For the Geeks (technically speaking)

Being part geek myself I know how riddled the geek (aka web) community is with negativity. This is not a social field outside of your friends and people you like. So I want to discuss a few things that speak directly to our contemporaries.

We are not a start up

Interzone has been around for a long time. Going on 10 years. Intezone has gone through many phases including audio production, scoring for television, print, newspaper, sub-contractor, consultant, design, and production company. The focus on E-commerce has been a long term goal we have been planing for years. Late 2008 provided the opportunity to push this forward and build the team.

We are not a start up because we do NOT subscribe to the puritan ideals that seem to fill the start up category. Most notably we are a for profit venture based on customer service using a type of software as a service model. We are not giving anything away*, we are selling a service. We are not looking for venture capitol or investors (but if you want to give us money we will probably take it). We are not adhereing to any "perfect ideal" of programming, application, or paradigm. Programming, web, etc is a means to an end. We are looking to make money while also providing a valuable service to our client base. The mantra that Marc has always used (since the 1990's) is "fair product for a fair price". This is our model.

Is that Wordpress? Yes.

Yes. We use Wordpress as a content management engine. The CMS interface is easy for people to use and the program runs logically and with certain ease. There is a grip of functionality we like and there you go! We are not selling Wordpress installs.. The next section details our programming more.

Three Cheers for Loosely Coupled

Technically speaking, our main design pattern is referred to as "an e-commerce and reporting platform loosley coupled to Wordpress". Our E-commerce core is a completly independent program that works with Wordpress. This was not always the case. This platform has operated as a 100% hand built CMS and platform. Since we have no desire to build a CMS and we really like Wordpress' CMS (that they adopted from other projects) we made our choice. We could adopt the entire E-commerce platform to any other CMS, blogging program, or as a stand alone if we wanted. Our main limitations are working in the LAMPPP environment.

We know that people don't like Wordpress. That is fine. The last thing we want is a "Ford versus Chevy" argument. The same goes for PHP or any programming language. Why argue? The questions we continiously ask ourselves are enlightening and challenging:

• Are we helping people?
• Are we profitable?
• Do we listen?
• Do we like what we are doing?
• Do we like our clients?
• Do our clients like us?
• What could we do better?
• Are we proud of our work?

The frequent fights over operating systems or better languages is for the birds. Find us at the bar and maybe we will go a few rounds on the topic. Ultimately there is no perfect language, that is subjective. The question is simple - Does your programming language get the job done? or How can you do better?

Wordpress Fanatics

Our use of Wordpress keeps the core untouched. We are not messing with the internal code of Wordpress, that is a dark trail that eventually leads to corruption. We keep our E-commerce and reporting separate and with virtually NO dependencies on Wordpress. We do have our own protocols and methods for dealing with the interactions, security issues, and other WTF's (worse than failure) that may occur.

Plenty of Work out There

The web, internet, interweb, webernet, or what ever you call it has so much work to be done. Sites are breaking everywhere, new ideas need programming, the standards change and work is created, a patch on a language breaks everything, and so on. There is plenty of work. Any respectable programmer, coder, designer, web person can find work.

Why do we mention this? Simple. There are so many negative people and companies who sit around and dog others' work. We don't want to get in that cycle. We have our opinions, if you ask we will talk about them. But if we (Interzone and client) don't get along, we can move on. Some companies can't. Paranioa, inappropriate protectionism, foolish bullheaded maneuvers, or plain stupidity can take away the pleasures of the work. We like what we do, and anyone who does not is entitled to their opinion. There is plenty of work out there for you to "prove how much better your idea is", so go do it.

*We actually do give a lot away by donating to open source projects and contributing to the community through code, review, and assistance.