StartPoint

StartPoint is the next generation of website management. It is not a Content Management System (or CMS). It is a complete Websites Management System (WMS), providing elements usually cobbled together from several separate places.

=Features= There are several important semantic, technical, usability, etc. issues that need to be kept in mind as we design StartPoint.

Components

 * Content Management (with several choices for navigation systems)
 * WikiWiki
 * Multi-user Multi-blogging
 * Portals
 * Mailing List Management
 * Request Tracking (Features, Bugs, etc.)
 * Web Chat (Customer Service, Sales, Collaboration, Online Meetings, etc.)
 * Shopping Cart
 * Affiliate Program(s)
 * News, Testimonials &amp; Quotes

Other components will be added in the future.

Unified, Flexible, Modular, Invisible Architecture
All components will share a common set of databases. The organization of these databases and the basic services built into the StartPoint Core are the real secret to StartPoint's power, flexibility and extreme ease of use. You do not need computer geniuses to get StartPoint going or to keep it going. You can easily have a website designer who knows nothing of programming build the consistent (or varied, as you desire) look and feel for all of your websites, and run them all from one convenient interface.

For example, one feature of StartPoint's management system is that you can determine the proper workflow for new content. Several authors, marketing personnel, legal staff, etc. can be placed "in the loop" so that new content and content changes are always properly approved before showing up. But, at the same time, you can specify fast-track pathways for when you need to fix some silly little typo or make other small, simple corrections or alterations to your content and do it rapidly.

As with other scalability features, you can have only as much or as little complexity as you choose.

Freedom to Choose
Hooks are built into StartPoint that will permit it to integrate other component systems, such as wikis, blogs, mailing list managers (MLMs), file/download managers and more.

Ease of Use
StartPoint is designed to stay out of the way of getting work done, while guiding novices and experts alike through each process. StartPoint gives you the ability to remain in complete control of all of your website's assets and be more nimble than the competition.

Easy to Understand Administration
Administration that is not overwhelming. All options are simple to understand and phrased such that all values default to unchecked or off. Defaults are designed to be secure, sensible and usable. Every option is carefully considered to be granular enough for a wide variety of needs, with only enough options to get the job done right.

Simple, Low-cost, Scalability
StartPoint lets you work while not locking you into a system that will hamstring growth. StartPoint scales easily and gracefully, growing with your needs.

Elastic Design
An elastic design is one that looks great at whatever dimensions/resolution each user happens to stretch their web browser to.

=Status= The current status is architecting.

=Project Members=
 * Project Lead: Peregrine
 * Developer(s): Cerebius
 * Testers: none assigned (there is no testable code, yet)

= Programming Language(s) &amp; Tools =
 * PHP
 * MySQL, PostgreSQL, IBM DB2