Tag Archive for 'modX'

Stock Spirits – Award-winner expands

Stock Spirits, the internationally-focused manufacturer of branded drinks, now has a set of 10 websites, including national sites covering all their existing and new sales territories.

Orzel vodka. Stock's flagship brand in the USA

Orzel vodka. Stock's flagship brand in the USA

Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, USA, are all national areas covered by the set of Wild West-designed and implemented web sites. And then there are sites dedicated to the work of Stock Spirits Group, and International Sales.

For a company that has only existed for a few years, they have come a long way in a very short time.

What is possibly more remarkable is that Stock are able to maintain and update all their sites through an implementation of ModX open-source software. The software allows Stock staff in the UK and in the international territories to amend their sites as they need, adding press releases, posting new packaging or bottle shots, and of course, adding to the range of Stock cocktail recipes which are suggested throughout the Stock Spirits group site. Since all of the national sites are provided in two, and sometimes three, languages maintenance would otherwise have been a big task.

Wild West undertakes periodic ‘refresher’ training to help get new staff up to speed and to ensure that all staff who need to have up to date skills.

Find Stock Spirits at www.stockspiritsgroup.com. For international sites, follow the links.

Web Design – Keep Your Options Open

Inflexion Homepage

Wild West is an unashamed fan of open source software, particularly when it comes to web design and to content management. Why? Because it allows the owners of a web site to have the maximum in terms of transparency and portability too.

Once upon a time the whole software industry was based on a ‘lock-in’ factor – choose one technology and you were effectively choosing a technology for a very long time ahead. And that base technology impacted, and sometimes heavily restricted, all your other choices too.

Now, with open source, that doesn’t need to happen. MySQL, PHP and other open source web enabling technologies are often better than proprietary systems, and allow greater interactivity with other systems – something which is often important in this age of web commerce.

Most importantly, open source technologies leave choices open and unlock the opportunity for best fit products improved by competition in the market.