About Kickstart
Kickstart represents a new generation of web development tools designed for small-to-medium businesses.
Kickstart is a framework for the construction of intranet/ extranet web solutions. It supports a very rapid approach to development of complete, reliable solutions that are exceptionally easy to maintain. Unlike most other web development systems Kickstart neither requires traditional web skills in the maintenance of the site nor ties the site owner into expensive technical resources.
The key differences between the Kickstart approach and conventional web development are as follows:
- Rapid development - pages, including layout, can be created and maintained on the fly.
- Simplicity - content can be maintained by anyone with basic computer literacy.
- Flexibility - suitable for any size of system from simple to complex and lends itself to an iterative approach.
- Versatility - creates seemless solutions encompassing intranet, extranet and public website.
- Manageability - all the complexities of ensuring high availablility, security ands safe publishing are built into the system
- Low maintenance - hosting and support are provided as a convenient, low-cost package.
- 100% browser-based - the only development tool you need is a browser and you can work anywhere.
Kickstart's Key Features
- Support for the full life-cycle of web development - from initial concept to long-term maintenance.
- Separation of design from content - allows content developers to easily conform to a site style and designers to work in parallel.
- Powerful database functionality - allows for a personalized interactive experience without programming.
- Unlimited customisation - whatever unusual requirements need to be addressed they can be accomodated with a little extra coding.
The first version of Kickstart runs in a low-cost shared server environment appropriate to small or early-stage businesses. This runs on a Linux/ Apache server and is written in a combination of PHP, perl and Java. The default database is mySQL. The system has been designed so that it can easily be scaled to more powerful platforms and databases as required.
Kickstart is fully operational in a number of live sites. These demonstrate the robustness of the system as well as the ability of non-technicians to create and maintain their sites. However, a continuous improvement programme is in place to allow existing clients to get the benefits of additional general functionality being created for other projects.
Typical Applications
While Kickstart is suited to an almost unlimited range of applications these are some typical applications that play to its strengths. See links for feature detail:
- Online publications
- CRM
- Content management
- Project management
- Event/ conference management
- Decision support
- Market profiling
- eCatalogues
Further reading
These documents are not product-quality. They may, however, give an insight into what Kickstart is rapidly becoming.
No prizes, but Kickstart needs a name and its own domain.
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