Content management systems (CMS) offer a new way of thinking about and using the internet.

A CMS is a software program that runs online creating a framework for organizing and presenting content in a logical and straightforward format. 

This provides for an exceptional on-line experience for both user and creator.

YdW provides you with a simple way to:

Drupal

Yellow dotWorks uses Drupal as our CMS-infrastructure. Drupal (pronounced /ˈdruːpəl/) is a free and open source modular framework and content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP. Drupal, allows the system administrator to create and organize content, customize the presentation, automate administrative tasks, and manage site visitors and contributors. Although there is a sophisticated programming interface, tasks can be accomplished with little or no programming. Drupal is sometimes described as a "web application framework," as its capabilities extend from content management to enabling a wide range of services and transactions.

Drupal runs in many environments, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and any platform that supports either the Apache (version 1.3+), or IIS (version IIS5+) Web server and the PHP language (version 4.3.3+). Drupal requires a database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL to store content and settings.

The Drupal community of developers are all partners in making Drupal the most flexible and robust CMS's on the web today. They can also be relied upon to constantly improve and refine the code base making it safe and secure.

Yellow dotWorks (YdW)  community-building features go beyond the limits of conventional website technologies, offering superior interactive user-participation tools.

Research indicates that all successful communities share three core elements:  Mission, Stakeholders and Communications.

YdW refers to Mission as Academics, Stakeholders as People, and Communications as Information in an academic environment.

MISSION/ACADEMICS: The primary activities for a college department comprise its Mission. This typically includes areas of study, programs offered, specific courses offered, research activities, services and outreach.

STAKEHOLDERS/PEOPLE: Common stakeholders within a college department include future, current and past students, faculty and staff , corporate research affiliates, and donors.

COMMUNICATIONS/INFORMATION: Standard online communications can take the form of news, events and information. These include newsletters and opportunity notifications regarding awards, grants, internships, jobs, calls for papers, community service, etc.

Your department/college deserves a memorable, professional, unified image.

Having your image consistently woven throughout your website along with all your electronic and print media needs will generate a professional unified look that will create awareness recognition for your department/college.

Image coordination is based in the creation of key design elements that when coupled with your logo, can be consistently woven throughout all your media needs.

The result is a strong, professional, meaningful, coordinated identity that makes your department/college more recognizable and able to generate the attention you deserve.

In a managed hosting environment, your provider owns and is responsible for the data center, network, devices, operating system and application infrastructure components, providing a stable operating environment for your applications. Your IT organization manages your applications and maintains full control over the operating system and application infrastructure.

IT hosting, on the other hand, actually goes a step further and includes the management of your applications. Managed hosting provides more value than collocation and dedicated hosting because it frees more of your IT personnel from mundane infrastructure related tasks, personnel that can now be reallocated to understanding and supporting your business more effectively. Managed hosting also provides greater responsiveness than fully outsourced solutions because it emphasizes a flexible bottom up approach to delivering value that puts you fully in control of your OS, application infrastructure and application.

Yellow dotWorks (YdW) offers two types of hosting solutions.

First, for those clients who simply wish for us to host their Yellow dotWorks website/CMS, we offer the opportunity to share space on our Rackspace® server with us. For a flat monthly fee, your site will be safe and your data secure next to ours. You will have control of your site's passwords and we will provide you with a development copy of your site. This development copy site is provided so you can make major changes to your site before revealing those changes to the world on your live site.

Second, through Yellow dotWorks (a Rackspace® Select Partner) you can purchase your own space directly at Rackspace® (instead of sharing the YdW space).