Schaefer Power is a leading power supply manufacturer, specializing in custom power solutions. They wanted their new web site to have content management abilities to allow them to keep their own web site content up-to-date in an ever-changing industry. In addition to content management, another major requirement for this site was to have interactive discussion forums. They wanted their customers to be able to create an account and post questions to be answered by other customers or by Schaefer’s engineers.

This second requirement was the reason why Drupal was chosen as the Content Management Platform for the job. Drupal has a Forum module integrated with the core code and strong user-management features for customer account management.

The forum module saved Schaefer the thousands of dollars it would’ve cost to build a custom module for this functionality. Such is the power of an open-source content management system. Modules are constantly being developed for Drupal that allow developers to quickly add new functionality to web sites without the high price tag of custom development.

Schaefer Power’s web site also has some interesting design elements, including a flash slideshow on the home page and an interactive slide menu that reveals different images in the banner as your mouse rolls over each menu option.

Other Power Supply Web Sites Developed by Web Image Designs

• Mornsun America
• Power Partners
• Power Sources Unlimited, Inc.
• Protek

I recently received a call from a small business owner who purchased a $50 template for his Drupal web site.  He already had an existing Drupal installation but wanted to “upgrade” the look & feel of it.  His website had well over 50 pages including blog articles.  The template company offered to install the template for an additional fee and requested that he provide them with a backup of his database. 

Three days later his website was a mess and he was on the phone with me.

The template was installed but instead of displaying his copy, it was displaying the “ipsum lorem” dummy marketing text and the site was live!  Instead of installing the template in a temporary location, they replaced his live site and they didn’t know how to restore his data!

YIKES!  A company’s worst nightmare!

After some investigation, we uncovered the location of his data (unfortunately his backup file was a mess too!) and we were able to restore the real content to his website.  He was so happy with our work that he asked us to help him “tweak a few minor things” on the design.  Normally the changes he requested would have been easy – had the template been designed properly.  But this one was a nightmare.  The entire Drupal installation was non-standard so none of the components were where you would expect them to be.  And to boot, they didn’t give him a username and password with full administrative rights — so some parts of the admin were off-limits!

After pulling in a database expert, a Drupal expert and pulling out some of my hair, we finally got everything into place.

His $50 template ended up costing him roughly $1000 to fix and made me vow never to work on a cheap CMS template again!

As the old saying goes, ”You get what you pay for.”

If you’re running on a hosted CMS such as Hubspot, then the hosting company should be keeping the software up-to-date for you – this is covered under the monthly fee that you are paying them.  If you are running a plain-vanilla WordPress site, then you may need to occasionally update to the latest version of WordPress, especially if there is a security update.  However, if your web site has additional features (modules) installed, you really should consider a maintenance plan.

Truthfully, I think it’s best that most people don’t try to update their own modules but call in an expert instead.  Consider this, I have worked on some Drupal websites that have over 30 modules installed and activated.  At any point in time, one or more of these modules could require updating.  When it comes to updating modules, you really need to know what you are doing; otherwise you could end up bringing down the entire web site.

Web Image Designs can assist clients with WordPress updates, but Drupal is much more complex so we turn to Matt Miller of Total Business Group for our Drupal Maintenance needs.  Matt and his staff have been working with Drupal for years and are very knowledgeable when it comes to the nuts & bolts of Drupal.  They offer an annual maintenance plan in which they will review your Drupal installation on a quarterly basis and update all of modules that require updating.  Like an insurance policy, this gives you peace of mind that your web site will be kept up-to-date and function properly.  After all, you have so many other things on your mind – why not let someone else worry about your web site?

One of the wonderful things about a Content Management System is the ability to easily expand your web site with new pages and new features.

Once your web site is built on a CMS, the options are practically endless – especially if your CMS is Open Source, such as WordPress or Drupal.  These are two of the open source Content Management Systems that I typically work with.  Open Source means that the source code is available to the public and therefore developers from all over the world can expand on the functionality of the CMS by adding new features.  These new features are called modules, widgets or plug-ins, which you can download and add to your own CMS web site.

For example, I am working with a client whose target market spans multiple industries and each industry has its own set of problems and situations.  We recently moved this client’s web site to a Drupal CMS and they would like to add Forums for each of their target customers.  To develop something like this from scratch would be a large and costly undertaking.  With Drupal, I just had to download and install the Forum module.  Once the forum module is installed, you can begin to add your forums & topics.  In this instance, I did do some customization to the look & feel of the forums before going live but it could be used right “out of the box.”

The Forums module is just one example of the many modules available for Drupal.  WordPress is another great CMS that offers many plug-in modules and widgets for customizing your WordPress web site.

So beef up your web site.  Use the power of your CMS to add a blog or a forum & start to interact with your customers.  An interactive web site is likely to see more traffic because it keeps them coming back for more!  Offering free advice in a blog or answering questions in a Forum increases your credibility and can help you to close the sale.