Water and Stone

A Content Management System allows you to add to and adapt the content and functionality of your site with ease. A good CMS will allow the website owner to maintain the website without the need for specialized (or expensive) programming skills. Basically, if you can use a browser (like Internet Explorer or Firefox) and have the skills to operate a program like Microsoft Word, you can maintain a website built on any of the systems we recommend.

Water & Stone promotes to our clients Open Source software solutions. Open Source is free of charge and does not include expensive or limiting licensing fees.

The emergence of powerful, flexible, Open Source CMSs is truly a revolution in web technology. Firms like Interwoven, Broadvision, and of course Microsoft, have in the past dominated the CMS market with offerings that start at US$ 17,000 (plus plus PLUS)! While it may seem too good to be true -- that highly functional CMSs are now available without licensing costs -- it is true.

We build on Linux, using PHP, on mySQL databases, and we strongly recommend obtaining advanced functionality cheaply by adopting, and if necessary modifying, existing Open Source solutions. Two of our favorites are the Mambo Content Management System and the osCommerce ecommerce platform, though we are also happy to deliver systems using Drupal, WordPress or Joomla. Use the links on the left to explore the various systems and learn more about each. If you are unsure which system best matches your requirements, just ask; we normally provide consultancy to clients who have yet to identify a preferred platform.

Being our first website we were keen to make the best impression possible and for the feel, content and of course 'impact' to meet all our objectives. Our greatest challenge was that we had no idea at all of what style and layout would be both appropriate for our sector whilst standing out from the competition. Water & Stone provided a simple questionnaire from which they designed a site which ticked all the boxes and really exceeded our expectations. We got some great feedback from our existing clients but were keen to see how the site worked as tool to attract the browsers. Perhaps the most satisfying comment was from a new customer who chose to call us ahead of the competition stating that he thought we.. 'looked like we knew what we were doing' ... a decision he made before picking up the phone!