For a long time now we've been wanting to do a complete makeover of our web site, and yes we know what you are thinking "it's about time". Being the technlogist that I am, I also wanted to vastly improve the way we design and manage content on the site so I figured it was time that I finally research and learn about the available web content management systems. After much gnashing of teeth and musing over the fact that web technology really has come as far as I thought it should by now, I decided to go with the Open Source Joomla CMS system. It is relatively easy to use and has a lot of available extensions with varying degrees of usefullness.

So far, the system seems to be working well. It is a lot better than manually editing web pages and having to deal with the complexities of making things work on all browsers. Also it will allow me to add a lot of function over time that I would never have been able to do on my old system. In fact, if it continues to work well, I might also start to offer custom web site services which is something I have always avoided in the past.

I am also using a program called Artisteer to design the visual template for the site. Being a Microsoft .Net programmer myself, I was happy to see that Artisteer is writen in .Net and provides a great deal of cutting edge function and usability. The look and feel mimicks Microsoft Office 2007 which is pretty remarkable. Artisteer makes it pretty easy for someone with no graphic art training to come up with a good looking and functional site design.

We hope that you like the new site look and function. Please feel free to contact us if you encounter any problems or have suggestion for future enhancements.