BirkeyBlog

At the company I founded in 1996 called BIRKEY.COM, I was able to build a web design business first as a one man web designer, and then as a team when I merged with a software development firm. Most of my experience in those years was in designing sites for Windows servers using Microsoft based technologies such as Active Server Pages (.ASP) and SQL Server databases.

When I started Headstand Media in 2007, I had the opportunity to start designing for “open source” technologies in addition to Microsoft technology. This development has opened up a hole new world of possibilities from a design, usability and customer service perspective. It also affords my customers to harness the cutting edge Web 2.0 features that are built primarily in open source. Now I can afford to asses the needs of my customers and recommend the best design, search engine optimization AND web 2.0 technology to meet their needs! Fantastic!

One such customer is Sunshine Gospel Ministries, located in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago, near the University of Chicago. Sunshine is a non-profit Christian organization that exists to seek renewal in the city through ministries of discipleship, mercy, and justice. They do this through building relationships, teaching and mentoring, developing life skills, care and advocacy in their community. They’ve got a fantastic facility, a great staff and a great reputation in the community. They are a joy to work with!

Headstand Media was asked to assess the current Sunshine website, to help them define a web strategy for the future, and then implement a new Chicago website design and content management system and search engine optimization to meet those strategic goals.

We determined that an open source tool called Drupal (see Drupal.org) was the best content management system for Sunshine for a number of good reasons:

• Low cost - it’s FREE - and this is a non-profit ministry!
• No future license costs for upgrades - also FREE.
• Runs on a standard LINUX hosting package, which is extremely affordable - usually around $100 per year. (This sounded good to them as well!)
• Very large and mature worldwide developer community
• Very informative and easy to use website found at drupal.org
• Extensibility: loads of features can be added in a modular fashion - also free!
• Widely used by many other corporations, organizations and associations
• Very search engine friendly taxonomy and navigation - helps their site get found in the search engines.
• Written in open source PHP and uses the mySQL database (also free)

We also decided that Sunshine would be able to manage and maintain their website themselves with minimal training and orientation with this powerful Content Management tool. We were right!

My firm, Headstand Media was able to design a new interface and a new look to better brand and position Sunshine as a Chicago based urban ministry. We were able to wrap the new design around the Drupal CMS fairly easily. We finessed their new logo, and created other ministry logos to help them better position themselves and their brand visually. We integrated Flash animation and Flash video with ease. The Drupal CMS tool was great to work with.

The new Sunshione Gospel site was launched on March 24, 2008 - almost one month ago. In that short time, their website is now #5 for a Google keyword search on “chicago urban ministry,” and #3 for “chicago urban ministries.” It was virtually lost and very hard to find before this web redesign and SEO project. Their new site is competing with the other big Chicago-based urban ministries such as: Breakthrough Urban Ministries and Circle Urban Ministries.

I get a lot of personal satisfaction and fulfillment knowing that we were able to make such a huge difference for the better in such a short time. I believe in what Sunshine is doing and so the personal satisfactions is even greater! I am hoping that their ministry will increase and grow in part because of our contribution.

Check them out at www.sunshinegospel.org

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