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virtualCMS - The Next-Generation Content-Management SystemvirtualCMS is a unique Content-Management System (CMS) developed by the geeks here at Virtual Creations. It is the flagship of the Virtual Creations product range.
What is a Content-Management System? A Content-Management System is a software package embedded within your website that allows you, the site owner, to maintain the content of your website (the text, images, etc that are displayed on your website pages) with no knowledge of programming, HTML or web-publishing - or any other technical expertise.In 2008, using a CMS to update your website is de rigeur for all forward-thinking organisations. The days of editing and publishing static HTML pages have been well and truly banished to the previous century. The technologies of "Web 2.0" (blogs, CMSs, wikis, Ajax, RSS, forums, et al) have changed the Internet landscape forever - it's now possible for even the most hardened technophobe to publish a website, without having their very own pet geek. How does a CMS work? Rather than edit pages on your computer and then upload those pages to your live website (the way it's traditionally been done), updating content in a CMS typically works a little differently: You simply:
Yuck! Never again! Your changes instantly appear on the site. No uploading. No FTP. No waiting. No fuss. Why do I need a CMS?There are many benefits to CMS-enabled websites over static websites:Benefits of a Content-Management System
What's so special about virtualCMS?There are plenty of content-management systems out there. In fact, the Virtual Creations developers looked long and hard to try to find a CMS that would suit the needs of our customers (and our developers), but none offered the features we needed.So we wrote our own: virtualCMS. Why is it so special? Simply this: It is designed to be customised to each customer's precise needs, tailored to their exact workflow. If you look around at all the other CMSs available (Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, etc), you'll find that they offer a set of modules that will be hopefully suitable to your needs. For example, they all offer event calendars and news modules, but what if you need your event calendar to keep track of the name of the stage manager of that event? Or the backup venue? What if you want your events shown on one page in calendar format, and on the next page in list format, grouped by venue? What if the news items need to carry a custom signature of the author of the news? Can these other CMSs handle such specific needs? No. They all offer generic modules. Ones that you will hopefully be able to shoe-horn into your workflow. Good luck! Besides not offering fields to track the special information you need, they also offer fields and features you'll never use. For example, if you need a shopping cart to sell advertising space, the shopping cart modules provided by these other CMSs will most likely come with a "Shipping costs" component. So your checkout page will have a "Shipping Address" section and a shipping costs calculator - but you don't even ship anything! If you're a real estate agent, for example, you'll want a website that knows what a "property" is. Shop around and see if you can find a content-management system that knows what a "property" is. Furthermore, if you're a commercial real-estate agent, your needs will be different to those of a residential real estate agent. On the other hand, if you're a football club, you won't care if your website knows what a property is, you'll want your website to know about events, members, players, fixtures, etc. virtualCMS can handle any of these needs. How? How is virtualCMS so flexible?  We sit down with you, face to face, and ask you about how your business works.We ask you what items you'd like to keep track of on your website (properties, events, members, customers, products, classes, etc). We ask you to describe the exact attributes that are important to you about each item (price, size, weight, location, start time, supplier, wholesale cost, etc) - every tiny little detail that you need tracked! We determine the most efficent information workflow for you, your employees and your website visitors. All this is integrated into your website in such a way as to make your most common tasks as efficient and time-saving as possible. Bottom Line: Your website is tailored to your exact business needs. Need more information?
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