There has been somewhat of a deathly ‘ush settling over our website of late. This is due to the age-old problem of working so hard on our clients’ websites that we haven’t had much time for our own. However, we’re still going (and growing). This is a very quick update to let you know what we’ve been up to, and to give you a taste of things to come.

A “CMS for the rest of us”

Last Autumn, we were working towards a lightweight tool which makes it easy for anyone to set up and manage their own websites. We got quite far with this, but somehow never felt completely satisfied with it. The simplicity of the system brought with it several limitations, and we’ve never felt comfortable about creating websites which can’t easily grow as our clients grow.

For this reason, we decided to move our efforts into creating an extra-easy version of the powerful, open-source Drupal system we use on our most advanced websites. Drupal drives some of the most sophisticated websites on the planet, and can be built to do almost anything. In the last year, Drupal’s ease-of-use has come on in leaps and bounds. We’ve always prided ourselves on the way in which we streamline Drupal to make it easy for anyone to use, but the rapid improvements in Drupal itself really are going to help us give our projects the perfect blend of user-freindliness, flexibility and power.

So, for the time-being, we’re putting our own micro-CMS project on the backburner and putting all our energy behind Drupal. For our clients, this will mean that even those with the smallest and simplest websites will have an easy upgrade path no matter how they decide to expand.

Major community websites & “digital inclusion”

Over the last year, we’ve been working intensively with City of Sanctuary and the Sheffield Quakers to provide them with the tools to support their growing online communities.

These two groups of people are interesting because they include many who are not naturally at home with technology and are new to websites and online communication. Supporting these people has been a great experience for Seedling Media. We’ve used our favourite website-building solution, Drupal, for both websites, and we’ve been able to find out exactly how intuitive it is for people with very little computer experience.

On the whole, we’ve discovered anew that Drupal can create very user-friendly websites. In particular, the lack of a separate admin area in Drupal, and the way administrators can manage their site as the browse around it normally, results in a gentler learning curve. This natural ease is enhanced further by the fact that Drupal allows us to entirely customise the administrative workflow around what suits our clients best.

We have also arrived at extremely easy, stable and flexible methods for formatting text, and uploading and placing images—which is certainly the task that people need most to do with their websites. We now have some excellent options available which make this process quick and easy for anybody, and we can tailor the process precisely to what suits a specific website or community. It really is this aspect that sets Drupal, and our approach, apart—you don’t need to adapt to the website; the website will adapt to you.

Our experiences with City of Sanctuary and the Sheffield Quakers have encouraged us to renew our commitment to making technology work for everybody. Websites are very empowering, and it is wonderful to see what people can achieve when their efforts are magnified by well-crafted online tools for communication and networking.

Helping you get your head around internet technology

So, we’ve got a new enthusiasm for getting everyone comfy on the internet and reaping the benefits. The problem is, the internet and our computers are growing and evolving so rapidly that they can be very overwhelming for some of us (not to mention a huge time-sink).

To help with this, we are going to start writing articles that help you to get to grips with the “obvious stuff” that nobody tells you. We’ve made a start with two that our clients have asked for already— Writing for the web is complete, and “Search Engine Optimisation: the basics” is on the way. These can be found on our Articles page and more are on the way, to help you with things like Facebook and Twitter, domain names, website hosting and many more essentials that somehow you’re just expected to know these days.

If there are any questions you particularly want answers to, drop us a line and let us know!