - the target audience.
   
   
3. Content. This is what it's all about - Content. It's the content that makes the site work, flow, and communicate well. What is a nice design if the content doesn't move with it? That is why it is important a designer should design the content, and not the box as Ben Hunt would say.
   

I hope you learned something in this article. Remember that users will always come back if you leave them the right impression.

Asiatown IT Park launched

Early this month, a project of mine at Cebu Holdings was launched - the Asiatown IT Park website. It was a redesign from a site built around early of year 2000. It's way too old with a not-so-good user interface/experience and it is a shame since this project is an IT Park. A lot of things has changed over the years and it is just fitting to redesign the website.

The new website is still using the Klik CMS but will be the last site to use it in favor of Drupal.

It's nice to be back!

It's been a long hiatus and a lot of things had happened over the last 2-3 months. The biggest of all is the founding of an Interaction Design company with two other old pals which we called crematic. The company site is coming so please stay tuned.

The second update is my transition to Drupal CMS from my homegrown CMS. Our company needed to stick to one reliable CMS and we found Drupal. Though the CMS that I developed could work but it's still in its infancy and the projects that are coming in are really demanding in terms of scope and requirements which I know that my own is not capable of.

Other updates are the skills we need to acquire to become a successful Interaction Design company in the field of Information Architecture. And I'm thankful I went into this venture because I it really helped me a lot as a professional.

As I'm back, please keep coming back also for more exciting articles especially in the topics of Drupal and Interaction Design.

The biggest developer day in the Philippines

Microsoft Philippines successfully hosted the Web Ramp in Manila last February 26 and they will be bringing it again here in Cebu this coming March 13. Our team will be joining this event and I'm quite excited as it will showcase Microsoft's latest web technologies including Azure & Windows 7. I will be able to get nice insights that I can leverage when I develop my Klik projects using PHP.

Other subjects that'll be discussed are the upcoming Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 & ASP.NET 4.0, Silverlight 2, WPF, & XAML to name a few. The afternoon session will be divided among the different users - developers, designers, architects, & even customer so you'll more interestings topics there.

So it's pretty exciting really especially that it is first in Cebu. Not to mention the Best of the Best! The Developer Showdown! on the following day which offers really nice developer showcase, but unfortunately, it's out of my business league.

Safari 4 beta

The new Safari 4 boasts a 150 new features. All of it are simply awesome - HTML5, SVG support, CSS3, Top sites, Coverflow, tons of developer tools like Javascript profile/debugger, web inspector are just few of the features that you'll surely love. Though it's still on beta, pages just displays beautifully unlike the IE8 beta I tested which is obviously problematic.

The new "Nitro" javascript engine makes it up to 30x faster than IE7 and 4x faster than Firefox 3. With its immense list of great features, it will surely kill IE. IE can't stand up to anything in the market now. It's the one catching up.

Since I had my Macbook Pro for the last 9 months as my primary development environment, I have to use its Safari browser to test my web projects. Good thing there's also Firefox on the Mac OSX as an alternative. But as it turns out, developing with Safari + Firefox first was a great move. It's a time saver when I do browser compatibility before I test it with IE.

Now, what I want to happen with Safari 4 is to become the benchmark in the browser market as what the IPhone did in the mobile market for a better web experience.

ETS website is now officially launched

ETS launched its new corporate website to establish its online presence and expand to greater pool of customers especially in the international market. Klik was enlisted to design and develop the website using a standard corporate style and leverages on the power of Klik CMS to maintain the site.

ETS is leader in fire protection solutions. Its strengths are in innovation, versatility and value-engineering which results to the capability to provide custom-made solutions that gives the best value for its clients.