WebDesigns Blog » whitedragon

Application Framework – Modules

Dale Bulbrook — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:30:00 +0000

We now have several modules completed and working in the framework, which makes it much easier to deliver “standard” sites.

The News, Menus and Photo-Gallery are all working just fine.

And as the framework already has the WhiteDragon CMS built right in, any sites built with the framework have a super-sexy semi-transparent admin menu which floats at the top of every page when the admin is logged in.

A pity we are not selling it yet, so you can’t see it unless you are a client and we have built a site for you.

VillageCow.com for East Grinstead released on the world

Dale Bulbrook — Sun, 23 May 2010 16:36:27 +0000

Last year, I was thinking that Facebook was great, but it was too big for any one town. The issues of one locality get lost in the general “background noise” of millions of people talking.

I like Facebook. I have Facebook friends all over the world. But my sister in Australia just isn’t interested in the problems of the town that I live in, just as I am not really interested in the problems of the town where she lives. The same with my relatives in Canada. Then when you add in different local cultures, council and national laws, and the immediacy of my problems in my town, East Grinstead, get swamped!

So I was pondering on this and realised that we at WebDesigns Ltd could make a whole web site just for our town.

So we did just exactly that. We called it VillageCow, mainly because we couldn’t stand the idea of a bland name like “townvoice”, or “localchat” or whatever.

I think it’s a nice idea. I am hoping that local people, talking about local issues, can reach better solutions, or at the very least get better agreement on solutions! I figure that it has to be better than just reading about what solutions other (outsiders) have decided.

WhiteDragon CMS – Version 4.0 on release, 28th October

Dale Bulbrook — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:59:04 +0000

The latest version of WhiteDragon CMS is being released tomorrow. It has some neat additional features, like a built in “Search” function for all content. Place one function call in the HTML where you want the search box to appear on the page, and that’s another user requirement checked off.

You can also update all meta tags on any individual page, again by simply clicking on an icon on the page.

I will be making some tutorial videos for the site that should help a lot in getting a buzz going once people see just how easy it really is to integrate into the HTML. The CMS market has been made quite tough for web designers by the requirement for a great deal of technical knowledge needed to get other CMS’es and working with an existing design.

I think that the majority of design companies, once they have decided to go the Joomla route, are resigned to the fact that the site is going to look like a Joomla site no matter what they do.

In fact, my hardest task has actually been getting people to see how simple the WhiteDragon can really be, once they have been exposed to other CMS’es. Nobody can really believe it can be that easy. I can’t blame them. I remember installing one particular extension for Mambo. I thought it would be real easy and had a Monday deadline. I started early on the Saturday morning so I could get it out of the way and have a good night out and not worry about trying to get it done on the Sunday with a hangover… What a “happy” weekend that was. I got a massive headache, but not from any booze!

That had to be one of the contributing factors for the creation of the WhiteDragon, although there were many such straws for this camel over the last few years.