The latest website (and responsive mobile site) created with the Buzzr Higher Education Edition CMS went live today — the very attractive http://www.paloaltou.edu/ for Palo Alto University.
The site was built in collaboration with mStoner, the design and strategy lead. mStoner also built the companion site, http://gc.edcms.net/, for the university’s counseling and psychotherapy center.
More details to follow on the feature set and the inside story of this fantastic new website.
Filed under Buzzr, Drupal, website design
EnergySipp.com co-founders Geoff Lynch and Carmela Rea wanted a Drupal-powered website to run their new digital publishing company. But they didn’t want to invest the tens of thousands of dollars (or more) that Drupal development firms typically charge to set up a professional publishing website.
Geoff and Carmela came to Buzzr. my company, and talked us through their vision. They wanted someone else to handle the technology, so he cold focus on publishing compelling information about money-saving green products, from smart cars to light bulbs. And he wanted to be able to publish his website day-to-day without the need for an in-house developer.
By using Buzzr and our Build It For Me services, Geoff and Carmela got the benefit of our highly experienced design and Drupal team, working on a streamlined, hosted social publishing platform tailored specifically for regular people who would find straight Drupal too intimidating. Geoff has a Gold Edition package, which means he was able to work with us to integrate additional features not already available on Buzzr.com’s standard feature set (now made up 195 modules.)
In the case of EnergySipp, Geoff and Carmela needed display advertising. We’ve started him off with a new feature for running Google Ad Sense display ads. We’ll roll out that feature to the rest of Buzzr.com in the spring. But it’s available to our Build It For Me customers right now.
Our guess is Geoff spent about 1/20th of what he’d have been charged to set up an equivalent site using a regular development firm creating a website from scratch, integrating and customizing dozens of modules one at a time. Instead, we used the Buzzr system of one-click deployment Quickstarts tailored for specific verticals, already packaged up with hundreds of features. We’re still able to create a completely custom layout and design, and turn features on and off with a couple of clicks.
Even with the site launched, Buzzr is staying in the picture. Our Gold Edition service includes performance monitoring, feature upgrades, training and personal support.
Check out the site at http://energysipp.com
Filed under Buzzr, Drupal, website design
When The Cinnamon Network, a U.K. non-profit, approached Buzzr about creating a website with Buzzr, they had two goals: finding a comprehensive social publishing platform anda platform they could run themselves, without a technical team. After shopping around, Cinnamon Network founder Geoff Knott decided Buzzr was the right solution and in just three weeks, we were able to help them launch an incredibly ambitious website
The Cinnamon Network is a network of over 60 leaders of various Christian denominations and charities who formed in September, 2010 to have conversations with government policy advisers about society and the Church. Members include the Church of England and the Salvation Army.
Their new Buzzr-created website, www.communityfranchising.net connects 4,000 U.K. churches with the dozens of charitable programs available for them to offer to their communities. In addition to comprehensive listings describing non-profit “franchises” that churches can join concerning Family Life, Addiction, Education, Housing, Finding Work, etc., the Cinnamon Network provides a social feedback loop for church leaders to rate and review the programs. The ratings are then combined into an aggregate score.
The website was presented at a meeting of more than 100 CEOS and Denominational leaders. “They see it as a key resource for churches to intelligently inform themselves about charitable franchises,” says Geoffrey Knot of Cinnamon Network.
Rather than create the initial website design and feature configuration themselves, the Cinnamon Network bought the Buzzr Professional Edition Professional Edition They also asked us to create a custom feature, for enhanced and aggregated ratings, which we were glad to do, especially after the Cinnamon Network offered to contribute the feature back to the general Buzzr.com community.
Thanks to the new feature, every franchise program can be created based on seven criteria, such as meeting the needs of the community, seeing people added to church, and training by the franchisor.
We’re incredibly pleased to have The Cinnamon Network as part of the Buzzr platform.
Filed under Buzzr, Drupal, Media, online communities, social networking, website design
Publish or Perish 