Mindfly Website Design Studio

Bellingham, WA, December 10, 2009 – Mindfly Web Design Studio recently released Boogaloo, an open source customizable site creation framework and content management system (CMS). Unlike other site creation frameworks, Boogaloo allows the designer to control almost every aspect of the HTML and CSS, page by page.

In 2006, Mindfly co-founder and owner Rusty Swayne began the search for a CMS that would fulfill the diverse needs of both Mindfly Web Design Studio staff and their clients. After reviewing a variety of existing content management systems that did not satisfy all of his requirements, Swayne and the Mindfly team spent the next three years developing Boogaloo.

“Ironically, I do not think of what we produced as a traditional content management system; rather, I consider it to be more of a ‘site creation framework.’ After all, a successful installation of Boogaloo simply renders a blank page,” Swayne explained.

The benefits of using Boogaloo to build your website include:

• Ability to produce standards-compliant websites in ASP.NET
• Freedom to conceptualize and create any design within the framework
• Absolute control over underlying HTML and semantic markup for the front-end designer
• Rapid implementation of any design alterations to a single page or every page on a site
• Easy for both front-end designers and clients to learn and use

Boogaloo makes producing standards-compliant websites a breeze for web designers, web developers and engineers, and clients.

For a free download, visit Boogaloo from Codeplex. Updated versions of Boogaloo and documentation are currently in progress. Boogaloo users are invited to join the Discussion to ask questions and offer comments.

A little more than three years ago I began outlining a Content Management System (CMS) based on the needs of my business, Mindfly Web Design Studio.  I spent the first two years and quite a few weekends , coding nearly every night and came up with an initial version.  Once completed, the studio began doing some internal and external usability studies and has spent the better part of a year completely reworking the interface.  The studio staff overwhelmingly decided to name it Boogaloo and I am very pleased to announce its open source debut on Codeplex.

My motivation to write Boogaloo was not without hesitation.  In 2006, I had decided to attempt a transition from a "shop", mainly known locally for its server side and database programming, into a "studio" that placed a much heavier emphasis on Web Design and seriously focused on producing web sites that validate and conform to Web Standards.  Even in retrospect, this maneuver turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. 

Mindfly's clientele mainly consists of small businesses and we often deal with people who find themselves too busy to learn how a website functions and frankly many of them, rightfully, don't care.  We hear the phrase "I don't care how it works, I just want it to work" so often we could consider it a mantra.

In addition, aside from a small percentage of small business owners, there is very little inherent appreciation to the amount of work and often how much technical expertise is actually required to create certain site functionality.  When defining a project scope, "That's pretty easy, right?" is another phrase we hear nine out of ten times and is a literal testament of that fact. 

Therefore, the change in emphasis was simply having a better understanding of our current and potential customers.  However, the transition, was fraught with challenges and it quickly became obvious that we needed to either spend a great deal of time updating our in house CMS or select an open source (or inexpensive)CMS written in ASP.NET, which three years ago relative to php systems, were in short supply. 

In 2006, I personally found it impossible to find an ASP.NET CMS that met the following criteria:

1. Quick for the front end designer to learn
2. Capable of producing non table based designs
3. Gives the visual designer the freedom to literally conceptualize and create any design
4. Provides the front end designer with absolute control over the underlying HTML in order implement the design with semantic markup.

Initially I reviewed DotNetNuke, Community Server and Umbraco and made a pros and cons list.  I played with DNN the most, and I did not care much for Community Server albeit many people love it.  I probably did not spend enough time looking through the ins and outs of Umbraco but quickly came to the notably incorrect conclusion that repetitive customer service calls from non technical customers would increase significantly and admit I was extremely nervy about that possibility after discontinuing our hosting services.

That being said, I would say that each of these projects were extremely influential.  Other project muses include BlogEngine.NET and Argotic, both written by insanely talented programmers.

Ironically, I do not think of what we produced as a traditional content management system, rather I consider it to be more of a "site creation framework";  Something more analogous to a server side JQuery if there were such a category.  After all, a successful installation simply renders a blank page.

There has been quite a bit of discussion as to whether or not "a blank page" was the appropriate way to debut our project, but our conclusion has thus far been that once one gets used to using the application, having to delete the default website for every single installation would really become more of an obstacle rather than a feature.

The studio is currently moving full steam ahead with its efforts to better document Boogaloo via wiki, articles, and videos.  We look forward to the discussions, comments and constructive criticisms.