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G-site Qualifications
Communty Portals
Community portals are not a new idea, but because the original excitement of the commercial Internet was in its global reach, its local potential was long over-looked.
Local Relevance No matter how interesting the global aspect of the Net was, and still is, in most cases it is not as relevant as the 10 square mile radius that we live in. As a result, one of the most useful aspects of the Internet has long been eclipsed – its ability to make you more aware of your own neighborhood and town. The creation of Long Beach OnLine.net Community Intranet is an example of the many varied features that the Internet is capable of delivering. Focusing on local news, sales and community interactivity, this portal showcases many of G-site's core technical abilities as well as our ability to create an online environment that is pleasant, relevant and informative. This site includes a "Long Beach Only" search engine -- a searchable database of web sites that are especially relevant to this community -- the search engine can be tailored to any specific community or specialized application. Because of its niche focus it will eventually become the most comprehensive community specific database availabe anywhere. Serving as an example, Long Beach OnLine.net features a special "OnSale" component engineered to help the visitor find local merchandise, in local stores! Think of your town as one huge department store and The "OnSale” component as its catalog & directory. Click to visit LongBeachOnLine.net Merchants, businesses, shoppers and the "OnSale" component The "OnSale" component gives participating local merchants and service providers a platform to add their sale merchandise or service specials into a searchable database and let shoppers find those items or services, which may be at prices lower to, or at least comparable with merchants in other cities. This system rewards the community in many ways.
About search engines and portals... In the mid1990s a number of entities started trying to make some sense out of the commercial Internet. Companies like Yahoo, AltaVista, Web Crawler, Lycos and others, steadily developed directories and other methods of indexing the millions of pages that were added to the web weekly. Their "search engine" and portal system services became quite valuable to users (web surfers), giving us all the ability to locate items on the Internet much more easily. Global focus and "micro" or "niche" focus The focus of the major search engines is global and their searches tend to turn up pages representing businesses located all over the world. In the earlier days of e-commerce the Internet seemed more focused upon the virtual or electronic world and was under-represented by traditional ("brick & mortar") stores and businesses. Today many of those e-businesses flourish, however in-spite of the "e" phenomenon, most brick & mortar stores and businesses continue to live on as well. Narrowing the focus When we began looking at the phenomenon of search engines, it became apparent that search engines would become one of the primary methods of finding things on the Internet, however it also became apparent that the trend would continue to be global and perhaps too lofty for it to be useful in everyday life and to average users. Putting "REALITY" back into "Virtual REALITY" We are now embarking on G-site's latest effort, and again G-site has chosen to focus on enhancing the quality of life within a niche community with, the Community Portal/Intranet and the "OnSale" component. This time G-site's Internet focus is a little different. Though our vehicle is the Internet, the "OnSale" component marries the virtual-world with traditional "brick & mortar" or real-world business (store). The local niche In this model we have de-emphasized typical e-commerce and created a search mechanism that allows the visitor to search for an item that is available in a nearby store. Before leaving the house or office a customer can search for it, display it and then click on the "map" button which will show the exact location and how to get there. It might be a five-minute car ride or just a few blocks away but it's close. With a few additional steps an on line e-commerce/shopping cart can be added to the mix as well. Some tech stuff... Our system employs "tried and true" technology. G-site has developed systems utilizing various platforms (ASP, ColdFusion, JAVA...). For the LBOL system we have utilized PERL coding, running in the stable UNIX environment, to bring the user a system where reliability is key. Our databases will allow thorough searches to bring up very complete results and participating merchants and businesses will have the ability to create and add new sales to the system 24 hours a day through their own admin screens. Merchants may even choose to post sales before they actually begin, thus allowing the public to see what may be coming up soon... or they may post something only a day before it is no longer available -- our goal will be to allow merchants the ability to make the site a "must check" anytime a customer is about to make a purchase... 100s of Websites! No job is too big or too small. Though we are extremely excited about our advanced portal developments, G-site remains a committed web development firm as well. We have not forgotten our roots -- we have been involved in the development of 100s of web sites and as a result that experience has taught us how to be extremely cost efficient. Shop around then call us. Most companies with similar portfolios will charge much more than us. Since we often work quietly in the background for many other higher profile web companies, there is a chance that a site that you have seen was actually built by us. Let us know what you want and we can probably build it for a fraction of quoted costs! You know your business... We know the Internet... Now let's build your project! To request information about building your project today - Click here! |
