The following are some of the current tools and technologies that Durango Consulting Group is working with to create customer application spaces.
WordPress
A great platform for creating a nice looking Marketing site for any size business. It’s an open-source Content Management System, and with a multitude of free, and inexpensive plugins, the site can be morphed into MUCH more than just a content/blog site. It can easily become:
- an eCommerce site
- a learning management platform
- a clean integration into your salesforce system
- a great way of displaying your products in a photo gallery, etc…
- and pretty much anything you might be willing to explore
See a list of some of my most used WordPress Plugins
Squarespace
An alternative to WordPress, for those who don’t want to get in and learn WordPress, or just quickly create a very clean, nice-looking, and professional website.
I won’t go into pros-cons of WordPress VS Squarespace, as they BOTH offer many of the same features… at some point, it comes down to what you know.
If you are NOT wanting to learn the ins and outs of HTML, the sometimes cryptic UI of WordPress, this is a great solution. You might be limited with customizations and available plugins, but… you get a LOT for a hosted solution, with little worry about the administrative overhead or learning curve of WordPress.
Ecommerce can be built out and tied easily to Stripe for online payments (ecommerce)
Weebly (and Square integration)
Again… see an overview of WordPress and Squarespace above. Another clear choice for creating a website, with lots of templates, and easy content editing, as well as plugins to choose from.
The reason I have implemented this for one particular customer is the clean integration of their SQUARE (note… NOT Squarespace) payment processing (Square in Person Payments), and their business integration to taking payments online (Square Ecommerce).
BOTH of these can be tied to the same product list, pricing, inventory, and management, so it’s a great solution for a customer who needs BOTH processes and doesn’t want to manage separate (and unconnected) inventories.
Shopify
A complete hosted eCommerce solution (an example of a SaaS – Software as a solution).
Allowing a customer to set up a themed, customizable online store, selling products through a variety of payment providers, and allowing for full store management as well as some basic site content management.
There are a variety of Shopify Plugins available through the Shopify App Store
Angular & Node.js & PostgreSQL
The combination of these 2 open source tools, allow for the creation of a custom Browser based application, along with a back-end service and API platform. Combined with a database (in our case, with PostgreSQL, these tools provide for a great full-stack solution for customers’ business-specific applications.
- Custom data objects
- Custom front end, HTML5 and CSS3
- API for use by an application, and outside if required
- AWS hosted docker (AWS elastic beanstalk)
- Custom login (provided by AWS Cognito)
- Fully developed Relation Database in PostgreSQL
Microsoft.NET & SQL Server
- Custom data objects
- Custom front end, HTML5 and CSS3
- API for use by an application, and outside if required
- AWS hosted docker (AWS elastic beanstalk)
- Custom login (provided by AWS Cognito)