e-magination InfoSolutions is an information systems and consulting firm specialising in Business Intelligence and Information Management. We provide customised, costeffective and relevant IT solutions that support and guide client strategy development as well as intelligent Report and Technical Data Warehouse Development.Our people, a complement of twelve continually developing professionals, are at the heart of our success. A collective fifty-four years experience, partnered with passion, creativity and an innovating spirit, ensures our capacity grows year-on-year.
We measure our success by satisfied clients, engaged employees and the 100% rate of repeat business we enjoy. We deliver innovative, customised IT solutions to Woolworths, the Clicks Group, the Oceana Group and the Western Cape Government amongst others.
e-magination is a registered close corporation and is fully BEE owned, managed and staffed. We give back to our community by supporting not-for-profits such as Cedar High Cycling Club and New Dawn through programs that encourage independence, positive change and growth. We nurture talent through our graduate training program in collaboration with regional learning institutions.
Tell us a bit about your business. How do you use WordPress?
Our area of specialisation is in Information Management – through our experience and expertise with various business intelligence and data warehousing tools available in the industry we have been able to identify opportunities to provide highly customisable solutions to clients.
WordPress has allowed us to extend this experience into the online space, building bespoke information management solutions without the confines of the traditional proprietary software applications. The limitations of these applications often dictate to clients the solution they put in place to solve a business problem. However, using the WordPress framework we have been able to design solutions from the ground up – with the only limitations being that of our imagination!
Why WordPress?
WordPress provides us with a solid framework which we are able to customise and extend using pure PHP and jQuery. Our strength lies in building solutions, and we re-use WordPress elements for design and styling – this allows us to focus on actual development. With the numerous WordPress themes available, we do not have to divert this focus with designing the website itself, instead we plug into the design elements available, and re-use elements across different projects (such as the menu framework for site navigation, headers, footers, etc.).
Why did you decide to get involved and sponsor WordCamp Cape Town 2012?
We feel especially passionate about WordPress, and attribute a large portion of the growth we’ve seen in our business over the past year, to the work we’ve done using the WordPress framework. It’s only natural that we want to be involved with an event that showcases this amazing tool.
What are your thoughts on the WordPress community as a whole? And the South African WP community?
The online interaction with the WordPress community is great – we learn a lot from the conversations which happen on the online forums.
Locally, we’ve seen a number of companies embracing WordPress as tool for creating websites rather easily, however, we would like to see the use of WordPress extend beyond that – we want to share with others the experience and successes we’ve had in using WordPress in information management.
What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Cape Town?
Meeting others who are using WordPress in innovative ways.
Please share one WP tip
Do not test on a live site! We learned that the hard way đŸ™‚ There are ways to set up a locally hosted copy of the site and this should be used for testing (even the simplest of plugins) instead of doing it directly on the live site.
Tell us more about how you became interested in WordPress, what about it drives your continued interest?
We first became interested in WordPress because it provided a good structure for managing content. Everyday though, we learn to do different things in better ways using this tool – it’s this constant process of learning and improving that keeps us interested and ultimately allows us to build innovative solutions.
Do you make money from wordpress?
Yes. We have delivered a number of projects to clients based in Cape Town and Johannesburg. We also have some current projects which, if successful, will be accessible by users across the globe.
Is WordPress an effective platform for getting your message across?
Yes, it is. It allows us to re-use elements, many of which has been provided to us by the broader WordPress community, saving time which is better spent on developing an actual solution.
Where do you feel you can make a difference at WordCamp and why?
We can offer insight about the way we’ve used WordPress – beyond website design – relating our experience with extending the WordPress framework to customise solutions for our clients.
