Located in the Twin Cities (Minnesota), Concerto Designs is an interactive studio that offers affordable website design, Flash media, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services for small- to medium-sized businesses and non-profit organizations. We specialize in Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) and e-commerce platforms such as Joomla!, Wordpress, Drupal, Silverstripe, CMS Made Simple, Magento, X-Cart, and others. Our clients include businesses and non-profit organizations located in Minnesota (the greater Minneapolis and St. Paul metro area), North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and California.

The Joomla! platform continues to be the most popular CMS in the world, and given the pace and scope of its ongoing development, we predict accelerated growth in the future. Its main strengths are:

• ease of use - it is really designed for the technical laity;
• versatility - there are currently over 3727 extensions with specialized functions for e-commerce, information management, blogging, and vertical markets such as real estate, libraries, restaurants, hotels, auto sales, and genealogy, to mention just a few;
• reliability - the platform has been around for a long time and the development team is rather fanatical about reliability and security.

Joomla! CMS Puts You In Control
Your organization's website ideally plays a dynamic role within an integrated marketing plan. For some businesses, this means a website that features daily specials, product updates, or e-commerce, for others it might involve downloadable brochures, email campaigns with newsletters, blogs, bulletin boards  to handle FAQs, or other dynamic content options. However you put your website to work, Joomla CMS allows you complete flexibility and control so that your website and your business grow together. Clear, streamlined administrative panels and menus allow you to fully update and edit your website. That means your updates happen when your business needs them not when an expensive maintenance plan says you can have them. You save money and your website keeps pace with your business’s growth and change.

Simple, Honest Business Solutions
At Concerto Designs we’re in the business of creating honest web solutions. We believe that’s good for our business and for yours. So all our contracts include the training you need to manage your new Joomla CMS. It’s a logical system that is as easy to use as basic word processing programs. We take you through it step by step. We work closely with you and your staff to ensure you are comfortable using all your Joomla features. Our goal is to make you independent of us. That’s right, once you are comfortable running your website, you won’t need us. And that’s how we believe it should be. We’ll still be here for questions, we’d love to be here for references, we’re always here creating sites, but you won’t need us to manage yours. You’ll have that under control.

Content Management Systems (CMS) allow end-users access to and control over their websites. The primary goal is to disperse and re-channel the flow of ideas and information so that end-users are able to create, edit and revise content, images, and even stylistic choices whenever they wish. Probably the most popular CMS in use today is Joomla, a platform of integrated, dynamic components that allow tremendous flexibility in a wide range of applications. I have created sites for a large ad agency in Chicago, a multi-partner, holistic healing practice in Minnetonka, the music programs at St. Mark's Cathedral (Minneapolis), Abiding Savior Lutheran Church (located at the foot of my street in Mounds View, MN), a world champion Morgan horse farm and training facility in Hugo, MN, and a piano teacher in Anoka, MN.

In addition to creating original designs and templates for these sites, I also provide organic SEO strategies, marketing consultation, and information architecture services.

Many of these sites highlight attractive graphic displays and AJAX features that have been integrated into Joomla and other CMS platforms.

Open Source Solutions

Along with Joomla, I have developed sites in other open source systems such as Wordpress, Modx, phormer, Simple Machines Forum, phpBB, and Serendipity, to name a few. All of these systems integrate user-friendly interfaces and excellent design principles that enhance rather than diminish search engine rankings. In other words, these systems are designed to make websites accessible and easy to locate. Because they tighten the connections between individuals and organizations, they become powerful tools for building communities.

This is not surprising. These systems are developed and supported by developers, programmers, and users across the globe who are not motivated primarily by profit or the desire to dominate or destroy competitors, but rather by a commitment to sharing technologies for the common good. Joomla happens to deliver high quality e-commerce functions as well as content management for non-profit organizations. And it is open-source, that is, free. This translates into lower costs for end-users and extraordinary resources for problem solving and creativity.