Community Site Design Group Mission

We build web sites for local government.   That's what we do.   That's our mission.

Let me break that down.   'We' are Community Site Design Group.  'Build' means we provide services like design, architecture,  consulting,  maintenance, hosting, coding, emergency repair, security consulting, and training.  'Web sites' refers to our product.   All of our web sites are built on our eMuni Content Management System.  eMuni CMS is built on Drupal, the popular open source content management platform.  'For local government' refers to you.   And 'local government' is a whole lot easer to write than,  cities, counties, municipal offices,  public libraries, colleges and universities, townships, districts, departments, boroughs, parishes, and villages.  

If I were a math wiz, I could figure out how many different ways there are to write that sentence....'We build web sites for local government'.    I know it's a big number.   That means we do a lot of things for a lot of local government entities. 

Given the vast sea of choices when deciding on who has the ability to deliver a functional, user-friendly website, what criteria does one use to a choose a legitimate web development company once potential talent has been identified? 

• Go With Real Support - Finding a company that represents itself truthfully can take some work.  Our curiosity is always piqued by claims that some companies make about having been in the design and development business for 25 years. Considering the relatively young age of the Internet, I would be sure to ask these folks why they kept the Internet a secret for so long. Humor aside, most web development companies are fairly young so another metric may be needed to identify real experience in the company. Often, web development companies are form by a group of experienced designers that bring their collective experience together to form a viable potential. In summary, dig for the collective experience of the staff. 
• Go With Open Source - There are many young web development companies out there these days. While they have excellent technical skills, a successful website project isn't just about design and software skills. Having been in the business world dealing with real world company issues and being able to resolve them and move forward with a project isn't something you learn in business school. Project management from the perspective of an experienced management team will be able to identify and resolve potential problems well in advance of the potential impact they may have on a project. Be sure that the company you are considering isn't just about all the whizbang cool tricks up their sleeves. 
• Go With Security -  As the web has matured, there have been many exciting developments in "platforms" used to build and manage a website. One of those is the introduction of the content management system, or CMS for short. In the old days of the web, websites were developed and maintained entirely by a group of designers and developers.  It was difficult for the average person to become familiar enough with the "code" in order to maintain the site's content. All that has changed now. With the advent of the CMS, designers and developers are able to design the site so that the owner can maintain the content of the site with minimal training. Even if the client isn't interested in doing this, the fact that most sites today are being deployed on standardized platforms which is good for ongoing maintenance of any website.  If you talk with a potential design house, be sure to learn which platform they will be deploying your site on and what the potential benefits of their platform choice is.