Last week we received a service inquiry from a company.  The interesting thing is that we had already performed work on the client's site - as subcontractors. 

We weren't so impressed by how the team leader managed the project, and unsurprisingly the company and the project leader parted ways in the most unfriendly of manners.

We repond to the service inquiry, and contact a great and very well organized representative of  the company.  We explain that we are already familiar with the project and why, and cringe while we wait for the response. She breaks down the entire scope of the project, how it was mismanaged, time lines were not met,  everything was over-budget, and the project was left uncompleted 80% of the way through.  She tells us that they are considering scratching the entire project and starting all over from scratch!  Obviously this would represent a huge waste of money for the company.

This is our only chance to save the day!  The site is visually appealing, all of the static content was in place, most of the functionality was worked out.  There are only a few major points of contention where admittadly Joomla is inflexable regarding how these problems can be solved.

We went through the site with the company and submitted our proposal to get things finished.  We have yet to hear back from them.  But this is the situation where we really shine!

Viva la Joomla!

I skipped blogging for several weeks (not that anybody would care, we havent built up much of a fan base yet).  I have been busy with getting ready to move.

Me and the Wife are avid canoeists, and for the longest time I have been complaining that there is no good info sites where you can lookup good rivers in your area, find an outfitter, make a trip report, etc.  There is a site (paddling.net) however it is very ugly and the information isnt well organized.  They have no easy way to the general public to submit content, and it shows. 

So I figured hey, I have the skills, when I am not busy with work I will build my own canoe information portal. 

Anyways, last week we went to the (awsome) canoe expo in Madison Wisconsin, Canoecopia.  I managed to squeeze about a week of work into my site so I would have something to show off and share.  We meet a lot of cool people and got to see some really great gear.

Most importantly we got a lot of people excited about the site, and probably lined up some initial moderators and some people to submit content.

Without further adieu, I present PaddleTattle.com  I am about 70% done setting up the functionality of the site, So not everything works (namely the trip report section wont be finished until I can figure out an easy way for people to plot their river trip via Google Maps INSIDE of the K2 Joomla component).  Feel free to poke around, register, use the forums, write a review, or just poke around!

At Balian Design, Joomla is our bread and butter.  But that doesnt mean that we arent always looking for the cutting edge.  Quite frankly,

Joomla isn't the right CMS for every project on the internet.

I know, revolutionary news that something specifically created for a hightly targeted purpose may perform better than joomla - which is made for very broad purposes.

Today I want to highlight two of the CMS's that we are moving into, and what Joomla extension(s) they are taking the place of.

Having great clients is priceless.  Today during a conversation with Ryan Estis, I got a great piece of feedback.  Of course, being a sales and hr consultant, he is just the kinda guy who gives great feedback. I'll come back to that though, allow me to digress for a moment.

Recently, I transformed his whole lead generation process to make it more efficient.  He's using an online mailing list service, icontact. There's a lot of these out there, and they provide a pretty valuable service.  They offer a nice, easy-to-use interface for managing mass-emailings, and of course, subscriptions.  So here's the big disconnect: Ryan's website (and so many others, especially Joomla sites) have forms for user subscriptions, but all too often they are only setup to send an email notification.  That data then needs to be integrated into their online contact database manually.  That's no fun.