b13 Founder and CEO, David, is a reluctant administrative wizard, father (of three children and all of the b13 family), and someone you’ll meet if you’re considering working with our agency. Somehow, he still finds time to be constantly learning new skills and is an influential part of our cutting-edge frontend practice. He loves lightning-fast websites, CSS, and taking templating to new levels. He loves hamburgers a little bit more.
Expertise
Solutions, delivering value, ROI
Learning, listening, agreements, partnership, international
Questions, asking why, saying “no” (somebody has to sometimes)
TYPO3, extensions, relaunch
UX, editor experience, design, responsive
Performance, SEO, RSS, user stories, testing
Teamwork, trust, values, family, understanding
Open source, contribution
Breakfast, burgers, gin & tonic
David and TYPO3
TYPO3 is fast, powerful, flexible, and extensible. We built our agency on it and it has proved its value many times over in the last 15+ years. We’ve never had a challenge (that was appropriate for a CMS in the first place) that we couldn’t solve in TYPO3. Its architecture and stability enables us to plan and work in the long-term. We have projects running on version 10 today that we have been able to continuously improve, develop, and upgrade since setting them up in TYPO3 version 4.x.
David on working at b13
What I love about b13
I love working with a team of people that love what they are doing. It’s an office and a company full of people that want to be there, because they like it. It’s our job, it’s hard work sometimes, but we still have fun.
My favorite thing about b13
We celebrate our successes, but never stop challenging ourselves to be even better next time. We are proud of what we did but not content to simply repeat it. We want to work with cutting edge technology, learning new things and make the next project even better than the last one. That being said, our ambition is to design solutions not limited by the tools we use, but rather, choose the right tools to help us achieve the desired outcome.
How b13 helps our clients and the world
We don’t want to reuse and resell the same solution over and over, but we do reuse our experience and what we learn from one project to the next. We’re not specialised in reselling a cloned solution to another client. We build custom solutions for our clients that fit their unique needs to the best of our abilities. And we build systems that last; that we are able to (and want to) maintain for multiple years.
Whether you’re launching a brand new project or upgrading your decades-old multisite website, you need to make sure your agency fully understands your project goals and your current suite of technology. In our recent post, “How we kick off TYPO3 projects for enterprises,” we explained why you should expect a Concept Document before your agency begins writing a single line of code. But say your agency has come to you with a set of suggestions for your CMS, integrations, and extensions—at that point, an obvious question comes up: how do I know that this is the right technology?
Whether you need to upgrade your TYPO3 version, relaunch a website, or build new enterprise functionalities, your choice of digital agency can make or break the project. It can be challenging to know which agency is right for the project and whether their capabilities match your objectives. As you begin a new project, you should have a conversation with your potential agency to make sure they have a deep understanding of your requirements, existing systems, and objectives.
Google Analytics is a marketer’s best friend, but you may not be getting as accurate a picture of your data as you think. Google Analytics leans heavily on cookies, and cookies are often blocked by users, extensions, or firewalls, which skews your data—often to a disadvantage. A cookie-less tracking tool can more accurately reflect the number of hits, users, and sessions your website is getting. By combining this data with Google Analytics, you can have more confidence that you are making the most informed decisions for your marketing strategy.
While external teams will upgrade your ability to make updates and extend functionality for your customers, integrating them effectively is a challenge because code can quickly become opaque, buggy, and brittle. Our standard processes leverage automation, version control tools, virtualization, and standardized best practices to make sure everyone not only tugs on the same rope, but—crucially—in the same direction.
Enterprises now have many software delivery channel options to choose from. With software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud-based implementation models on the rise, you might be trying to figure out the best software delivery channel to support your enterprise’s digital strategy. If you don’t have an internal IT department, SaaS can be tempting, but when you also have stringent data compliance needs, an on-premises (or on-prem for short) solution is your best bet.
TYPO3’s separation of content and code is one of its major strengths. TYPO3 saves content in containers called content elements, which you can stack in content areas on a page record to create pages. The different parts of this highly configurable setup include “page types” (defined by the “doktype” field value in the pages database table record), a “backend layout” configuration, and possibly a third, separate “frontend layout” configuration value. We combine these components in various ways to enable different scenarios and desired outcomes.
At b13, we’re often approached by CMOs and CEOs disgruntled by escalating costs. What seems like a relatively “cheap” CMS or software solution can often come with hidden or long-term expenses—like multiple relaunches, jumps in licensing fees, or pricey additions. As an agency committed to free and open source software like TYPO3, we’re dedicated to helping companies make forward-thinking decisions for their content strategy. In the process, we’ve identified some best practices for making smart, cost-effective decisions for your CMS.
Some organizations need multi-tree installations for their different translated content. We’re proposing an open source solution that you can be a part of.
Forms are a must-have on any website these days; from a simple contact form to a complex multi-page form for data processing. TYPO3 CMS’s built-in form functionality has all the answers.
