Smallbox software
Smallbox Software is a content management company based in Victoria, BC, Canada. Founded in 1999, Smallbox Software markets version 5 of its flagship product Smallbox CMS. The scalable system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, eCommerce, eNewsletters, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, image galleries, file libraries, search, and video playback. Smallbox is proprietary software that uses PHP and MySQL to manage and deliver content over the world wide web.
Overview
Founded in 1999, Smallbox Software is a content management system provider specializing in creating dynamic websites that enable its clients to effectively communicate their business, message and brand. Smallbox CMS is a powerful and intuitive hosted CMS solution that offers unparalleled content control and configuration flexibility. Smallbox CMS is the result of an initial collaboration of programmers, multimedia and graphic designers to develop a design-friendly content management platform that achieves a balance between form and function.
Product
Smallbox CMS is a design-friendly content management system that allows marketing experts to connect their brand with the software's powerful interface. The CMS features a rich suite of tools that allow individuals to update and maintain website content without having to know how to edit or program HTML/PHP. Modules include article management, blogs, calendar of events, discussion forums, document library, eCommerce, eNewsletter, FAQs, image gallery, polls, search, sitemap, and video display and management. Because the CMS is flexible, modules May Be added or deleted as required. Each module ties in to the core application module, which enables edit/version tracking, time stamping, date publishing, search engine optimization (SEO) and user administration. The company also offers consulting services for site planning and development, site marketing, and custom application programming.
Philosophy
The consistent theme behind Smallbox CMS is that it empowers designers and end-users to have large, graphically-rich websites made through the fundamentals of MySQL/PHP, templates, javascript libraries, CSS and dynamic image creation. Part of this means that images - that would normally be created in programs such as Photoshop in a custom font - can be entered by the user in plain text, and the image version will be automatically created for output on the public side. This helps create a consistent look and feel for pages on sites that have hundreds of pages that the designer would otherwise have to make hundreds of images for, export them, and reference them on each page. The prospect of maintenance becomes a relatively simple one because of the dynamic image creation - if the page name changes, the graphical text will automatically change to suit. This philosophy of empowering the designer and the end user at the same time extends to navigation and drop-down menu creation. Navigation and site structure is centralized in a way that allows for one change to the sitemap to effect page titles, page addresses, image text headers, navigation, subnavigation, drop down menus, and the public sitemap all at once. This means the margin for error is greatly decreased on large sites that feature complex navigation. Such errors can be costly to the user experience, and Smallbox CMS mitigates this risk with this type of navigation centralization.
Company History
Founded in 1999, Smallbox Software is a content management systems provider specializing in creating dynamic websites that enable users to effectively communicate their business, message and brand. The company maintains offices in Victoria and Vancouver, BC, Canada.