With so many CMS options to choose from, why LRS Antilles? This is a question our team gets frequently. Here's what we tell them.
For the most popular platforms, such as WordPress, the software developers that build the content management system are not implementing the software for real-world applications every day.
Sure it's free and seems easy to implement ... at first.
At LRS, the people that created the software also build your website.
This is a unique attribute in the world of content management software.
By using LRS Antilles, the team that builds your site is the same team that built the core platform from the ground up. This means customizations can more easily and quickly be put into the base software package and rolled out to your site in an update. LRS Web Solutions manages the updates and release schedule. There is no reliance on a third party. Why is this important?
But other platforms have so many plug-ins and widgets available
This is true, other platforms have a large base of community-contributed modules and vendor-supplied modules. While this can be a good fit for some projects there are potential issues. Let's look at an example. Your site is built on the popular platform, WordPress, version X. the newest shiniest best version of the product ever. You find a really awesome theme that you love, purchase it at a very inexpensive price and install it. You also need to display news articles, so you find a free plugin to do what you need, download and install it. While you're at it, you find plugins to display events, one to show alerts, a fancy SEO plugin, an inexpensive eCommerce module to sell a few of your products and another to build custom forms. I forgot to mention all of these pieces were built by and maintained by different developers. You have a super awesome site ready to go, at a relatively inexpensive, up-front cost and you're up and running pretty quickly.
Now, let's fast-forward 6 months down the road:
WordPress has released a new version, X.2. It has several security vulnerability updates that could open your site to several hacks, along with some bug fixes. It's really simple to upgrade your WordPress version, so that's what you do, no problem. The upgrade goes without a hitch, with a few exceptions. The news module that was installed will not run on version X.2 of Wordpress and there is not an update yet. The eCommerce module does not work, and the developer is no longer making updates to the plugin. You'll have to find your own PHP developer now to make changes to this 3rd party module.
Upon further testing, you find there are issues with the theme, and it needs to be updated to the newest version to prevent hackers from easily injecting malware into your site. However, it cannot be upgraded to the new version of WordPress. Now the decision has to be made to roll back to a version of WordPress with vulnerabilities to fix the security issues with your theme or run on the newest version of WordPress but on an insecure theme.
These issues continue to stack up and make maintaining a secure site very difficult when you're working with so many different vendors and developers.
LRS Antilles modules are created in-house.
The LRS Web Solutions team created LRS Antilles CMS, and we continue to make improvements and build new modules to better serve our clients.
We know the inner workings of LRS Antilles. We do not have to submit a ticket to the software vendor or post a question on a forum to find an answer. We can take care of it sometimes in a matter of minutes.
Because all the plugins come from the same family, these modules work together and easily join your existing website. New modules we've created include an alerts module, blog module, e-commerce modules, and much more!
Having new features included as part of the base package means fewer customizations to your website. Less custom code results in easier upgrades, and fewer issues with adding new features and applying bug fixes and updates.
At LRS Web Solutions, you get a full team of developers and managers to help you with your website.
A lot of it is done by us behind the scenes, so you never have to worry about fixes and upgrades! If you need help, all you have to do is submit a Helpdesk ticket and our staff will respond quickly. Your account representative is always available if you have a question.
Plus, you get to have input on the future of this product
What's so exciting about this is that you get to provide input on the product roadmap and what features we need. The most important feedback that we can get is from people using the software every day. Users are who will shape this product into what it will become. Users can tell us what features are going to be the most useful, what changes are going to save time, or what tweaks can be made to make our software even better.
By choosing LRS Antilles YOU get to shape the future of the CMS that you're using. Not a Software Architect who has never maintained a website. Not a Software Engineer who thinks they know how you should be using their system. But you, someone using the software every single day. You get to help us shape the future of LRS Antilles.
And this is why you should choose LRS Antilles for your next web site build.