Annomedia

A CMS (Content Management System) is a program that runs on your site, and is used to manage the content and structure of your site. The CMS-program makes all the pages in your site accessible to you and they can be edited/filled with content by you. Therefor you will be able to change and maintain the content of your website, even if you have little or no knowledge of website-coding. But if you do have a good understanding of website techniques, a CMS can also be very useful because it takes care of a lot of boring aspects of website maintenance most people do not want to deal with.

There are several Content Management systems available and after a lot of research I standardized on using Silverstripe when implementing a CMS because it is a well supported CMS with a lot of possibilities. And on top of that it makes my life easy.

• Silverstripe does not get in the way, thereby ensuring I can work faster and with more freedom.
• This also means that I have more freedom to implement certain things that have to do with SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• It offers everything I need from a CMS. It can be used as a normal CMS for corporate websites or news websites for example, it can be used for a blog, it can for example be used to maintain a calender for events or a listing of courses.

Of course you could ask me to code your website in a different CMS or on a different platform because you heard good things about it or because you have heard of them as the standard everybody uses today (Joomla, Drupal, Worpress and Typo3 come to mind)  - but I can assure you that most of the things that can be done in those CMS's out there, can also be done in Silverstripe. However, if there is a good reason to use one of the other CMS's out there, we can talk about it. I did not take the decision to standardize on Silverstripe lightly and have therefor done enough research and tried enough other platforms before I came to my decision.

With Services for Designers I support designers who are less experienced in working for the web, and I offer support for those designers who do not want to deal with the coding and programming part of web-design.

• I offer support and advice during the design phase.
• I code for you, thereby turning your designs into standard compliant (XHTML 1.1 / CSS2) templates
• I can also offer to turn them into a CMS (Content Management System) based on Silverstripe.
• On top of that I can also take care of the hosting for you

In short: As a designer you get access to my knowledge and experience, and I make sure you can offer your clients a web ready product with eventually even hosting and support.

There are some things that are important for you to realize when cooperating with me:

• It is important for me that the people you work for are your clients, not mine. During the design phase I will not contact your client, nor should I during the coding phase. But the CMS system that I implement comes with support and your clients need to get an introduction into that CMS. I therefor need to contact your clients and your clients need to be able to contact me when they have questions (and in my experience they always will, and it ensures that the customer is satisfied with a project when they know how to use it).
• In order to successfully create a website for your client based on your designs I need to have access to your designs in digital form and you have to be aware I might need you to work in a certain way - this will be discussed beforehand. This might mean you have to work differently from the way you are used to work.  In short: a 300 dpi tif image is not what I need, I need to have a layered psd at 72 dpi (screen resolution).
• Certain things work differently for web as compared to print. You have to think about the flow of text and elements on your page, you have to be aware of the way your layout might change based on different screen sizes, and you have to think about what happens when the visitor of a site hovers over an element or clicks on it (in a menu for instance). These are some of the things you have to think about.
• The web is advancing with great strides - and I have seen it advance enormously since the days of Explorer 2 / Netscape 2. However there are limitations - and my guess is there always will be. There might be certain things you heard about that you would love me to implement, but it could be that these things are outdated, proven not to work from a usability stand point or these things might work in some browsers but not in others because they are too new (and therefor still need a few years to become a usable standard).
• Based on the previous point it might be that you need to create not one but two designs: one for the visitors of the website who have more modern computers and use browsers that are ready for more modern features and the other design for people who have less modern computers/ less advanced browsers or who choose not to enable certain features.

Later - in the chapters on the right - I will start to explain various points that might be of interest to you if you want to design for the web and are not or do not want to be a coder.

Under the name AnnoMedia I offer web-design, coding/templating and services for designers. Under the name Alien Saints I offer designs for the people who are interested in something different. Alien-Saints.com is the website where I show my art, but it is also the entry point for those who want something a bit more extreme.

My name is Jeroen Goulooze. And I am a freelance webdesigner/coder. I live and work in Berlin, Friedrichshain (Kreutzigerstraße 18 10247 Berlin to be exact). My website is www.AnnoMedia.com.

I can be contacted by phone with the number (++49) (0)15 772 753 760 when you are in Germany. You can also contact me via (++31) (0)6 13 203 439 when you are in the Netherlands, but it can be that I have to call you back when using that number because I do not always have it with me.

You can also contact me by email.