Alternagy offers eco-friendly alternatives to the consumer. Alternagy approached The Forge Web Creations with the requirement to launch a fully functional e-commerce website to enable them to trade online. Using WordPress as a foundation, we designed and developed their online presence.
Click here to visit Alternagy.
The Forge Web Creations can help!
Once upon a time, websites were only built in a static way, which meant that site owners had zero control over updating and managing their own websites. They had to request changes from their service providers, pay for the changes and then wait for the updates to be done – all very tedious and not terribly efficient.
Thankfully, things have changed.
Now days, it’s all about dynamic websites and the use of content management systems (CMS).
With a good content management system, you can update your site yourself, saving you money in the long run, the time waiting for changes to be done and the stress of having to rely on someone else to update your website. Many new content management systems also offer the potential for valuable additional functionality such a blog or news feed (Why do you need a blog?), which is an extremely powerful engagement and marketing tool.
There are a number of great content management systems available such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Expression Engine, to name but a few. The Forge Web Creations’ CMS of choice is WordPress, for reasons we’ve outlined in a previous blog post.
With the increased awareness and interest in content management systems, the need to “skin” or use a theme to dress up the CMS, so that the website looks attractive, has also increased.
In some cases, site owners require a unique design solution to reflect their branding and incorporate custom functionality. In other cases, a template theme that offers a number of simple customization options is more than adequate.
Whichever option you may decide on for your WordPress site, we can help:
We’ve recently launched two new custom WordPress sites for Clients who needed unique design and functionality, along with the control of updating and managing the sites themselves.
1. Legal & Commercial Solutions
2. The Dot Spot
We can do the same for you.
If you’re looking for a unique website that runs on a content management system, The Forge Web Creations can help! Please pop us an email and we’ll contact you to chat about your requirements.
And if you’re looking for a gorgeous, high quality WordPress theme to use on your website, head on over to eFrog Digital Design.
WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
Wordpress enables you to run your website efficiently and effortlessly.
1. Open Source
WordPress is built on an open source platform and is, itself, open source. This means that it is free to use for any purpose (personal or commercial). This is, naturally, of huge benefit for any small business or not-for-profit organisation that has a limited budget and resources but, requires the ability to manage their own website. Also, it is simple to learn and quick to keep your site fresh and updated, so you are able to eliminate both the cost of possible expensive training and extra staff capacity.
2. Flexible
Wordpress has a global, buzzing community backing it which offers its users a wealth of information from tutorials to add-ons. With these resources so freely available, it is easy to manipulate Wordpress to cater for any website requirements.
3. SEO
Wordpress has been built with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. Websites built on Wordpress have an immediate head start when it comes to being searchable in search engines. An abundance of SEO plugins (add-ons) exist for free, which easily plug into the website to increase the sites visibility in search engines.
4. User friendly
Wordpress is one of the easiest web management tools available. In just a few hours, anyone can master the basics of what Wordpress has to offer. The administration area is laid out logically and focuses on easy navigation for all users.
5. Standards Compliant
Web standards are the use of correct web coding standards as laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The web standards which are of most concern to modern business are XHTML and CSS coding practices. The idea behind a standards compliant website is that the look of the website is separated from the content on the website. This results in a website loading quickly as well as easily working across the various browsers different people use, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
6. Self Managed / Low Maintenance
Wordpress is a Content Management System (CMS) which provides the owner of the website with the ability to maintain the content on the website, without contacting a web designer to make changes. If a website has been built correctly, and runs on Wordpress, there is very little upkeep for the owner.
7. Low running costs
Wordpress is a light-weight CMS which doesn’t require expensive web hosting and updates to Wordpress are released free of charge.
8. Adapt to design/brand
With Wordpress being a light-weight, open source framework, adapting the look of a brand to the design of the website is possible, regardless of the nature of the brand.
9. Community Support
The incredible community following that Wordpress has, also means that fans and users are able to active release tips and tricks daily. This support system provides website owners with easy, instant access to necessary information for any situation.
10. Feature Rich
Part of Wordpress flexibility is the fact that there are thousands of plug-ins freely available on the Internet. These plug-ins cater for a variety of functions including, displaying latest news posts, enhancing the SEO of the website and increasing the speed at which the website loads. These plug-ins allow for a static website to become dynamic and encourage true interaction between visitors.
11. Easy Media Management
With Wordpress, the publishing of photographs, videos, podcasts and other media becomes incredibly easy for the website owner. In most cases, no third-party or externally hosted applications are required.
12. Advertisement Management
For website owners who want the ability to run advertisements on their website, a Wordpress plug-in can cater for this. The plug-in will provide statistics on clicks and impressions and provide the ability to limit advertisements to certain pages or certain duration of time, amongst other things.
13. Spam-free Contact Forms
When it comes to having a form on your website for people to contact you via your website or subscribe to a mailing list, spam can become a huge problem. Wordpress has built-in spam protection functionality and will prevent you from receiving all those unwanted emails.
14 Automatic RSS generation
RSS Feeds are another way of distributing information on a website each time a new piece of information is published on the website, everyone who is subscribed to the RSS feed will receive the updates either in an RSS reader or via email.
15. Easy Integration with Social Media Applications
Wordpress has functionality which makes it easy to integrate with the most popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. This is incredibly useful if marketing is taking place on one of the social networks and the campaign needs to incorporate a website.
The Forge Web Creations has produced a variety of customized Wordpress websites for our clients, including Cape Villa Collection (http://www.capevillacollection.com/) and the Cape Stay Blog (http://www.capestayblog.co.za/)
Should you be interested in letting The Forge work their magic with a Wordpress site for you, please contact us by clicking here.
The Forge Web Creations was approached by The Anglican Aids & Healthcare Trust seaking advice on evolving their presence on the Internet.
We were commissioned to redesign the website, whilst maintaining their brand and providing an easy to use content management system with a few extra bells and whistles.
We are proud to announce the new Anglican Aids & Healthcare Trust website!
