Our Website

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This website leverages on a number of Free Libre and Open Source Software projects (hyperlinked). We would like to acknowledge the often taken for granted open source communities for their commitment to liberating the internet. We'd also like to acknowledge the less free / libre projects that were just as fun to work with (non-hyperlinked).

Client Side Technology

Markup Language: HTML5

Scripting Language: JavaScript

Scripting Framework: jQuery, MooTools

Styling: Cascading Style Sheets 3.0

Web Fonts: Font Squirrel

Backward Compatibility: HTML5 Shiv

Server Side Technology

Operating System: Amazon Linux AMI
(derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora , based on the works of GNU Project and Linux Kernel )

Hosting Container: Apache HTTP Server

Scripting Languages: PHP, Perl

Version Control System: Git

Hosting Control Panel: Virtualmin

Content Management System: Joomla 3.0 (core optimized for performance)

Design: BJ Jupiter (re-written for Joomla 3.0, HTML5 and performance)

Photography: Server room by Torkild Retvedt, Amazon Web Services by Will Merydith, Stone bamboo table by Wallpapers Shop

Web Services: Google Analytics,Google reCAPTCA, Google Webmaster Tools, MailChimp

Statistics Reporting: Amazon Web Services Command Line Interface

Hosting

Domain Registrar: GoDaddy

Domain Name Service Hosting: Hurricane Electric Internet Services

Web Hosting: Amazon Web Services Virtual Private Cloud

Content Distribution Network: Amazon Web Services CloudFront

Monitoring: Amazon Web Services CloudWatch

Customized Software

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Customized Software, also known as bespoke or tailor-made software, are built around a customer's exact requirements. This is in contrast to FLOSS projects and COTS software, which are produced to address the anticipated needs of a particular market or sector.

Business managers will need to analyse their requirements and understand the pros and cons, and cost implications of each model to find a best fit for their particular use case. A clear strategy for the company's long term IT plans cannot be stressed enough, since any software can only be as good as they can be defined and understood by a solutions provider. Our software consultants have an in-depth knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of software, open source, commercial and customized, and would be able to analyse the pros and cons of each model and make appropriate recommendations.

It is our firm belief that softwares should work around the users it was designed for, rather than users working around them. With automating and simplifying business processes in mind, we present our customized software solutions:

Features vs Simplicity

Generic software is available for common programming tasks. These programs are made available / sold with a wide audience in mind. If an unique feature that is pivotal to the business is not available off-the-shelf, a customized software might be just what you need.

At other times, generic software can be cumbersome, packaged with too many advanced features you don't require. This could result in:

Higher hardware requirement and cost
Reduced employee productivity
(having to drill through a large set of menu and sub-menus to perform simple tasks)
Steeper learning curve for employees having to master an application
(especially so for companies with a large staff or high turnover rate)

Our UX specialists analyse each feature of a new application to determine optimal placement for the component, as well as the way data is presented for an intuitive and productive user experience.

Streamlining Business Process & Integration

Customers could be fulfilling their business requirements with diverse generic software titles for ERM, CRM, HRM, email, SMS and newsletter. Having to add a same piece of data (client's particulars, for example) repeatedly to accounting, customer relations and each employee's contact management software is not only unproductive but also prone to typographical errors. On top of that, keeping this data in sync and compartmentalized data sharing between departments is a logistical nightmare.

A customized software solution can include any of the required functions, presenting data through an unified interface for increased productivity and ensure key business objectives are met. Integration with external software / data assets is made possible with published APIs, possibilities include: SMS gateways, email servers, credit card processing gateways and legacy accounting / billing / client management softwares.

The Cloud Advantage

Our customized software solutions are designed from ground up to harness the full potentials of a cloud infrastructure. Unlike legacy applications, we are not bound by last generation's relational databases or local file systems. Often, we utilize cloud components like non-relational databases and distributed file systems in our design to ensure predictable performance, high availability, scalability, data integrity and security, and a fault tolerant architecture.

Our rock-solid Cloud Hosting platform offers a diverse tool kit, perfectly addressing the rigorous demands of a customized software deployment, so be sure to check out the Cloud Hosting introduction video too.

Security & Legal Compliance

In a world that's increasingly tech-savvy, application security cannot afford to be overlooked. Our customized software solutions leverage on established multi-factor authentication (SMS verification, Google Authenticator and YubiKey) methods and detailed activity logging to ensure your data is safe from corporate espionage.

For some industries, legislation may require document retention within the country of operations. Our hosting plans offer a good selection of regions for legal compliance and data is exclusively managed within high security data centres that are PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant.

Search Engine Optimization & Statistics Tracking

For customers that rely heavily on search engine referrals, you can count on our in-depth understanding of SEO and SEM strategies. These features are available with our customized software solutions:

Search engine friendly in-page content
Source code ordered according to crawler priority
(Without affecting content layout)
Search engine friendly URLs
Seamless integration with Google Webmaster Tools
Seamless integration with Google Analytics

Our consultants are also available to advise on link building strategies, content canonicalization, choice of secondary domain names, meta keywords and meta descriptions.

Corporate Branding, Proprietary Assets & Competitive Advantage

In some use cases, even though generic software titles work well, corporate branding may be desirable. We can theme 3rd party applications where licensing permits and all our customized software solutions offer a loosely-coupled presentation layer through Smarty for easy branding, making even festivities-related theming practical and affordable.

Open source applications released under GNU GPL or similar licenses require that modifications be released under a similar license. This may sometimes not be practical where proprietary algorithms and trade secrets are concerned. Customers of our customized software solutions may request for a NDA to protect their intellectual property.

In industries like retail, where generic applications are widespread, competitors will have access to the same platforms and deploying the same generic softwares will yield no competitive advantage. If you have innovative ideas to streamline the business process or add a special touch to customer relations management, deploy a customized software. Capitalize on that first-mover advantage while competitors beholden to generic software providers are left in the dust, waiting for their ideas to be accepted, developed, tested and integrated.

Long Term Support & Portability

We believe in building long-lasting business relationships and work on a transparent billing model for both extended software support and development of additional functionality. Bug fixes are rolled out to all our customers and maintenance package customers can expect prompt response to their requests. Customers also benefit from our agility in staging incremental and phased deployment where necessary.

Sometimes, customers need to leave us. We're always sad to see customers go, but we like to go the extra mile to ensure they can be up and running quickly with a new service provider by releasing our customized software with a liberal usage license.

Content Management System

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Content Management Systems allow a domain owner to update pages on a website without programming knowledge through an easy-to-use WYSIWYG interface. There are numerous proprietary and open source CMSes available on the market and most of them are compatible with our hosting plans.

Understanding that customers have varying CMS requirements, we provide commercial support for 3 open source projects, namely Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. Each project addresses a niche on the ease-of-use vs feature list continuum, with WordPress being extremely easy to use, Drupal having an extensive set of features and Joomla, a good balance of both. These projects are highly recommended and have passed our stringent selection criteria:

FLOSS
Mature code-base
Active development
Strong community support
Good selection of free and paid templates / plugins

We advocate the open source software model and contribute to the community in a number of ways:

File detailed bug reports promptly
Provide bug fixes if possible
Release open source plugins and templates

Pricing

	Price
Installation & Setup	S$400
Custom Template	Varies
3rd Party Template Installation	S$100
Custom Plugins	Varies
3rd Party Plugin Installation	S$100
Content Migration	S$40 / page
Staff Training	S$40 / hour
Maintenance Package (5 hours)	S$250
Maintenance Package (20 hours)	S$800

Home - Luminary Studios Pte. Ltd.