MadTek has its roots in website design and construction, software applications development and project management. At MadTek, website design and construction means much more than banner graphics and templates. Information architecture, usability and trustability are clearly necessary for developing and delivering an effective web presence that meets the objectives set forward by the website owners. Technology infrastructure complements the user interface, content development and branding dimensions of the web presence.

Plone

The Plone project was begun in 1999, by Alexander Limi, Alan Runyan, and Vidar Andersen. It was made as a usability layer on top of the Zope Content Management Framework. The first version was released in 2001. The project quickly grew into a community, receiving plenty of new add-on products from its users. The increase in community led to the creation of the annual Plone conference in 2003, which is still running today. In addition, "sprints" are held, where groups of developers meet to work on Plone, ranging from a couple of days to a week. In March 2004, Plone 2.0 was released. This release brought more customizable features to Plone, and enhanced the add-on functions. In May 2004, the Plone Foundation was created for the development, marketing, and protection of Plone.

The Foundation has ownership rights over the Plone codebase, trademarks, and domain names. Even though the foundation was set up to protect ownership rights, Plone remains open source. In March 12, 2007, Plone 3 was released. This new release brought inline editing, an upgraded visual editor, and strengthened security, among many other enhancements^. Up to September 2007, there have been over 200 developers contributing to Plone's code. Plone won two Packt Open Source CMS Awards.

MadTek began studying Plone in 2002 as part of a recommendation for Duke University News and DukeHealth. Both organizations were looking for an enterprise CMS. Duke University News was using MadTek's own CMLite CMS until 2004 when it migrated to Plone. Duke University as a whole followed suit.

In 2005 Jason Hare started working with Durham Public Schools in selecting a CMS. Durham Public Schools was then using Joomla!. Joomla! is a lightweight CMS good for putting together small nimble sites quickly but Joomla! lacks a lot of the enterprise features of Plone. In 2007, planning began at DPS to replace the Joomla! site with Plone. In October 2008, the DPS Plone site was launched. That year the DPS District site won two NCSPRA awards for best school district site in North Carolina.

Since then Jason Hare and MadTek have been evangelizing the use of Plone including building sites for One World Education and the Chicago Medical Society.

Joomla!

Joomla! is a fork of the CMS Mambo, developed by all the original developers. It is backed by Open Source Matters a US-based non-profit, although it is developed by developers around the world, particularly in Australia and Canada.

Once Joomla! is installed and running, it is simple for even non-technical users to add or edit content, update images, and to manage data.

For many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in the application framework that makes it possible for thousands of developers around the world to create powerful add-ons and extensions many free and open source but also there are many others commercially available.

Joomla has over 3300 extensions developed and available.

MadTek started developing Mambo sites in 2004 and then switched to joomla! after the 2005 fork between Mambo and Joomla!

MadTek has specialized in helping sites that have been compromised with other hosts and bringing them here and locking them down securely. We monitor several forums and boards frequented by those who develop and use exploits for Joomla!. In the 5+ years we have been developing sites using Joomla we have created over 45 websites including the Medical Association of Atlanta, The Walker Company, Fiorentina LTD, The Cupcake Factory, our own site and the Illinois Society of Plastic Surgeons. We have vetted almost a dozen components, modules and plugins for use by our customers. You will not find a team more experienced in hosting and supporting Joomla! than the professionals at MadTek.

ProductCart by Early Impact

Developed by California-based Early Impact, ProductCart® is a suite of e-commerce shopping carts that small- and medium-sized businesses use to build and manage a professional Internet storefront.

This shopping cart software is the result of years of experience designing and developing Internet applications. A lot of time was spent trying to determine how to best combine advanced functionality and ease of use. ProductCart is the result of these efforts. It offers both powerful e-commerce features and an intuitive administration area that gives you the ability to manage your online store even if you don’t have a technical background.

ProductCart is the most popular ecommerce platform we have ever offered. It is the most user friendly and feature packed of any we have tested or sold.

MadTek sold and built its first licensed ProductCart in 2002 for Grazi.net. Grazi is a specialized corporate gift buying company and is still our customer today. Since 2002 we have sold and built dozens of shoppingcarts using this platform including http://www.lovebugclothing.com, http://www.oenophilia.com, http://www.cinemaphotos.com, http://www.gsnpos.com and many, many more.

MadTek has been a certified solution developer for Productcart since 2004 and a Gold Certified Reseller since 2003.