twitter.png
facebook.png
youtube.png
linkedin.png

Dec
22

Concrete5 Version 5.5 is Out Now

From Concrete5 on their new release: We completely changed the way installation works so it is much easier to build a starting point. You can even install completely from the command line. We also took the time to rethink Scrapbooks which had evolved “organically” and had any number of issues. Now there’s Stacks which let you clump different blocks together into one reusable element. Permissions, versions – everything you’d expect from a concrete5 page all work on a Stack. Very cool. We also spent a fair amount of energy on performance concerns. Lots of cleanup on less than optimal queries, extra object loads, etc. We even consolidated and rearranged javascript a bit more to just create that snappier feel everyone likes. Some other features that have been added is the ability to navigate to administration tools.  A feature that we like a lot!
Categories: Concrete5
read full post

Dec
21

Concrete5 vs ModX

Been doing some research latley around the ModX content management system (CMS) and concrete5.  What I've found is that while the approach of each CMS is similar I found that the implemenation is different and that is where the devil is in the details.ModX is seems to us to be very hands on and as such isn't for the less technical user. If you are willing to work your way through it we find it is a robust system. There is always a learning curve that comes with any CMS, but that curve seemed to be more challenging than it should be.  Adding a form to the website and then getting to work the way I wanted to was a bit frustrating and the documentation that we worked through didn't seem very clear. Another issue we had with ModX was that I could create great chunks that could be reused on multiple pages (that was pretty cool) but if I wanted to create variations for each page I had to create multiple snippets. We could not find a clear way to do this and we ended up too many chunks. I liked the way I could apply changes to multiple pages all at once. That came in very handy. The rewrite to pretty urls was clean and the interface was nice. Going back and forth between the page and the dashboard was easy and facilitated easy testing of features. The community forums were a lot of help, usually. There were lots of snippets and chunks and some templates available to use. There was not very many "polished" items though. It was more put together in a garage rather than in a factory. Don't get me wrong, I like things forged in garages but they do not easily have the same shine as production quality. Not being able to do incontent editing I also found to be a bit of a downside.  I've always found that navigating to a page to make a change is a lot easier than trying to manipulating from a backend admin tool. This of course isn't a deal breaker, but a preference of ours.Concrete5 on the other hand allows users, even ones without much computer experience to edit not only the text of a site but entire blocks and move them around in a near wysiwyg interface from the front end. Again, there does not seem to be a way to manage the guestbook (their version of user comments).Each page can be change and each block can be altered to function the same or slightly different on each page. This is nice until you need to change one thing on 90 pages and have to do it on each one. Concrete5 also uses a lot of flash for editting and such so you better like flash and not be too into Apple-non-flash products. I will have to surf my site with a non-flash enabled browser, perhaps Konqueror will do. Concrete5 is to content management what the iphone is to cell phones.  Intuitive.  Making basic and common changes to a site doesn't require documentation.  You just go to the place that you want to make a change and then big buttons seem to make it obvious as to how you do things.  We didn't feel the same pains as we did with ModX in getting through the initial learning curve.  We also liked the concept in Concrete5 of a scrapbook were you could copy blocks that you wanted to reuse on other places of the site.  Unlike ModX, once you pasted a scrapbook item you could manipulite it anyway you want.   The forms block in Concrete5 is second to none.  It took us no time to manipulate a form to how we wanted it to work as long as you didn't need anything to fancy.  We were a little disappointed that you can create multi-page forms would would like more tools to work with, but for out of the box what Concrete5 provides is more than adequaate. In summary:ModX Pros: Modular, easy to use templating system, reusable code, ability to apply changes to multiple pages simultaneously, once site is up can be operated by average computer user, good community.Cons: Documentation outdated, not easily spit and polished, getting site up is not for faint of heart, not easy to manipulate structure to suit each page's needs, no easy way for https login, no front end management except for comments. Concrete5Pros: Polished, easy to use in-content editing, easily manipulated blocks, great form tools, and scrapbooks made it easy to reuse blocks. Cons: Somewhat limited tools for forms
Categories:
read full post

Dec
19

Happy Holidays from Pixo And a Very Special 2012 Offer!

We would like to thank everyone for a great year in 2011.  We saw tremendous growth in business and even more importantly saw great results for our customers.  Great clients make a business look good and we have some of the best.  We want to wish everyone a great Holiday season and a fantastic 2012! We want to help you get your online marketing off to a great start in 2012, so anyone that mentions this blog post will get 75% off search engine optimization setup services with a new or redesigned Concrete5 website purchase.  This offer is only good until January 7th (we are giving away the farm here) so act now.
Categories: Awesome
read full post

Nov
29

Website Owners are Noticing what Pixo Has Know for Years; Concrete5 Rocks!

Water & Stone put out there annual report on website content management systems and in the Open Source space it was no suprise to us that Concrete5 made tremendous gains in 2011 and is the fast growing Open Source CMS on the market. To quote Network World: "The big winner for this year though seems to be Concrete5 who had a tremendous year of growth. The report authors caution that this could be the result of underreporting them last year, but it seems clear that no matter how you slice it, it was a great year for Concrete5." Why the big gains by Concrete5 this year?  If you have been following this blog you would know that it is flexible, extensible, and built on a solid foundation.  But what I think where it has really won over website owner is that it sells itself by being so easy to use.  Concrete5 is the iphone of the CMS world.  It doesn't take thick manuals to understand the basics of it because site editing is so very intuitive.  It doesn't take a lot of brain power to figure out that if you navigate to a page, click the Edit Page button to make changes to a page. Adding new pages to a site is just as easy. I don't want to make Concrete5 sound overly simplistic.  It is actually pretty robust and gives you more functionality than most any other open source CMS out of the box. Want to see what Concrete5 could do for your web presenece?  Give us a call or drop us a note to find out what Concrete5 can do for you.
Categories: Concrete5
read full post

Nov
18

Know the Successes & Pitfalls of Mommy Blogger Social Media Campaigns

At Pixo we've worked with companies large and small on mommy blogger social media campaigns and events. We've had a lot of fun with those campaigns over the years and have worked with some of the best brands in the world. Through the years we've watched companies try different strategies with great success. We've also seen some companies hurt their image more than help by not understanding their audience and not understanding mommy blogger expectations. Social media is well, "social." It comes with all of the pitfalls and opportunities that come with any relationship. There are prejudices, expectations, language and rules that come with every mommy blogger campaign. Mommy bloggers are a special breed. They rightly demand more than other blog groups and over the years, in general, have come to have higher expectations from companies when it comes to mom targeted campaigns. Because of this you need to know your audience or you can end up with a PR nightmare on your hands. I think back to one invite only mom related event, put on by a well know company, that within the mommy blogosphere had become the who's who list of mommy bloggers when a mom was invited. The invited moms expected some high end merchandise to be given away at the end of the night so it wasn't with a little excitement when a mom was given an invitation. A limo picked up the moms at a hotel which only added to thrill of the moms when the evening of the event arrived. But as the moms piled into the vehicles one of the drivers told one mom with an infant that she couldn't come. The event was being held at a bar and in that city children were not allowed in bars. In the end there was a small argument and a very disappointed mom. One of the mom's friends immediately whipped out her phone and tweeted "company X hates babies." The tweet was immediately picked up by other moms and re-tweeted into a firestorm within an hour. At the end of the night the company didn't give out any merchandise and there number a lot of disappointed moms. The complete campaign was a disaster. In most circles a nice event at a swanky downtown bar would meet the invitee's expectations. In this case the company hadn't thought fully through that some nursing moms might have children in tow and didn't appropriately work through those details. Many mommy bloggers are professionals at what they do but they aren't business people. They know that they have an audience, that they have value but most don't treat their blog as a business. Some bloggers will do product reviews, others will do travel reviews, others will do ads, and others will not accept any kind of company related item on their blog at all. Knowing the mommy bloggers, their language, their audience and their needs is what how we help companies develop strategies to share products and services through social media. At Pixo we have worked with mommy bloggers for over four years. We understand who the players are and help companies create awareness through the mommy bloggers' powerful network of audiences. If your company would like to do mommy blogger advertising campaigns we can help you avoid the pitfalls and help your next campaign be a success online.
Categories:
read full post

Oct
22

New Concrete5 Looks Pretty Slick

From what I have seen of what will be the next release of Concrete5 the Core team is adding some great tools into the contentn management system.  From what I have seen so far, it isn't so much new functionality that has got me excited as much as polish.  The Edit Tool bar is being enhanced with mega drop down menus where now you won't have to click multiple times to access tools in the Dashboard.  The drop down menu will give you instant access to the Dashboard buttons from the front side of the website which will save time when doing site edits. Other enhancements include a better installation process for first time users.  Now there will be better, on screen instructions once an install is concluded to allow first time C5 users better directions on what they should do next. We are looking forward to the next release of Concrete5.
Categories: Concrete5
read full post

Oct
14

Customizing The Concrete5 Login Page with Your Theme

Sometimes we are asked by clients if the Concrete5 login page can have the site theme applied to it.  The answer is yes and it is relatively easy to do.  If you go onto your server in the root directory there is a folder named config.  In that folder open the site_theme_paths.php file.  After the defined('C5_EXECUTE') or die(_("Access Denied.")); line add the following code with 'mythemename' renamed to whatever the folder name that your theme lives in. $v->setThemeByPath('/login', "mythemename"); The end result?  You should see your login page with your Concrete5 theme applied to it.
Categories: Concrete5
read full post

Oct
03

A Guilty Pleasure of Ours. Online Marketing for Ski Resorts.

We feel honored to have worked with some of the best ski resorts in the world and we cherish the relationships and friends that we have built in the ski industry over the years.  Some days we almost feel guilty about the work that we do because it is almost too fun to call it a job.  Our work in website design, online marketing strategy, social media marketing and search engine optimization for destination resorts are what we best known for. Looking for new markets and innovate ways to more efficiently reach your current markets?  Give us a call.  Like the secret powder stashes that you hold sacred we’ve developed strategies that can help you efficiently reach online groups that can more effectively drive new business to your resort.Want to create social media buzz?  We have years of experience in this arena utilizing a network of influencers that can help reach the decision makers in destination travel (aka moms).Want to make sure your website is optimized for the search engines.  It is always surprising to us how few ski resort websites are properly optimized for Google.  We’ve seen the impact that great optimization makes and would love the opportunity to talk to you about how search engine optimization will impact your resorts bottom line.Our skies are waxed and we are ready to work with your marketing team to take advantage of great online opportunities.  Give us a call at 720.334.PIXO (7496) for a free consultation.
Categories: Awesome
read full post

Sep
22

A Big Thanks to the Core Team at Concrete5!

What other content management system at the level of Concrete5 can you get a reply from the CEO on a forum post that you made?  What other CMS system can you talk with the core development team and then see your ideas come out in the next release?  What other CMS system will they give you some basic custom code for a tweak that you need to make for an add-on they developed? At Pixo not only have we found the Concrete5 content management system to be the best open source CMS we have found but we are grateful for the team that has put it to together and continue to make it great.  A big Thanks to the Concrete5 core team!
Categories: Concrete5
read full post

Aug
11

Concrete5 vs. Wordpress

Sometimes we are asked how the Concrete5 content management system compares to other similar content managment systems like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.  To put it unprofessionally but honestly all content management systems (CMS) suck.  No content management system will work ideally for all websites and all tasks and by there very design they are limiting in what they will let you do and how they work.  Once you understand that then you can understand what content management system sucks the least for your particular needs. We've worked with content management systems that are the $125,000 variety and the free open source variety and in the end there often isn't a lot of difference between the two in many ways.  The higher end ones in some cases could manage larger websites but didn't necessarily work any better than the free models in some cases.  Of the open source models Concrete5 and Wordpress are two of our favorite to work with.  They are more intuitive than Joomla and Drupal and in our opinion have a cleaner code base.  Between Concrete5 and Wordpress we would go with Concrete5 in most cases.  Concrete5 started out as a true content management system.  That is what it was originally built to do and in many ways it shows.  Wordpress was originally made to be a blogging platform and similarly in many ways it shows.  Wordpress has morphed itself towards becoming a true CMS but in some ways it still falls far short to Concrete5 in permissions and versioning functionality which are key elements in a CMS. Reasons to Use Concrete5: More intuitive user interface.  Simple to use as an iphone. Faster page load allowing for more site traffic and concurrent users on a website More functionality out of the box (more tools ready to use) Idea of blocks being changeable and unique and having multiple content blocks on a page (i.e. form block, image gallery block, content block, etc.) Ability to setup different users, different user groups and assign permissions right down to the block level on a page True page versioning functionality Ability to create unlimited types of page types Solid base code and add-ons from the Marketplace are reviewed before they are allowed into the marketplace so you don't see some of the junk code that developers that have been around for a while run into with Drupal and Joomla sites Don't get us wrong. As we have said before we like Wordpress.  Just not as much, in most cases, as Concrete5.  Without question Wordpress is the best open source blogging tool available and if that is what you want use Wordpress.  However, if you are looking for a little bit more, then use Concrete5 on your next website. Want to learn more about Concrete5?  Give us a call, drop us a note or post a comment below.  
Categories:
read full post