RAZOR releases Zulu CMS 3.0
We recently released our newest, custom Content Management System; Zulu. Originally developed by RAZOR Web Design back in early 2011, the latest release of Zulu has taken years of cultivating and hundreds of websites to perfect. With constant improvement by the team at RAZOR Web Design, the latest release of Zulu is a fully rebuilt system from the ground-up.
- New back-end interface
- Built in Mobile responsive styling
- Easy page management
- Sliders, testimonials, FAQ's, forms all built-in
- Google XML sitemap
- Advanced versions and backups of content
- New favicon generator
Why is a good CMS important?
A good CMS is one that is RAZOR believes is A) easy for the client to use B) easy for the developer to use and C) light-weight.
Many CMS systems on the market (i.e. Wordpress) are pretty quick, easy-to-use systems in their basic package, however, with the myriad of different plug-ins and themes available, the systems usually begin to slow down pretty quick, and not only that, not work how they should. Why? Because developers of plugins are all developing their plugin for it's own specific functionality. Lots of these plugins use and manipulate the base CMS systems core to function in different ways to make the plugin useful. For example: a photo gallery plugin, a contact form plugin, a slider plugin.
When you get lots of plugins and more-so lots of complicated, functional plugins into one install, you'll often run across lots of cross compatibility issues. Therefore creating a slow website, that doesn't work how it should specifically... therefore the users of the site leave after waiting for the page to load or encountering a dozen red error messages.
RAZOR using their own CMS (Zulu), benefit by developing the core requirements the client has into the base system without any '3rd party' plugins that can affect the operation of the site. The client gets what they asked for essentially, not a 'plugin' that does the job 'pretty close' to what it needs to.
Why Zulu? Why not alternate systems like Wordpress?
RAZOR endevours to give it's clients the easiest and effective way of updating their website, over the years RAZOR found Wordpress and other open-source CMS systems vunerable and also not as flexible to modify. Therefore the cost new sites built in Wordpress compared to Zulu, were significantly higher. Also due to the nature of open-source programs, Wordpress was compromised more if not patched regularly.
What makes the new Zulu so much better?
The original release of Zulu 2.0 back in 2011 featured a simple, modern user interface with all the key tasks required to maintain a website, laid out. However, RAZOR observed some clients struggling to modify parts of their websites effectively without 'disturbing' the layout of the page. They also received feedback about the difficulties of adding news articles, adding testimonials or new FAQ's to their website.
Zulu 3.0 was developed to help make it far easier to keep their site up-to-date themselves. Clients can now visually click on a 'block' of content and simply modify the text, click save and not run the risk of corrupting the layout of the page. Pages are now made up into a 'frame' as RAZOR calls it. The frame consists of grids of content blocks (images, text, links, tables etc)... Each content block is individually editable, compared to the WHOLE frame originally being editable, which in some cases affected the overall page layout.
RAZOR also built Zulu 3.0 to be far more intuitive and easy to navigate, the system has a much crisper back-end administration panel and also works on mobile devices.
"While we may invest hundreds of hours in developing our own content management system, we believe the Zulu 3.0 adds value to both parties. Clients of ours get a light, clean, professional and easy-to-use website, but we as a development company can charge less as we save time over our competitors by customising our CMS (Zulu) to compliment our build process to the exact method we want it. We now save so much more time with this system that we can give our clients great value web solutions."
- Matt Reid, Director
