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powerful platforms, superb scalability and massive savings.
Emotech is well positioned as a web development company providing professional software and web development services for open source and established powerful platforms.
Web site development and design, custom web application development, web programming, ecommerce web development, search engine optimisation & web site maintenance services - our experience and strong technical competence enables us to deliver scalable solutions that meet customer's needs and expectations while regarding to cost, quality and project timeframes.
Emotech guarantees quality, competent and rapid execution of any open source based projects - from small web sites to complex e-commerce software and custom solution programming.
- Template & Design Integration
- Custom Application Development
- Installations & Configuration
- Updates, Patches & Security Fixes
What Is Open Source?
Open Source software is mostly distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, modify, redistribute and use the software freely. Open source software can be developed by community of programmers interested in software applications for a specific purpose. Businesses and companies are also seeing the benefits of developing open source software. These companies will distribute their software for free and make their money from support contracts and customised development.
Most open source software is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). The GNU GPL allows you to copy, use, modify, redistribute the software but prohibits companies or individuals from making modified versions proprietary. Richard Stallman, a McArthur genius award recipient, developed this license, in order to encourage the development of a software sharing community.
Tens of thousands of developers and several large corporations such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Intel have chosen to participate in the open source software movement. Some of most successful and robust software on the web today has been developed under this license.
Why Use Open Source?
Security and Protection of Data: There is a myth that open source software is more vulnerable to attack than proprietary solutions. Actually, the opposite is often true. Because the source code is exposed, it is often easier for a security minded software community to close security holes or breeches.
Cost: Open Source software available under the GNU GPL license is free. In some cases, you may choose to pay for the distribution (compiled version that contains installable executable software on CD ROM). The cost of the distribution is generally trivial compared to the cost of many enterprise level commercial offerings. In addition, the developers of many of the open source solutions offer support contracts that are suitable to all levels of business or organization.
Software Source Code: When you purchase a license to use most commercial software, you are dependent on the software designer to add features or customize the software for the needs of your business or organisation. The software manufacturer provides you with only the executable program. You do not have access to the source code. With open source software, you are free to modify the software and customize it in order to suit your application.
Scalability and Robustness: a large community of highly skilled software developers has created open source solutions, such as Linux, Perl, and Apache. As you can see from our examples, open source software is used across a full spectrum of web sites. Open source UNIX based operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD are extremely robust and efficient as they are suitable for both small and large organisations.
Large Support Community: a large community of developers that communicate through on-line discussion groups supports many open source offerings. This allows common problems to be easily solved and bugs to be quickly exposed and fixed.
What Open Source Solutions Does Emotech Use?
Emotech uses a combination of commercial development tools and Open Source Software. We have chosen a combination of tools that will help us develop the best and most cost effective web site designs for our clients.
Web Site Development Tools
We use Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash. Dreamweaver is used by over 70% of web design professionals (source: PC Data). We also use software chosen by individual team members such as Coda, Genopal, Sitescope and many more.
Web Programming Language
Emotech uses PHP for Server Side application development. PHP is an open source solution built from the ground up specifically for web applications. PHP enjoys a large developer community. PHP runs under Linux and can be compiled as an Apache module. This makes PHP very fast. PHP is one of the fastest growing development languages on the web. Over 20 million domains (about 1,000,000 IP addresses) are running PHP (source: http://www.php.net/usage.php). PHP is fast, robust and scalable.
Database
We use MySQL. MySQL is an open source high performance relational database management system (RDMS). MySQL is widely used on the web and has Interfaces (APIs) to most programming languages including C++, Java, PHP, Perl as well as OBDC. How does MySQL stack-up against commercial offerings?
In terms of raw speed, MySQL benchmarks faster than many other databases such as Microsoft’s SQL Server and performs favorably against industry heavyweights such as Oracle. MySQL is fast because it was designed primarily as a web based relational database management system. MySQL is used Yahoo, Slash dot, and Linux Today. In addition, MySQL is used as a backend database at NASA and NASA Kids web sites. eCommerce & Content Management
Platforms & Frameworks
Emotech uses only a select few platforms to develop web sites for our clients. Unless we are commissioned to build an application from the ground up, we utilise one of the following solutions as a launch pad:
- osCommerce
- Magento eCommerce
- Wordpress
- Expression Engine
We are always looking out for excellent, powerful, trusted and secure Open Source solutions that will benefit our clients. Emotech is currently researching the benefits of:
- TYPOlight webCMS
- Symfony Web PHP Framework
- Zend Framework