Women Executive Leadership CMS Case Study

In today’s world of web development there is no lack of Content Management Systems (CMS) from which to choose when developing a web site – either for internal use or for clients. How do you go about selecting the right CMS for the job? As with many development decisions, it’s a matter of language preference, skill sets and budget. Merit Mile recently redesigned and launched a much improved web site for our NPO client, Womens Executive Leadership. Our clients were seeking an easy to use, reliable, scalable CMS to serve as the foundation for their new site.

We also needed a CMS to accommodate YouTube video, PayPal commerce, and a sophisticated events calendar module. Based upon these requirements, we elected to use ExpressionEngine by EllisLab as it met these base requirements while still being secure, affordable, user friendly, and able to grow as the organization does. Some of its standout features include: * Ease of setup and configuration * No requirements for extensive development knowledge * The availability of 22 add-on modules and more than 100 plugins * Built on PHP4, it sits comfortably on virtually any server environment (in this case Windows Server… yep PHP on Windows) In additon, ExpressionEngine has the following added benefits:

It’s Secure
ExpressionEngine’s built-in framework offers an audit trail, Captcha verifications, ease in content approval, email verification and granular privileges. Login history is also included and the system is SSL compatible. *It’s Fast* ExpressionEngine’s dynamic publishing templating model provides the instant gratification of seeing changes appear instantly on websites. Since overhauling WEL’s website to include ExpressionEngine, the client now has the ability to add and edit web content, add news articles to their site, as well as update and manage their calendar of events. This dynamic CMS tool allows WEL to quickly post updates at any time from any web browser.

It’s Simple
ExpressionEngine integrates beautifully with your existing HTML, CSS, and Javascript sites. Also, it doesn’t require learning much more than the very user-friendly Control Panel and a few proprietary pieces of code to interface with your content. In today’s dynamic and fast-paced world of business, a strong, flexible, scalable Content Management System is a must! When faced with CMS decisions for a non-profit or any other enterprise, consider ExpressionEngine.