3…2…1… blastoff!

I finally launched the new site for Bloomingfoods. I say finally because it was a project that was messy.  One team of people started it two or three years ago.  They were slow, chose a CMS that was not well supported (just two developers!) and although they managed to do some great work wireframing and creating a navigation, the whole project eventually fell apart.

I took the project on at the same time as I was the project manager for the remodel of our restaurant into a grocery store. (This is the mark of insanity.) Regardless, I put the site on hold for a few months, created some breathing room.  I found an open source CMS that I liked and it was installed about a year ago. It took me a bit to learn Joomla (all while building a grocery store,) but I am happy with it. (I plan on learning Drupal also.) We started testing templates and finally settled on one from RocketTheme – but there have been some modifications to it.

What you see on the site is the result of three people (and me!) who have been very determined to get it done. Our webmaster is a volunteer. Bob is unbelievably dedicated and I am thankful for all the energy he has put into making the site happen. Kyle worked on the template for us. I think it is beautiful. I can’t stop looking at it.  My co-worker Steve has been supportive of the project and willing to learn Joomla.  He has been creating content and filling the site with great information. 15 days ago he linked thousands of our members to the dev site via our e-news and I think it got our team motivated to launch.

What a relief it is to have it out there. We have some issues to resolve, things to get posted. And then we plan to do a big update, new version of Joomla with changes to the template, scheduled for the fall. I am so pleased with the new site.  Within 6 minutes of it being out there, we had a phone call from one of our members telling us how beautiful it is. I am so thankful for that, amazed by that.