Natetronn

Okay I’m back with part 2 of “This is not going to be a bashing session!”

Well before I actually realized I wasn’t going to ever talk to them again I started doing research. So now I have all this information stuffed in my head with no where to go. So I thinks to myself, how can I get rid of it and still feel like I have been of help to someone. That’s when I get the idea to write this post and unleash all that I had learned.

So here it is, the stuff that I learned:

I learned in the meeting that one of the clients top 4 competitors in our area is San Diego Magazine. Oh ya, I am not going to be the judge on this one as far as if the said client is actually really that much competition for San Diego Mag or not though, I will say, web site wise, SD Magazine is light years ahead.

I knew they were light years ahead and the client considered them competition so, I thought I would pull out my trusty firebug add-on for FireFox and go to work on San Diego Magazine’s website to see how much sleuthing I could get done before I talked with the client the following day (again, never happened.) I didn’t even have to open up firebug (darn!) to see right away that SD Magazine was using a online publishing system called Revista.

Revista is a product from a company that goes by the name of Godengo, Inc. Their system looks very robust and is specifically designed for clients who own magazines and want to take their magazines online. They have clients from all across the U.S. including Chicago Magazine, Palm Springs Life and, as I mentioned, San Diego Magazine.

So with this knowledge I decided to contact Godengo, Inc. to see if I could find anymore information out in regards to their product and whether or not it would be a good option for my client. Keep in mind I was going to recommend to the client to completely redo their website all together with a whole new CMS. That alone would have got them going in the right direction and would be the first step before any “SEO Experts” should be called in. In fact I think that in itself would have been a huge step in the right direction. You know, build your base first.

So like I said I contacted Godengo and spoke with Peter Stilsen who is the CEO of the company. Peter was very helpful and setup a nice demonstration via Adobe Connect so I could see how the admin side of things in Revista were handled. I thought the system looked very well built and would be a perfect option for the client.

Now I will say you could achieve something very similar using Wordpress and a few other CMS out there today though, it would take quite sometime to accomplish and allot of times I find corporate companies want to have a good support system in place should they ever need it even if they have to pay extra for it. Now I am not going to go into all the details about Revista and what makes it a good system but I will say this; it’s not exactly cheap, though Peter was nice enough and offered to knock off a cool 2 grand from the total if I provided a project manager, which of course in this case would have been me. So I thought that was very nice of Peter to do especially with everyone talking about the economy being in the state that it’s in and what not.

Now that I knew all about Revista and was prepared to bring what I had learned to the client I decided to go on the hunt once more to see if I could find something similar to what Peter was offering, you know,  just as a backup in case it came down to price with the client and Revista. In which case I would offer the client a second (or even third) option for a fraction of the price. I guess I was just trying to cover as many bases as I could.

I also have to admit I was a bit worried the client was going to not want to hear the fact that I thought he should totally “can” the site he had and start over fresh and build it from the ground up the “correct way.” Though, that’s what I felt was the honest answer, plus deep down was what the client needed and was actually asking for. Whether the client knew it or even wanted to hear that, well we never got to that point so I can’t say.

Okay so far you’ve read my lead in and now option 1 which was Revista from Godengo, Inc. In the next post, part 3, I am going to give you my option 2 which is by no means a lesser option then 1, just different.