Web Design Software and Technologies
At Innovation Simple, we pride ourselves on providing services using the technologies that will most greatly enhance the businesses and bottom line of our clients. Regarding website development (or programming) technologies, we focus on open source technologies based in Linux server administration. These technologies are used by the top software companies on the internet – namely Google and Facebook – and are ubiquitous. Most of our website development for Utah small businesses is focused on PHP and MySQL technologies with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS as companions. Here is a more comprehensive list of technologies that we use in servicing our clients:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Flash
- Adobe Dreamweaver
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Joomla
- WordPress
- Drupal
- Magento
- Cpanel Server Software
- MySQL Databases
- Linux Based Servers
- PHP
- Ajax
- jQuery
- Python
- Django Framework
- Browser Compatibility
- CentOS Operating System
Web Design Technologies
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is used by many different companies for many different purposes. We use Photoshop not only for image editing but also as a utility to create our designs.
Adobe Flash
Flash is software developed by Adobe to quickly develop many cool features for a website. Flash can be used to view videos on your website, create slideshows, animations, even small scale applications.
Adobe Dreamweaver
Many Innovation Simple staff members utilize Adobe Dreamweaver to help organize code and edit websites. We utilize many of Dreamweaver’s features such as color coding and auto complete so we can be as productive as possible and maximize our efficiency in the web design and web development processes.
Web Development Technologies
MySQL
MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database technology and the most pervasive website database and scripting combination includes MySQL. Even developers who don’t use PHP, will use MySQL. There are other database technologies that we are familiar with and comfortable using, but this is by far the most common. Most major CMS, Blog and other software that is used by the consumer public is MySQL driven.
PHP
PHP is the web’s main server-side language that is used on almost every website you visit. It is capable of handling database interaction, emailing systems, and many other higher level functions and basic HTML cannot accomplish.
Ajax
Ajax is a technology that we utilize when creating ‘apps’ on websites. Ajax allows a programmer to change content and manage database entries without even reloading the page. Think about things like when you create a post on Facebook. If you notice when you click ‘post’ it appears as a post on your page very quickly and the page does not reload. This is accomplished using Ajax.
Joomla
Joomla is one of the oldest and largest full CMSs in the world. It powers a huge part of the internet and is very flexible in terms of being able to create all kinds of websites. It facilitates the creation of news related websites and is very friendly for all kinds of media outlets and small businesses. Although we do not develop in Joomla frequently, this software can greatly help certain businesses in accomplishing certain tasks. We are happy to develop in Joomla if the occasion lends to such.
WordPress
WordPress is the world’s most pervasive platform for blogging. We use wordpress as a CMS or platform for many of the websites we create. WordPress is world renowned for being one of the best CMS (Content Management System) programs as well as being the best extendable blogging platforms in the world. WordPress is super SEO friendly and is used to facilitate rapid deployment of blog content.
Magento
Magento is world’s most robust shopping cart platform and is full of features. We generally use other shopping carts such as OpenCart for our e-commerce websites. However, we are extremely versed in Magento and if additional features are needed we can turn to Magento to fulfill our client’s needs.
Drupal
Drupal is a popular community based CMS designed to facilitate extensions and rapid deployment of content. Although we do not use Drupal in our typical development, we can use it for any web project that we feel will benefit from its features.
jQuery
jQuery is a library (a system of program classes and functions) for Javascript. We use jQuery for almost everything we do with javascript. This library makes it very easy to set up very ‘flashy’ features like basic content animation, content transitions, etc.
Python
Python is a rising server-side language programming language much like PHP. This means that code written in Python is run right on the server before the page is loaded so that the client machine doesn’t have to work as hard.
django
Django is a piece of software written in Python (Python framework). Django is software that makes it very fast and easy to develop high level web-based software. Our own PMS (project management software) was created using this tool.
Browser Compatibility
We test every website we create in all major browsers. We do our very best to make each website look and act the same in every major browser. Sometimes we have to make compensations and thinsg look a bit different from browser to browser but for the most part all our websites look and act the same in the latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, and Opera.
Web Server Technologies
Linux
Linux is a freeware OS (Operating System) based on Unix. This software was originally created by Linus Torvalds. It is primarily used on servers due to it’s speed and optimization.
Cpanel
Cpanel is very user friendly server management software. When you host your website on our servers you will have full access to this piece of software and all it’s features. Cpanel makes it very easy to manage email accounts, MySQL databases, password protected directories, and many other settings and features.
CentOS
CentOS is a community-supported, free operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It provides an enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System. CentOS is the most popular Linux distribution for web servers with almost 30% of all Linux servers using it. CentOS is a flavor of Linux that allows us to run cPanel which greatly enhances the ability of our customers to control their hosting accounts.
Graphic Design and Video Technologies
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is primarily a print design program. We use this software to design business cards, pamphlets, fliers, and other print media.
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is used heavily in our logo and graphic design work as well as some graphics related to web design. This technology is also used in illustrations (hence the name) and is a powerful tool for creating custom graphics from scratch.
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is video editing software. We use this to crop, clip, resize, and add other creative features to video.