ISL is delighted to finally launch a brand new website. It has been 7 years since our old site (on the right) was launched. A lot has happened in the industry - and with ISL - since, and the two sites reflect these changes.
The old site featured a shade of blue then in vogue, and heralded our focus on ATG Dynamo, a proprietary e-commerce and personalization package. We were in part an ATG shop. Open source was in its infancy and hardly something one could sell to clients. We worked with content management platforms like Interwoven, fully-featured and fully complex. We developed deep expertise in these kinds of platforms, but it was terribly difficult to train new staff properly and ridiculously expensive for clients in upgrade and maintenance fees.
Today we are an open-source web development shop. Our new site is built in Drupal, a content-management platform that uses open-source software - Linux, PHP, MySQL - only whispered about 7 years ago. A constant stream of new modules is being contributed by a large developer community (ISL has just contributed its own e-commerce modules to Ubercart, the reigning e-commerce solution for Drupal). These modules cost nothing, and can do most everything. Old problems of scalability are gone; if Drupal can run Jennifer Lopez's wesite (www.jenniferlopez.com) and the New York Observer (www.observer.com), it is good enough for ISL. Today the underlying software we provide to clients is largely free.
Our business has changed as well, not just the technology portion. Search has become essential. Running a Google Adwords campaign can be part of a site build. The web as marketing machine that much of the early dot.com enthusiasm was built around is finally becoming real. Technology, marketing, psychology, design and usability are coming together in permeable ways that change regularly.
The web is still the Wild West. Only you can do more, more quickly, for more people and less cash than ever before.
And yes, grey is the new pink. Or black. Or blue. Here at ISL we are waiting to see how long grey will last as the contemporary web design color (thanks to Drupal, we can change this easily!). On the other hand, grey might just last a long time. It empowers the user to look at buttons or engage with a design and content as much as they want to. It does not jump out at you, it draws you in - if you wish. More than ever, the web is about the user, not the technology. ISL's new site exemplifies our commitment to creating the most elegant and personal means to help clients connect with their communities. Vive le web!
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