It has been a while since I last updated our website and believe me, it has always been pain to make manual changes especially on the graphics if you don’t have the source codes. A complete makeover is in order, so I scoured the internet for a better solution, comparing all the available open source content management systems (CMS) out there. I tried Drupal CMS and found it has a great many open source applications available but nothing on the free templates to make the site jump out of the page. I found Mambo CMS but the limited modules, components and templates made me think twice. And then there was Mambo’s stronger cousin - Joomla. With hundreds of free modules, components and templates, I decided I will stick on this one as my framework.

I think I made a wise decision in choosing Joomla as CMS platform for our site since it offered me great flexibility with lots of possibilities - from forums, to calendars, to event sign-up systems, to document repository - you name it, Joomla has it. The open source community is great with lots of support and discussion boards to troubleshoot your technical problems.

Already in pre-production mode, the site is looking fantastic with all the goodies that the parents, teachers and administrator will find useful. And as I have promised the parents two school openings ago, I will develop a website that is both interactive and functional so that everybody involved will have a useful tool to make early childhood education a much easier and enjoyable task.

I just hope that teachers and parents will use this site more often to communicate, get useful information, share thoughts and feelings and automate every day tasks for the betterment of the children.