At last we've launched our new website. It's been a long time coming but we're really pleased with the way it's turned out.
The design of the new website was carried out by our good friends at Axon Garside. The brief was quite simple; we keep the logo but apart from that anything goes.
We're really pleased with what they've delivered and having built a few websites to their designs now we have a great understanding between us of what does and doesn't work not only online, but also within the confines of a content management system.
You'll see some radical changes to our portfolio of customer's websites. We've included lots more detail for each webite and have tagged each one so that you can quickly look at similar websites.
The portfolio is still growing as we add all of our websites. It's a bit time consuming but well worth the effort.
The first thing you'll probably notice is that the site is wired up to show our latest Tweet from Twitter. We're going to be using Twitter to keep you informed as to what's going on with Silkmoth and the web at large. So if you're not already following us make sure you do.
Another obvious difference is this integrated blog. Previously we had news items on our website with Carl's blog (FloatingDivs) hosted on Blogger. We've decided to merge the two as it didn't really make sense to be saying the same thing in different places. We also believe that website visitors are more relaxed with the tone of postings on websites these days so it makes sense to host the blog on our main site.
On the right hand side of this page you'll see a tag cloud. Each page on the Silkmoth site has been tagged with relevant keywords. If you click on any of the links in the tag cloud the site will list all pages that include that tag. The bigger the link in the tag cloud the more references there are to that tag in the website.
It's quite simple yet very powerful. No surprises that the biggest tags are content management and ecommerce. That's our bread and butter!
We also like the Featured Services slider on the home page. This is a simple but effective slide show that adds a bit of movement and some more interest to a page without being overbearing. This is just one of the many features offered by our new Content Management System, Kentico.
In July we decided to mothball Wirenet and move to a new CMS platform, Kentico. It was a big decision for us but three months on and with a number of websites under our Kentico belt now, we're convinced it was the right decision. We'll still be supporting Wirenet for the forseeable future but all new work will be built on the new platform.
Kentico gives us lots of new functionality, everything from search engine friendly URLs to embedded YouTube movies. But most importantly, it allows us to get on with the business of delivering the best website for our customers rather than focusing on developing the platform.
Let us know what you think of the new site by adding your comments below. We'd love to hear your ideas and criticisms if you have any.
The elves are back...