Our Beginning
Started in January 2000, Lotus Creations was a development shop specialized in the creation of high quality HTML code. Our experience and knowledge of coding standards and design, allowed us to work efficiently with programmers and designers to produce great looking sites with functionality in mind.
In 2001, we were involved in an eCommerce project that required the use of osCommerce (www.oscommerce.com). An open source e-commerce solution for online shops, it was one of the growing applications of the time. For this project, we were required to template the site and also setup the systems backend with product entries. This experience taught us 2 things. Firstly, osCommerce had a complex admin user interface making it difficult for a novice to use. Secondly, integrated code logic within the HTML page made it cumbersome to update and prevented junior HTML coders to work with the project.
Over the years, we continued to develop sites with other open source CMS applications. Consistently, we came across certain common problems:
- The creativity of the site was limited by what the system can produce
- The admin interface were cumbersome to our clients, and were not simplistic enough
It was possible to modify the codebase of other systems, and custom code modules, but these system had the tendency to have a bloated code structure and people had to learn how the system was programmed, hence we would need to hire more programmers that were specialist in these applications.
Lotus CMS was born
In 2004, we decided to venture into creating our own CMS. We knew exactly what we wanted. We immediately identified the core stakeholders of the system, the client, the graphic designers, the HTML/CSS designers and the programmers. The site that our CMS were targeting included brochure sites, photo gallery sites, portfolio sites and static sites with some advanced features. We understood that our client base didn't want all the fancy features that lots of CMS's had, but they liked certain features like photo galleries, news listings and product listings. Taking designers into consideration, we created a system that was flexible enough to allow designers to create what they wanted and have their designs integrated into the system.
In order to satisfy our core group of stakeholders, we identified a few points that we wanted our system to have:
- Simple Admin UI
- Admin UI that has the exact same design flexibility as the front-end
- Flexible templating system – for those HTML/CSS designers out there
- All logic must be offloaded from the templates – once again, a designer focused feature
- Easy module creation and integration
- Adopt an MVC architecture for flexible development
Our Evolution to who we are today
Our evolution could be defined by the evolution of the web. With its growing population of users, more and more people have faster connections and faster computers, allowing greater interactivity with websites. A lot of large businesses have invested heavily into the evolution of their websites so that their sites could provide an even better user experience, which in turn creates more satisfied users.
Due to the high cost involved in creating an absolutely unique interactive experience, small to medium sized businesses have refrained from taking steps in redeveloping their websites thinking that their cost to entry is too high. Some have opted to go for lower cost solutions that are less than optimal in their execution.
In order to provide small to medium sized businesses with interactive content, we've evolved to provide professional consultation and services that provide cost effective solutions that could provide websites with greater interactive content in a cost effective manner. These service include: Website conversion and intergration with an open source CMS, custom module development, AJAX development, and Flash programming and design services.
