PlatformOS: The Limitless Development Platform

More than just a Website Development Platform

What is PlatformOS? PlatformOS is the development platform that we use to build our websites and other online assets. Think of it as a Wordpress replacement with steroids. Whereas the majority of web design and development businesses build their websites using Wordpress to make it easier and quicker for them, we believe there are too many limitations and security issues. For this reason, we build our websites on PlatformOS. But what makes PlatformOS a better soloution?

History of Web Development Platforms

Before we get into why we believe PlatformOS is the best solution around for web development, let's have a quick look at the history of web development.

The first websites were hard coded. This meant that the web developer had to design the website and then lay that design out using a code known as HTML. They would do this using computer programs (Web Development Platforms) called HTML Editors, such as Microsoft FrontPage (no longer around) and Adobe Dreamweaver (still around). As you can imagine, you really needed to have a good understanding of HTML (and CSS), as well as access to an HTML Editor. So the obvious downside was that the average website owner couldn't make any changes to their website and needed to use a Web Developer. This lead to the Content Management System or CMS Web Development Platform.

The CMS Development Platform allowed a web designer to design and build a website online. The HTML Editor was built into the platform and in most cases implemented what is known as a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") Editor. This allowed someone without knowledge of HTML to make changes to their website. It also made building websites a lot quicker, especially if a design template was used. Common examples of CMS Platforms you may have heard of are Wordpress (the biggest), Joomla, Drupal, Wix, Weebly and our favourite, Webflow. However, these web development platforms were fine if you just wanted to build a website to show on phones or computers; but what if you also wanted to show the info in an App or share it with your other software programs (eg. CRM, Email Marketing, Scheduling or Accounting programs). What if you just wanted a content management system that looked and worked differently for different people (eg. Sales Staff, Marketing Staff, Admin Staff)? This led us to what is known as a Headless CMS.

A Headless CMS is a web development platform that essentially stores and manages all the data (think web pages, web forms, contacts etc) and then allows you to pull that data and display it however you want. Using a technology known as API (Application Programming Interface), we can send the data to a website, mobile app, CMS or to third party software (eg. Salesforce, Mailchimp etc). This gives us enormous flexibilty on how we want to use and display the data. This is essentially what PlatformOS does.

What is Platform as a Service (PAAS)

PlatformOS is what is known as a "Platform as a Service". All this means is that PlatformOS built and developed the platform and then charge an ongoing fee to continue managing the platform. This is different to traditional platforms, where you buy the platform initially (or in the case of Wordpress get it for free) and then develop and maintain it yourself. At Probity Web Marketing, we are big believers in Platform as a Service, as our core business is to build powerful, secure websites and to help optimise these websites so they generate business. We don't want to be wasting our time maintaining our web development platform to ensure it is secure and using the best and latest technology. We leave that up to the technicians at PlatformOS.

Benefits of PlatformOS

We've discussed some of the benefits of PlatformOS already, but let's finish with a list of the key benefits as we see them.

• It can be hosted on either Amazon Web Servers (or preference), Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure Servers (coming soon).
• It has been built for Speed.
• It is built using the latest technologies.
• It is a Headless CMS, meaning we can display and manage the data however we want.
• API technology allows us to send data to third party programs (think of sending webforms straight to Salesforce or invoices to Xero).
• It is Platform as a Service; so PlatformOS ebsure it is always secure and up to date with technology.

Want to know more? You can read up on PlatformOS on their website.

But how do I make changes to a PlatformOS website?

If it is a Headless CMS, doesn't that mean it has no CMS? So how do I make changes to my website? Don't worry, there are many different companies out there building CMS's to work with PlatformOS. We have considered several of these, but in the end have decided to build our own. We believe this allows us to build personalised CMS for your specific needs; no more one size fits all. Let us introduce the ProbityCMS.