This week, Cubed Monkey was contacted by a potential client in the waste water management industry who wanted to add an admin tool to their site. This tool would allow them to upload large documents and automatically generate and send emails to their partners with links to download specified documents. For us, this of course meant some PHP development.

After some research to properly scope and price the project, we ran into a pretty cool app called OutDisk Email FTP which actually did everything that our client wanted — this solution was $39! I notified the potential client and with a thankful email he was on his way … and so was the profit.

In the past, we would scope similar requests as custom development and make a nice chunk of change. Today more often than not, there is already a third-party solution, sometimes even under the General Public License. You may think that this has interfered with our business and profits, but truth be told — We’re glad!

Reasons Why We Like This

Cubed Monkey has offered — and will continue to offer — web development services to provide our clients with a one-stop-shop, but our expertise and passion has always been design and coding. The fact that  many solutions such as content management systems, bulletin boards, chats and social networking sites are now available as highly customizable third-party apps has given us the time to focus on what makes us truly stand out. Sure, we used to take on development work because we had to pay the bills, but after evaluation we found that development work was actually unprofitable with our business model. We now rely on many of these apps for our solutions and if any more custom development is necessary, we collaborate with partners whose core competency is web development.

You may be wondering why clients should pay us to incorporate these features. The reality is that although the applications are available, the time required to integrate and then customize them can be tremendous. We take pride in integrating them seamlessly with the designs and layouts that we have developed for you.

Some of the Third-Party Applications That We Use

• SpringBoard — Content Managent System
• ExpressionEngine — Content Management System
• WordPress — Blog Publishing
• PixelPost — Photo-blogging
• phpBB — Bulletin Board
• DZOIC — Social Networking
• SlideShow Pro/Director —Slideshows and Management
• Lightview — Slideshows
• JW Player — Media Player
• JQuery — Interaction
• Flash Loaded — Flash Components