JCOGS Design

ExpressionEngine Expertise
in the Thames Valley

About

JCOGS Design is a specialist website backend developer, working with the ExpressionEngine Content Management System, based in the UK's beautiful Thames Valley.

ExpressionEngine - is a powerful and flexible commercial content management system that provides a mature, well supported, secure and reliable platform. It is used in all sorts of roles, but is particularly well suited to sites that need to work with complex data and / or where designers seek maximum scope to be creative.

We are familiar with a wide range of ExpressionEngine add-ons, including CartThrob, the EE eCommerce suite.

We also work with the Craft CMS system - which has a strong design similarity to ExpressionEngine, but also some unique merits that make it well suited to particular applications.

We work for client organisations who need support for an existing sites, and with Web Developers and Design houses who need specific expertise to assist them in their work to develop new ExpressionEngine or Craft based websites.

Services

We offer five kinds of service:

Repair / Audit

If your ExpressionEngine or other CMS based site is no longer working well, we can help.

We can deploy resource quickly to diagnose the problem and fix it.

Even better: let us look your site now before the problems appear and make recommendations about how it can be improved: to make your site work more efficiently, become more secure, and easier to maintain in future.

Upgrades

Keeping your CMS up to date is essential maintenance to ensure that your site is protected from newly emerging internet security threats, and can take advantage the latest web technology.

We can help - we have the hands-on familiarity with the updating process to be able to do the work quickly and efficiently.

This is particularly true for ExpressionEngine - upgrading a site to the latest Version 7 release can be complicated, but necessary to benefit from the latest performance and security updates (and well worth the effort).

New Site Design

We translate designers' visions for new web sites into a practical, efficient and reliable reality.

We work closely from the outset with designers, end clients and other stakeholders throughout the design process.

We are flexible - we are happy to fit into an existing team or project manage the entire site design process for you.

Custom EE Add-ons

ExpressionEngine can use additional custom written add-ons to add specific / unique functions to your site.

These range from simple bits of coding to add new features through to complex php applications that co-exist with the ExpressionEngine installation.

As ExpressionEngine and php have evolve, the coding requirements for add-ons change - without updating your custom add-on may stop working.

We can provide full service support for these elements - from updating existing add-ons to work with newer versions of ExpressionEngine and / or php, through to the design and development of new custom add-ons to suit your needs.

For example, we have recently completed the development of a custom add-on for a client that provides simple tag based access within ExpressionEngine to an API based data service operated by a government funded agency in the USA.

Get in touch with us to find out more about how we can help you maintain or develop custom add-on solutions for your ExpressionEngine installation.

Hosting

We already host our client work while it is in progress on our in-house development server, but 2018 we began offering website hosting as an additional service.

Based on a high reliability fast cloud-based platform, our standard hosting service easily meets the needs of most ExpressionEngine sites, and our hosting usually comes with agreed continuing dedicated support for your site.

Our hosting service is priced competitively - and when you add in our dedicated support options, it offers exceptional value for money.

If you have a particularly complex heavily loaded site, or have other specific needs, we can also offer hosting via dedicated hardware.

Get in touch to find out more about our dedicated hosting options.

Add-ons for the ExpressionEngine CMS

JCOGS Design has published several add-ons for the ExpressionEngine CMS which are available from the ExpressionEngine add-on store, or from Devot:ee.

More details of the add-ons are given below. If you would like to discuss the development of a custom add-on or the addition of features to our commercial add-ons please get in touch!

Image

ExpressionEngine Add-on - JCOGS Image Buy NowDocumentation
Advanced Image Manipulation for ExpressionEngine CMS

JCOGS Image is an image processing add-on for ExpressionEngine 5, 6 and 7. It is simple to use, fast, efficient and provides a range of image manipulation options that go beyond those available within EE's built in image processing services.
The facilities offered by JCOGS Image include image format conversion, image resizing, and image manipulations. Image also supports Batch Processing, and has exceptional CE Image compatibility - offering developers an upgrade path to EE5, EE6 and EE7: for most sites upgrading simply requires a replacing {exp:ce_img: in site templates with {exp:jcogs_img

For more information about the add-on see its documentation.

One-Time Passwords

ExpressionEngine Add-on - JCOGS One-Time Passwords Buy NowDocumentation
One-Time Password Authentication

JCOGS One-Time Passwords provides a simple solution for Multi-Factor Authentication for EE sites.

JCOGS One-Time Passwords modifies the EE Control Panel log in process to require a user to enter a six-digit "One-Time Password" in addition to their regular log in credentials; the six-digit code is generated algorithmically. The add-on can send the required code to the user by email, or alternatively most standard "Authenticator" apps can be used to generate the OTP codes required.

JCOGS One-Time Passwords uses the Member Roles system to control which site members have access to OTP, and whether use is optional or mandatory. 

For more information about the add-on see its documentation.

Auto-Translate

ExpressionEngine Add-on - JCOGS Auto-Translate Buy NowDocumentation
Auto-translation for the EE CMS

Multiple vendors now provide machine translations via API services - including Google and DeepL.

JCOGS AutoTranslate provides a simple tag-based method for accessing such translation services via:

  • a unified control panel to store api keys, account status information and access to add-on documentation;
  • if a service allows for it, an option to determine whether <html> tags are included in the translation;
  • an option to allow translated text to be cached;
  • an option to add useful debug information to the EE template profile log;

For more information about the add-on see its documentation.

Examples of our work

Please get in touch if you would like to find out more about any of these, or other examples of our work:

Corporate Site

Management Consultancy - Corporate Site

A site that combines standard brochure type information with a dynamic resource area providing access to a large number of documents.

In 2012, the site was updated from a custom CMS to use version 2 of ExpressionEngine CMS, and has been running with this CMS since.

The design focus of the current version of the site is on speed of operation and ease of content management.

The site uses a variety of add-ons to achieve this, including JCOGS Image, Low Search, Stash and Freeform.

Customisations included provision of full-text searching of PDF documents, and multi-lingual operation via the Publisher add-on. The site uses a variety of custom and commercial javascript utilities, and the Bootstrap templating system.

Expertise: EE2->EE3->EE4->EE5->EE6->EE7 upgrade, site design, backend design, javascript, Bootstrap, speed optimisation, SEO, image processing, multi-lingual design

Blogging Site

Blogging Site

We were retained to recover this existing EE2 site after it had fallen into disuse and existed only in a series of partial backups: we recreated the original site by picking and combining the best elements from each of the backups, and then upgraded the site to run under EE3.

In addition during the upgrade process we refactored the EE installation to make better use of new EE features introduced since the earlier site had been abandonned, and improve speed of operation.

Concurrently we worked with the client to implement a CartThrob based eCommerce platform within the same server using ExpressionEngine's Multi Site features.

The site uses a variety of add-ons, including JCOGS Image, Low Search, Stash and Freeform and CartThrob.

Expertise: EE2->EE3->EE5 upgrade, backend design, speed optimisation, SEO, Bootstrap, image processing, MSM implementation, CartThrob implementation

Catalogue Site

Engineering Supplies - Catalogue Site

This client's business involves the supply of components to the engineering sector, and their Catalogue includes over 1300 product series, with data on over 64,000 specific product attributes. Speed of access to their catalogue and the accuracy of the stored data are critical requirements.

JCOGS Design were retained to update a prototype site that had been in development some years earlier using EE2 and prepare it for release.

We upgraded the site initially to EE5, redesigned the EE backend to take advantage of new features introduced in EE5, did considerable work to validate the large data set the site relied upon, and built out the remaining site functions (including search, contact forms and site navigation). Subsequently we have updated the site to EE6, and implemented a custom add-on to support various custom operations within the site.

The site uses a variety of third-party add-ons, including JCOGS Image, Low Search, Stash and Freeform.

Expertise: EE2->EE3->EE4->EE5->EE6 upgrades, site design, backend design, SQL data manipulation, javascript, speed optimisation, Foundation framework, Custom Add-on Design

Why JCOGS?

Small

JCOGS is a small firm. Because of this you can be sure that any work we do for you will benefit from our full attention.

Because we are small we can be very flexible. We can tailor our work to suit your specific needs. We can work with you at your location or remotely.

Although we are small, we have access to the latest technology and can provide the full range of technical services, including hosting and connectivity, if required.

Skilled

ExpressionEngine is a powerful and flexible system, but has a steep learning curve. We have climbed that curve for you and are knowledgable and skilled in its configuration and use.

ExpressionEngine's function can be extended in a variety of ways. In addition to our expertise in the core framework, we are also familiar with the most widely used add-ons and can help to deploy and resolve issues with those too.

Experienced

We have been working with ExpressionEngine since 2010, and are focused on this framework. We also support another similar CMS product - Craft.

Our experience is broadly based, including the design and deployment of complex data based websites, eCommerce solutions, and the creation and maintenance of multi-lingual sites (including support for RTL languages such as Arabic).

ExpressionEngine is built upon standard web technologies MySQL and php, and so necessarily we are expert in these and related areas too.

Contact

We are easy to get hold of, and keen to hear from you.

Online

Telephone

+44 7974 254995