Customer Stories: Greg Riley from Technology Applied

This series of posts profiles some of the people using Perch. If you use Perch and would like to be featured here drop us a line at: hello@grabaperch.com.

Greg Riley from Technology Applied

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I bought my first Perch license in January 2011, I also use WordPress and occasionally Drupal. I chose Perch due to its small size and simplicity. WordPress is great but when you just want to add a few content managed areas it is overkill, and the admin area scares clients. I always seem to be fighting WordPress trying to get it to do what I want it to do. For example some things work great when you write them outside of WordPress but stop functioning when you add them in. This can force you to use WordPress plugins for things like contact forms and lightboxes – that are just not quite the way you want them. The alternative is spending so much time that the project becomes too big and expensive.

On the technologyapplied.co.uk site I loved that in the FAQ section for example I could just write the code to get the accordion working and then just pull out the relevant section to create a Perch template and content manage that section. Also, on the homepage I have used the order by a suppressed field a lot so I can move content around easily.

I am only creating my second perch site at the moment, but from the minute I started on the first, a whole set of new possibilities opened up for me. I see that I can now offer clients things that they have asked for at a price they can afford.

Next time I hear a prospective client say, “oh and of course I will want to change it myself” I will no longer despair as I explain that I will have to use a big CMS like WordPress and it will cost lots more. I also do not have to worry about the conversation, when an existing client with a static site wants to take it to the next level.

- Greg Riley

Example site

www.technologyapplied.co.uk
Perch features used: Blog App, Perch templates and custom templates.