San Mateo, CA (PRWEB) April 13, 2009
concrete CMS, developer of next-generation open source solutions for web sites, today announced general availability of concrete5, the latest version of its popular open source Content Management System (CMS). concrete5 combines the ease-of-use of a blogging platform with the flexibility and power of a web development platform. To date, thousands of advertising and creative agencies and web developers around the world have downloaded early versions of concrete5 and used the technology to quickly and inexpensively build sophisticated web sites that can be updated by end users.
New features in the GA version of concrete5 include:
Upgraded file manager: includes a completely revamped interface and improved searching and ordering.
Picnik integration: tight integration with the online image editor picnik.com enables users to crop, resize and make other alterations to images right from within the browser.
Automated site augmentation: users can shop for themes and add-ons in the concrete5 marketplace and have them automatically installed on a 3rd-party site without touching a line of code or even opening FTP.
Advanced permissions: users can grant administrators access to work with all files, or just the files they’ve uploaded, and limit which file types can be added by which users. Individual files can now have their own permissions and passwords.
New help system: Help now connects concrete5.org directly, returning results to questions and requests in real time. Additional help can be requested directly through the interface.
concrete5 provides a flexible, powerful and streamlined framework for developing enterprise-quality web sites. concrete5’s block-based architecture gives developers a “playing with Legos” experience to building and extending web sites, with few limits to what can be done from a design or build perspective. concrete5 is unique as it was built from the ground up for in-context editing, giving site owners a toolbar that enables them to make edits directly on the page they want to update. Independent web developers and creative agencies are able to build client sites, quickly train end users on making updates, and then hand the site off to the client to maintain and update themselves.
“As long-time web developers, we saw a real need in the market for a platform that was strong enough for geeks, but made for marketing. Developers want flexibility and power; site owners want to be able to update their own sites. This is why we developed concrete5,” said Franz Maruna, founder and CEO of concrete CMS. “The feedback we’ve gotten from our users has been tremendous – we hear time and again that concrete5 is allowing them to work faster, close more business and improve client satisfaction.”
Easier than Drupal, More Powerful Than WordPress
Frye/Wiles, a creative web design and branding agency based in Riverside, California, discovered concrete5 when they were researching ways to build web sites that would enable clients to update their own sites. The agency had investigated open source content management systems like Drupal and Joomla, but they found these systems were too complex for their clients to use, while blogging systems such as WordPress weren’t powerful enough to build sophisticated sites. Frye/Wiles began using concrete5, and they have now migrated nearly all of their web development over to concrete5; to date, they have completed four sites using the platform, including meadowviewipa.com and angiesworld.com, and have several others in development.
“concrete5 has been a massive time and money saver for our business. concrete5 allows our small team of web designers to build complex sites quickly and easily. But most importantly, concrete5 really empowers our clients to take the reins of their own web sites,” said Robert Frye, Founder and Creative Director of Frye/Wiles. “Our clients are thrilled with this streamlined, modern way of doing web development because it reduces their costs and makes managing their web sites really easy. In turn, our agency is able to offer the type of service our clients have been wanting for years and turn around projects more quickly, and that means more repeat projects and word-of-mouth referrals.”
Fast Development, Simple Updating
Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), an environmental photography project by award-winning nature photographer James Balog, also needed a sophisticated web site with a simple updating process. EIS wanted to integrate Google Earth into the fabric of their site, overlaying EIS footage and photos over Google Earth satellite maps. This couldn’t be done in EIS’s existing Flash-based site, so the team began looking for an HTML-based content management solution that would allow them to build the sophisticated site they needed and would also allow for easy, automated posting of photos from the project’s 26 time-lapse cameras. The site also needed to integrate real-time blogging functionality so that James Balog and the wider community could add comments and thoughts to the site.
EIS chose concrete5 as the foundation for their new site. The EIS team appreciated concrete5 for its intuitive interface and ease of use, as well as the ability to apply different “themes” with the click of a mouse. With concrete5, EIS now has a state-of-the-art web site that its non-technical team can update continuously with live photo feeds from the 26 cameras, blog posts and other real-time content.
“I’ve used Drupal and Joomla on client projects in the past, and I found these platforms to be inflexible and difficult to theme. A site like EIS’s would have taken significantly longer to develop using Drupal or other platforms and would have involved a lot of client training,” said Bryce Tugwell of Fusestudios Media, developers of the EIS web site. “concrete5 provides a very powerful toolset right out of the driveway. Using concrete5, we were able to integrate the design very quickly and had our site up and running in under two weeks.”
To try out a free hosted demo of concrete5, please visit:
http://getconcrete5.com/demo
To see other examples of sites built using concrete5, please visit:
http://concrete5.org/about/showcase
To get more amazing customer quotes, please visit:
http://concrete5.org/about/testimonials
About concrete CMS:
concrete CMS is a leading developer of next- generation open source solutions for web sites. The company’s flagship product, concrete5, combines the ease-of-use of a blogging platform with the flexibility and power of a web development platform. To date, thousands of advertising and creative agencies and web developers around the world have downloaded concrete5 for free and used the technology to quickly and inexpensively build enterprise-quality web sites that can be updated by end users. concrete CMS is a privately held company based in Portland, Oregon. For more information about concrete CMS, please visit http://www.concrete5.org.
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