Building Websites

If you are a regular visitor to any of the Co-operation Ireland websites, you have probably noticed by now that changes are afoot. Since the start of the year we have been working with a team of designers in Belfast (the nice guys in Liquid Ice Design ) to re-design all our websites.

We have a new theme for the main site, and a simpler theme derived from it for all the sub-sites.

For anyone who is interested in how it is built, we've been using a whole bunch of open source software tools.

• The Drupal CMS is the heart of things. This in turn relies on:
• The PHP scripting language
• The PostgreSQL database
• The Apache web server
• ... and last but not least the FreeBSD operating system.

For me, as the network administrator of a charity, the advantages of open source tools like these are:

First and foremost, the cost. It's hard to beat 'free' for licence costs.

Secondly, and just as significant, the quality of freely available documentation. In fact, my preferred open source operating system and database were determined at least in part by the respective documentation projects back in ancient history (about eight to ten years ago) when I found the help available for FreeBSD and PostgreSQL at that time to be extensive, concise and readable. This first impression has lasted through the years.