Blog

How Many People Are Needed For A Website ReDesign?

Jeremy Houchens — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:09:18 +0000

Hello Everyone!

This has been rolling around in my head for a while, so its time to put it down on the blog. It's about the people that are required in building a website. A website can be built by one person or a team of people. This article focuses on the team aspect. Here is a brief outline for a web project. The website for this illustration is for a medium sized company. The company has an existing website but would like to move from a static website to a new content management system. Static website means there is no database, no dynamic page content. Also, the company would like to have a new graphical design for the website. Most of the existing page content will remain the same, but updating the content is also required. The final requirement is to link all forms from the website to an existing CRM package.

The project outlined above could be handled by one experienced web developer, but many times there are time constraints from daily task lists and many professional websites require expertise in a certain field to pull of a great look, feel, and functionality. Below is a list of people that would be involved with building our project:

Web Designer
Writer/Social Media Coordinator
Web Developer
CRM Integration Specialist
Server Administrator

Web Designer
This person will be responsible to handle all the Photoshop/Illustrator work required to forge the new look and feel. They will work closely with project owners and marketers to flush out the perfect design. Once the design is finalized and complete, they will hand off all the graphic files to the web developer.

Server Administrator
The server administrator will assess the technical requirements needed for the new website and will procure a new server. The website in our scenario will not utilize shared hosting, but will use a Virtual Private Server.

Web Developer
With the graphic files ready to go... the web developer will apply all the graphical elements to the new content management system. They will use a mixture of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP programming (the CMS is based on PHP,) to accomplish this goal.

Writer/Social Media Coordinator
The writer will be responsible for updating all the written content on the website. This can be a huge job depending on how many pages have been created over the years. They may also handle publishing updates through various social media channels.

CRM Integration Specialist
All the forms on the website must be integrated with a crm package. The sales team needs to capture leads and to turn those leads into future customers! The CRM Integration Specialist will make sure all the forms are working properly and will make sure the CRM system updates status information for our sales team.

Overall, building a successful website can be a large project and its very important to know what key players are needed... and at what time they are needed. Until next time, thanks for visiting and please contact us if there are any questions!

Thanks!

Tags:

Corporate Web Design

Website Redesign

Website Project Management

Is Your Website a Trusted Member of Your Sales Team?

Jeremy Houchens — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:44:21 +0000

Hello Everyone!

Recently, I have been thinking about websites and how a site should be working for you, the business owner. If a website is built with a strategy in mind, a professional website can become one of your most valuable sales assets. Just think... a website works for you twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week. It never shows up late, it does exactly what you tell it to, and it never takes vactions! Does that sound good? The trick is... the implementation strategy! Just like our sales rep scenario... a website can behave like a bad sales person. Do customers receive the proper assistance? Do they get return calls? Do they engage with your website and turn a casual visit into a qualified lead? These questions can all be answered "yes" when a project has all the required components. These components go beyond the website aspect and can include the following:

Website
Focused landing pages
Email marketing
CRM Integration
Custom forms
Social media

To have an online sales representative working for you takes time, effort, and a solid plan. The goal is... lead generation. The plan is more than just a website. It is knowing how to take all the pieces of the puzzle and fit them together so that qualified leads find their way into the your CRM system and the inboxes of your sales team.

Please contact us if there are any questions!

Thanks!

Tags:

Sales

Website Strategy

Lead Generation

Installing SugarCRM, The Install Process

Jeremy Houchens — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:24:29 +0000

Hello Everyone!

Recently, I ran through the install process for an open-source CRM, SugarCRM. In this article, we share the installation process along with our notes.

There are paid and free versions of SugarCRM. We are using the free, Community Edition, which can be downloaded here.

This is version 6.4.0.beta1 on CentOS 5.6.

The first thing was to decide how the installation will be configured. A few options could be:

Its own domain
Subdirectory (www.domain.com/sugarcrm)
subdomain (sugarcrm.domain.com)

The subdomain option was used for this installation.

Second, the server needs some prep work to get things rolling. A subdomain was added to the zone file.. (do this at your registrar, i.e. godaddy.com.) Next, create the directories on your server and configure the web server to point the new subdomain to the correct folder.

At this point we should be ready to get down to business. Fire up a web browser and enter in the address of your installation... http://crm.mygreatdomain.com. We should see the first default landing page.. right? WRONG!!! Instead we receive a nice "Server 500 Error." Yikes! How can our fresh copy of SugarCRM be bombing out already?

Is the domain / webserver configuration messed up... hmmm. No, everything is good.

Lets look at the error logs on the server. We find.. PHP Fatal error, PHP Notice: undefined index. Nothing clear cut. Next up is a Google search where this link is found, http://www.sugarcrm.com/kb/category/imp/install/. We follow ths instructions on the "Required Permissions" section for Linux... restart the httpd service... and voila, it works! We can now see the first screen below:

Right on Sugar! Now we can actually move through the installation. Below we see an information page that outlines what we will need to proceed.

Next is the Terms of Service page. Lets check the box and move on to the next page.

Now SugarCRM runs some checks to see if it can write to certain directories on the server. It finds many issues that need to be resolved before we can move forward. Again, we refer back to the page http://www.sugarcrm.com/kb/category/imp/install/ for some guidance. Basically, permissions need to be set on data directories and for the modules folders.

Lets choose Typical for the following screen:

Next, we are using MySQL for the database, so really a no-brainer here...

Now lets tell SugarCRM where to find our installation and lets supply the login credentials for the database server.

Okay, SugarCRM is confirming our settings for the configuration.

On the same screen as above... there were some additional error messages regarding IMAP libraries for PHP. We are not going to use the mail functions in our SugarCRM, so the errors were just noted and left as is.

The next step gives you some rules for your .htaccess file. These were copied over to the server to complete this step.

After all steps were complete, we are redirected to out welcome page! Woohoo! Lets login to our new CRM software package and start adding some contacts!

Thanks for visiting Pro Media Publishing and we hope to see you at the next post!

Tags:

Installing SugarCRM, How Much Memory Does it Require?

jermooski — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:46:09 +0000

This is a brief post to share my experiences with SugarCRM 6.4.0beta1. Its been a few years since I have worked with SugarCRM, maybe 3 years. If you are unfamiliar with SugarCRM, it is an open source CRM package which can be downloaded here. I have been meaning to install a fresh copy for some time on a new Virtual Private Server (VPS) in the Pro Media Publishing arsenal. Before committing to putting anything on the server, I was very curious to see how much memory was required to run SugarCRM. Google searches returned old forums threads from 2006 and 2007. I never found a clear answer. So, the installation moved forward and here is the memory specs that were recorded in the process.

Operating System:
CentOS 5.6

Ram used:
Server Before Install: 197,576
Server After Install: 208,608
After Logging in and browsing, adding, deleting: 238,824

After playing around in SugarCRM, the server was only asking for an additional 40MB of Ram from where we started before the install. I am very pleased with the performance so far. SugarCRM responds decently fast and it is not killing the server. There is only one user at this time, but the system will be closely monitored and the results will be published here.

Thanks!

Tags:

sugarcrm

Finally Live!

Jeremy Houchens — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:30:30 +0000

Hello Everyone, Today we are live with the new Pro Media Publishing website and blog. After many weeks of focused work, the website is finally ready to go live. So, this is the beginning of Pro Media Publishing PMP. This is where the brain dump of 14 years of internet publishing experience is going to take place. The long road of internet experience has gone through interactive media firms, tech startups, custom development shops, and corporate marketing departments. Along the way I have learned countless nuggets of information which will be presented here in one format or another.

Thanks for visiting and please check back often!

Tags:

Thoughts Business

web publishing