Asked — Edited

Best Website Management To Support Robotics-Based Startup?

I hope this discussion question is appropriate for community consideration.

I'm way impressed with the EZ-Robot website, especially with the availability of finestkind resources and support. I'm wondering if DJ is willing to share the choice he made regarding in-house development vs third party website management.

And just as useful would be similar decisions made by those of you who have established a business entity.

I'm in the process of writing a business plan, and the cost of web presence, both dollars and time, are an important consideration.

Thanks in advance for any help.


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#1  

I am pretty sure that he is using dotnetnuke. There is some custom programming that has been implemented also, but there are a number of plugins available to make it pretty much what you want it to be. It is an easy install and can be hosted really easy by some providers. I can recommend PowerDNN.com. They are really easy to work with.

United Kingdom
#2  

DJ mentioned in the past that the website is all bespoke and custom made. By building a website from scratch you can be pretty sure it wont fall foul to many of the usual security flaws associated with other, pre-made backends such as wordpress, phpbb etc.

That said, I always use pre-made backends now. They are easier and faster to set up, security is pretty good and they do the job. Some, such as Wordpress, have a huge community also which always helps.

PRO
Synthiam
#3  

Thank you for the compliments :)

The website is entirely custom with no third party components, not that anyone wanting to develop their own wants to hear that, ha. I started making my own "blogging" software for my personal website in 2006 and the ez-robot website is a branch of that. The back end is .Net 4.5 and the database is MySql.

As for the html, it was modified to be "responsive" by our talented ex-employee Chrissi.

I've always been the main developer at ez-robot, and that includes both the website and ARC software, mobile apps, firmware, etc..

If you're looking at making a website - the number of features which we provide are custom and therefore a little difficult and expensive to have programmed. I would recommend starting with limited features, such as an online store. I don't know what web framework is available, so i'm not going to be very useful for recommendations. If you are hoping to have many tutorials and information, ensure the framework that you select is the easiest to edit and manage :)