I’m sure, by now, that you’re aware of just how powerful a system Pearl really is. Having everything in one place wherever you go is, well, handy. But what most people don’t realise yet is that you can wrap it all up sweetly and present it to your own clients and customers ribbon-tied in the form of a website, be it for mere presence or actually as a platform to sell from. It makes total sense: a system that already takes care of your sales, purchases, stock, accounts, customers and comms is sitting pretty for a public face to be dropped on top of it, automating the entire process. And it works, too. (Did we mention that the future version 3 will make your morning tea for you?)
In all seriousness, Pearl is an immensely powerful content management system in itself. Only one side of a multi-faceted application yet completely interconnected with the rest of your business, it’s the logical place to put your site. Scrap that, it’s the only place to put your site. Sure, there are better CMS’s out there with richer WYSIWYG editing and so on (I’ve used, reviewed and developed on them all), but that’s all they do. Try asking your current system to integrate with your retail till, or let your B2B clients reprint invoices, view statements, or add comments to quotes. Besides, this particular face of Pearl isn’t fully grown up yet: we’re working on some pretty exciting advancements (all a bit hush hush at the moment but to keep you guessing: open themes, on-the-fly XHTML/CSS edits and a tasty graphical environment) that will allow even the non-technical user to build stunning W3C valid portals and ecommerce applications. But advancements aside, the system will always indulge the more adventurous amongst us by catering for raw code entry, and as a result the possibilities are nigh on endless.
Over the coming months we’re going to be writing a number of posts, each one focusing on one particular area of designing with Pearl. We’ll kick off with the way in which categories and pages are handled, and how to use the menu widget in your templates to pull through beautifully styled, fully dynamic and entirely customisable navigation. Looking forward, topics and tutorials will cover everything from the more practical – setting up client access areas and working with custom fields; to the more aesthetic – graphically heavy designs, multiple templates, intelligent layouts, and using jQuery to aid user experience. That’s just a taster – If you have any questions about site design with Pearl, a suggestion for a topic or even ideas for improving functionality, we’d love to hear it.
Stay tuned!
-Jay.
Tags: CMS, integration, web design
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