Creating and updating websites is a science. Since 2003 I have been designing and building websites. Back in the days there were hardly any CMS (Content Management Systems) available for the common website builder. It was a lot of code and you basically build it on your computer and then uploaded the site and took a look at the site and hoped it all worked. In 2008 we build the Ministries' website in Typo3.com. An amazing CMS and the site has now over 1500 pages of which about 500 belong to the Inner Circle where over 2000 members have enjoyed the online audio and video material. An enterprise CMS with a great UI (User Interface) in the back-end where you can edit the content with an unlimited amount of team members.
Dr. Kees-Jan de Maa
Then I tried WordPress ... well what can I say? It all started with a great promise, but reminded me of my Windows PC days. Constantly under attacks of viruses and software bugs and it looked like the developers in the community were often disconnected, making one plugin to stop working while the other was upgraded. The more plugins you used the more problems we seemed to have. It looked pretty. (I think for a while) I know many people love it, but I felt like I went from a Mercedes 500SL to a Ford Fiesta. So after suffering for about 12 months we decided to move forward. So of course I wanted to have a typo3 site, but the developers are in such high demand that our budget did not allow that marriage. Yes, often websites that are developed by others are not just a temporary friendship, but a marriage. As I mentioned for Typo3 it was a happy marriage. But an expensive one..
As you can see today we created 2 brand new sites for the University with squarespace.com. What a joy! All my years of working with different software to build sites, this is the one I love the most! No hassle with hosting (and viruses) SLL certificates, separate shopping carts (we still use Magento for the Ministry site) (We ran 4 servers, (including AWS) for all our sites and clients' sites...) So I/we can actually dedicate most of our time to just building the sites! It works so beautifully and it is designed by developers who have thought of so many details. It uses the page-tree I was used to in Typo3 and the elements (building blocks inside a page) are great, and easy to place and edit. I know I am picky when it comes to design, but this tribe does it right! Building a multilanguage site did not work for us, so we decided to create an English and Spanish one. And great value for the money! Thank you guys at squarespace.com!
The one who really needs to get the credit for all this amazing looking work is Jonathan my son, alias 'handsome" who build most of the pages. Together with Mitzi his queen. He is a genius! (Of course he grew up with Typo3 :) ) There are many others who had their share as well: thank you!
So enjoy the new sites and let us know what you think. We barely touched the surface of what we can do. So in the coming months we will offer you more, so we can serve you better.
Kees-Jan de Maa