Choosing the right CMS is always a gamble; I either run the risk of choosing a big all-in-one CMS that confuses my clients, or I choose a smaller, newer CMS and discover its flaws on a live site. It’s a bit like the Mac guy vs PC guy ads… A big CMS like Drupal is PC; It has so many features that it just confuses users, but it’s great at getting mundane work done. The smaller CMS like Firerift is Mac; Easy to use, fresh, and cutting edge, but maybe a little wild at times.

Making the decision to go with “the little guy” is not a position I like to put myself in, but sometimes it’s a necessary risk.

Working with Hotcakes New Media, I’m always looking for new ways to push boundaries with content management systems, but also help my clients too. The simple fact is the “big players” in CMS software, such as Drupal and Joomla, are far too confusing for my average client. They just need a simple way to log in, change the wording of a page, post an important notice, and maybe update an image. They don’t need to have a thousand back-end options. They don’t want to learn the difference between “pages” and “stories”, or have a week long course on how to update their site. And I don’t want them to have all those obscure sections in which they can easily destroy their site with a few clicks.

Newer Web 2.0 CMS solutions are finally starting to emerge, but because they are still so new, they cause two major issues for creative companies:

1. The learning curve. There is a considerable amount of time that needs to be spent learning how to install and optimize the CMS.Then there is even more time spent learning how to create exciting and visually stunning designs with their template systems
2. Learning the flaws. Every CMS has flaws; Some can potentially have security holes, some may have bug, some may not be optimized for speed. The only way to find these flaws is to use the system in a production environment.

Case in point: I recently installed a Firerift website for a client. I proposed the CMS after looking at the feature set and testing the admin area. On paper it was perfect: It used simple CSS tags to pull in the dynamic content right into my own HTML, so I had full control over the design. The backend was stunning; Very well laid out, easy to use, and behaved like a desktop application. My clients would easily be able to edit the content on the site without much training at all. I built the site, and implemented Firerift in just a few hours on my test server, and it was ready to go! Fantastic! I copied all the code onto their Netfirms web server and deployed the site. Suddenly, the website was taking 20-40 seconds to load. Anything over 10 seconds is bad, but 40 seconds?! Something had to be done. You see, the issue is that Netfirms has extremely slow connections for each data request. Because of the way Firerift works, namely loading all the html content then going back using Javascript to get each dynamic element one at a time, the site choked. The way I had designed it, there were 3 dynamic “page snips” on the page, plus each of the image banners (5 in total) were in separate dynamic content boxes as well (so my client could easily update the banners themselves). And because the javascript wasn’t optimized to load asynchronously, each item had to be fully loaded before loading the next one. The result was a page that would load with a bunch of empty boxes, then the text and images would slowly pop-up one at a time over a 30 second period. In order to fix the problem, I had to fully optimize the site and remove some features. All the banners were made static so they could load with the HTML layer. All the CSS and JS was minified. All the cool alpha transparent images had to be hacked and converted to highly compressed JPG images. In the end, with all the changes the site now loads in under 5 seconds, but we had to make compromises in design and editing abilities.

For smaller sites with less content, I would still potentially recommend Firerift. Its benefits in ease of use and design can sometimes outweigh its flaws if managed right. But for bigger sites or clients that need more control, I will have to look elsewhere for now.

That brings me to Concrete5. The newer Concrete5 CMS has been making a lot of waves in the CMS community. It is open-source, free to use, and has a good amount of features and support. It is one of the few CMSs to provide in-context editing (in other words, you can change anything on your site while you are still looking at the actual site). Furthermore, it has great community support for plug-ins; That’s a good thing, and a bad thing. Obviously, it is great that you can find a variety of plug-ins to help you build your CMS, but the vast majority of them are paid plug-ins. That’s how the developers make money: They give you the app for free and charge for the plug-ins. I’m not opposed to that concept, but when they charge for a blog plug-in (a pretty standard feature for most CMSs) I have to wonder if they are nickel-and-dimeing me.

Regardless, Concrete5 does seems like a great solution for my next client, so we will have to see how it goes. But first, I have to learn how to make a template (again).

I am proud to announce that Hotcakes New Media has been selected to create the new fundraising experience for leading non-profit organization CUSO-VSO’s newest campaign called “Volunteers for the World”. We will be responsible for all branding and visual imagery, website design and implementation, and Artez fundraising customization, with the possibility of extending into additional work with video, social media and traditional advertising. As a multi-faceted project, Hotcakes New Media will have the opportunity to showcase its strength in providing all creative services in-house under one group vision.

About CUSO-VSO

CUSO-VSO is a non-profit development agency that works through volunteers. They are a member of the VSO International Federation.

Each year, they send hundreds of global citizens to work on collaborative development projects in more than 40 countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean. They are one of North America’s leading international development organizations that works through volunteers.

CUSO-VSO volunteers work at the crossroads between hope and hardship. They place people of all ages who have the professional experience, hands-on know-how and perspectives needed to work in partnership with organizations working to overcome poverty and disadvantage in more than 40 developing countries.

Creativity for a cause

Hotcakes New Media is honoured to have been selected for this contract and everyone at Hotcakes is excited to begin this incredible project. We are extremely proud to be working with CUSO-VSO to help fight global poverty and lend our creativity and talent to help make the world a better place.

We will be releasing more details in the weeks that follow, and we hope you will join us in getting involved in fundraising for a great cause.

Andy Morris
Creative Mastermind - Hotcakes New Media

I’ve recently been contacted about a large contract I am pursuing for Hotcakes New Media. The contract is fairly extensive, and requires branding, video, photography, graphic design, print, web, programming, and custom Artez design for a large non-profit organization. Because of the size of this contract, and the money involved, I’ve been tasked with writing a full proposal to send to the client. Since all other Hotcakes New Media contracts have been under $5000, I hadn’t written any such proposals yet. As I found out, the most difficult part of writing the proposal was deciding how to approach it.

The reason for this is simple: We are not a marketing firm. We are not an ad agency. We are a creative company.

This may seem insignificant to most people, but it has a huge impact on how we conduct our business, and what people should expect from engaging our services. There are a number generic templates ad agencies and marketing firms use to build marketing proposals. They all include the “science” of marketing: SWOT analysis, target audience, focus markets. While we do take all those things into consideration when coming up with creative campaigns, they are not the core focus of our strategy. Our philosophy is simple: We make cool things people want to be a part of. When you follow that approach, you don’t have to worry about other factors. There’s no age limit on liking cool things. And no amount of science will magically get people to be engaged by your campaign.

For our creative proposals, the focus had to move away from the science and focus on the art. We are, after all, artists first and foremost. Our proposal had to reflect that fact, yet show prospective clients that we have the skills to get the job done. The format I created for teh proposal is as follows:

Background
This section describes where the client is currently, where they want to be, and what they are looking for us to do.

Scope
This is the longest part of the proposal. It covers in detail what we intend to do to get the client where they want to be. It does not pitch a specific concept or idea. That comes later in the process. Instead, it details our recommendations on how to approach various aspects of the project. For example, it might talk about how we recommend a website based on WordPress to allow two-way conversations with the public, and why we thing that is relevant for this particular project. Or it might explain the type of video we are proposing, and how we recommend distributing it. For larger projects, there may be several sub-sections for each specific task we will be recommending.

Schedule
As you can imagine, this is simply our recommended production schedule. If no specific dates have been confirmed with the client, this can be detailed as “week 1 to week 4″ or “day 22 to day 64″. It should encompass every sub-section from the scope, but not be too detailed as to not have the freedom to shuffle things around based on the final creative spec.

Team
This section is not always present in other types of proposals, but is important in the creative proposal. It contains vital information about who will be working on the project, with short bios, and tasks assigned. This helps the client understand where the expertise is coming from, and helps provide insight into our creative backgrounds.

Budget
This section is a fairly straight forward budget proposal. Because the final creative spec has not been set at this point, this is more of a budgetary overview so the client knows where we are focusing our production efforts. That way, the client has the option to say “spend less on the video and put the money into improving the website”. The budget also details what each section includes, for example, the web design section might say “includes all graphic design, setup and installation of required web applications, all html and css, SEO and speed optimizations”. This is vague enough to allow for the funds to be allocated as needed within each section, but provides a detailed enough quote so the client is aware of all the costs. It should also include a contingency of approximately 10% of the budget.

Supporting Information
The supporting information includes links to articles we may have referenced, examples of similar campaigns we are drawing inspiration from, and a portfolio of works to reinforce our ability to successfully complete the project.

As you can see, there are no charts, no intense analysis, and no marketing speak. We make it clear we are not providing a marketing campaign. The client is free to consult with a marketing firm for additional help if they so desire, but the emphasis of our proposal identifies that the proposed campaign should be honest and accessible to everyone.

As of this writing, the creative proposal has been sent to the client, and is awaiting feedback.

Andy Morris
Creative Mastermind – Hotcakes New Media