A web site represents a major investment of resources. In choosing a supplier, and a system, it is important to ensure that:

• your risks are minimised
• the site represents a foundation that can be built on
• you are not locked in

Portability

There are many content management systems, both open source and proprietary. To reduce risks, you need to ensure that the system you choose is not stuck where it is, that it is not dependent on extraordinary server configurations, that the underlying system is upgradeable, and that developers with the appropriate skills are available. A number of common systems, such as those based on Zope/Plone and Drupal simply do not meet these criteria.

TYPO3 is:

• based on PHP and mySQL, the most common development platform, available to virtually any hosting, and supported by hundreds of thousands of developers
• comes from a thriving development community, with new releases and maintenance releases contantly under development
• contains software which enables you to back up all your information, and transfer it directly to another TYPO3 installation, and ensuring that you cannot be locked in

Scalability

Scalability measures the risk that your investment will be open to supporting growth, both in the site and in your organisation.

TYPO3 is very scalable. It can be used to do virtually anything that is done on the net, and can manage very large and busy sites.

Only the largest organisations (larger than, say, a local authority in the UK) are likely to reach its limitations.

As appropriate it can be combined with other, more specialised, software such as CRM systems on the same server, and these can be accessed directly through the front-end web interface.

Upgradability

Upgradability measures the risk that when your software platform, or your company identity is upgraded, your site will be left behind, becasuse it is incompatible with the new version.

TYPO3 Being both open-source and modular,  is open to you to expand, extend and customise any of its functionality - even if the originating company were to cease to exist.

As a platform, it is continually under development, and backwards compatibility is supported by providing a simple system for upgrading old database tables to support the new version.

In addition, the basic principle of a  content management system  is to put you in control of being able to upgrade the content of the site instantly, whenever you want or need to.

Separation of content and presentation

This measures the risk that the content on your web site might become isolated, and also that a change in your corporate branding could lead to the need to completely replace the site, because the design is mixed in with the content, or that the rise of a new technology (handheld devices, for example) could lead to the need to abandon the current system.

TYPO3 separates the content of your site from the design, and uses a very standard database. This means that the information in the database is available to other applications, so that you could, in principle, use the same data to generate material across a range of media.

Changing the design of a site can be done easily when required, at little more than the cost of generating the new design - ensuring that your investment in content is safeguarded.

Adherence to standards

This addresses the risk that your site will be illegal, or will fail to meet grant criteria, because it fails to meet the demands of the relevant legislation for accessibility. 

A further risk is that the use of deprecated elements will lead to the code becoming dysfunctional as they are dropped from browser rendering engines.

Web sites which Gate Seven design and engineer are highly standards compliant, and semantically based, enforcing the separation of design and content. Content is formatted by using CSS, which makes it easy for the layout to support different devices such as printers and hand-helds.

All accessibility issues can be addressed to the appropriate standards.