What Is SiteDone?
Good question... well simply put, it's a piece of software which
allows you to maintain your own website, also known as a CMS
(Content
Management System) or 'Back Office'.
Suffice to say this in itself
is not a new idea, what is new however is that SiteDone has
been designed from scratch to provide huge benefits over alternative
systems. Here are just some of the benefits:
- Extremely quick to deploy
- Integrated Membership System
- Supports all commonly used media formats
- Encourages growth of community through user involvement (comments,
submissions, forum)
- Standardised code means greater stability
- Free in-version updates to core system
- Easily extensible, upgradable and customisable
- Integrated image and media libraries ensuring that content can
be updated on the move
- Integrated publishing work-flow system allowing different levels
of site manager
And Lastly
- Incredibly low license cost
What more... as they say, could you want?
So.. erm.. why?
Another good question! Well, SiteDone is developed
by a company called 'Kempt'.
Kempt will do anything they're asked to do really, but they mainly
produce new media for companies
and
organisations
who have reasonably large and generally youthful audiences. This
ranges from leading brands to charities but more particularly record
companies and recording artists.
Originally developed to allow clients to manage
their own sites cheaply and more efficiently the system quickly evolved
into an extremely versatile and stable content management tool. At
this point Kempt realised that by standardising the system into a
core set of utilities
they could deploy sites far more quickly and reliably, reducing costs
for their clients and headaches for themselves.
According to MD Chris Kemp-Salt: 'It's all about
honesty really, most agencies re-use things that they've developed
for other projects
and we were no different, but by packaging the system up as a distinct
product we allow all our clients to benefit equally from the system
and the standardised architecture means that future enhancements
can
be easily added to all sites as desired' he continued... 'I'm particularly
excited about the potential for smaller record labels, with Artist
Edition we've put high end functionality firmly in the grasp of
even the most limited budget...'
The development of SiteDone required a
fairly substantial re-write of the system which has resulted in
two separate distribution models:
SiteDone Artist Edition and Label
Edition aim
to provide an affordable but fully functional entry-point for new
artists and small labels who don't have the resources to fund
the development of a full-scale bespoke production.
Custom Edition provides all of the functionality
of the standard editions with the added benefit of a bespoke 'front
end' or 'user interface' meaning that whether your passion is for
flaming logos, animated bananas, or even a slick, professional, gracefully
transitioning masterpiece, it can be yours with all the benefits
of the basic system.
Most importantly, customers who already own one of the basic systems
can easily upgrade to a custom system or even later versions at any
time, without any loss of content or server down-time. So if your
university tour
goes well and you suddenly find yourself playing at Wembly, you can
simply re-skin your site and go for it! |