Joomla templates and offshore programming.

It's been about 2 years since I started focusing more and more on Joomla as a CMS and as one of Sagewing's core services. These days, about 50% of our services income is coming from Joomla development and maintenance and there's no end in sight! However, there is one gap in Joomla's functionality that has yet to be neatly filled and that is the lack of a built-in blogging component.

Of course, with no shortage of 3rd party components available for Joomla, it's no problem to piece together a blogging platform and that's exactly what we've done:

• A standard category in Joomla was created for blogging, and sub-categories added as usual. So, the blog is essentially just running as a collection of Joomla articles.
• The DS-Syndicate component was added to handle our RSS feeds. This component allows us to elect which categories go into the feed, and appears to cleanly carry html right into the feed. The component is available at www.joomlafun.com.
• The comments are handled by the JomComment component which as available at www.azrul.com. These excellent programmers provide great support and the component is well written and stable.
• Still missing is a way to allow people to digg or otherwise put an entry onto the many social bookmarking sites. We'll be adding this in once we component selected.

To be fair, there are a few blogging components available for Joomla but these are fairly new and, in our opinion, not quite ready for prime-time. There is also the classic bridge to Wordpress, which is enticing but it just doesn't seem like a good idea to introduce an entirely new application just to handle the blogging.

With more and more clients asking 'how to I do a blog in Joomla' we'll be interested to see how the blog really performs as we add more and more content. Hopefully we'll get some good feedback from our handful of readers se if we can polish up this approach. Your comments welcome!

Promotopia, a leading manufacturer and importer of unique retail products since 1996, announces the launch of www.islice.com. Based on the popular open source OSCommerce platform, the website will offer the iSlice and Envelopener products to the public while seamlessly integrating with existing fulfillment and marketing systems at Promotopia.

By leveraging Sagewing's offshore development teams and domestic project managers, Promotopia was able to outsource the end-to-end development of the store, including design and back-end integration, to single source. "Sagewing delivered a quality product at a great price, and they provided the project management and client service we needed.", said TJ Scimone of Promotopia, "and they worked hard to meet our aggressive marketing deadlines."

 Using a customized version of OSCommerce, Sagewing adapted the interface to match the print and television marketing campaigns while maintaining usability and SEO functionality. Through a combination of existing contributions and custom development, the checkout and shipping systems were modified to best support Promotopia's unique product line and consumer habits. "With the level of back-end customization needed to support this product, OSCommerce was a natural choice due to the availability of 3rd party contributions and the flexibility of the codebase." Sagewing's offshore development teams substantial experience with OSCommerce, and we are very pleased to add www.islice.com to our list of e-commerce success stories.

Sagewing is proud to announce it's 5th anniversary as a leading provider of outsourced Internet and software development services. We are thankful to our clients for bringing us 5 years of steady growth and profitability, and we anticipate continued growth with the addition of some exciting new services during 2007. 2005 was also a record year for Sagewing's charitable donations, with donations make to SmileTrain.org, Operation Smile, CARE Interntaional, and several smaller charities around the world. We look forward to the future, and we're commited to maintaining the value and quality that our clients have come to rely on!

TechXplore is an innovative online competition and mentoring program dedicated to helping K-12 students build the science and technology skills needed for future workplace success.

When Oakwood Corporate Housing, the world's largest rental housing solution company, decided to raise the bar on their Internet application processes, they turned to Sagewing for methodology consulting and WWW application support. Sagewing provided an on-site expert who improved and reformed their application development approaches while acting as a business analyst and development lead their large scale .Net application development project.