Who we are
River Valley Tech Collective is a group of local information technology professionals who have come together to form a collaborative business serving the technical needs of small businesses and non profits in the pioneer valley and beyond. We specialize in leveraging the power of Open Source Software to provide powerful and elegant solutions to today's – and tomorrow's – technology needs.
Our web solutions use the same powerful technology deployed by major organizations such as NASA, IBM, and Yahoo!. Using these tools we can create customized websites and web-based applications that scale with your needs. We offer everything from simple and elegant brochure-style websites to enterprise level contact management systems. We specialize in bringing the power of the internet to your desktop. From design to hosting we have a solution for your organization.
Our office solutions will enable your organization to use the most modern software, end expensive upgrade and licensing fees, and support your local economy instead of traditional software monopolies. Using our office software package will lower both your total cost of ownership and your ecological footprint by providing a longer life cycle for hardware and utilizing the latest green 'thin client' technology. All of our office packages include redundant data storage and off-site automatic backups, and can co-exist with legacy applications.
Why we focus on using Drupal for creating Websites
We focus on Drupal for a number of reasons.
The first reason is that it is a Content Management System (CMS). That basically means that it is a web site your organization can easily organize and update with new data/content with out any help from some geeky IT guy.
There are other great CMS solutions like Joomla and Wordpress, but we find that Drupal is superior in flexibility, security, and power. Regardless of which system you choose, the best part about a CMS is that by removing the technical hurdle to adding content it puts the power in the hands of your organization.
- Drupal is a Web Development Foundation which allows us to build custom applications and modules using all of the commuity built tools it offers.
- The security features surpass all other CMS. You have very fine grained control over who has access to what content.
- Scalable - Drupal can meet a wide range of needs, from creating a quick drop in solution for an organization that just wants instant web presence, to the organizations that really want to push the Web 2.0 technology.
- Community supported so you get endless amounts of people working to make it better by fixing bugs, fixing security problems, and creating modules to add features.
- CiviCRM integration (http://www.civicrm.org) this is a critical key software for Non-Profits. You get all the power of the commercial software programs Constant Contact, Sales-Force, and Event Management ALL IN ONE PLACE, so your data is truly centralized. It ties tightly into drupal. It is made from the ground up with Non-Profits in mind and it is licensed under the GPL so it will ALWAYS BE FREE.
- Customizable Database drupal allows you to easily add fields, content types, etc by acting as a graphical interface to the database. With no SQL training you can create data content types to store your data the way you need to, and query it with just as much ease. No HTML, no SQL required.
- Graphical Editor keeps getting better. Upload files, insert images, create links and tables with NO HTML knowledge.
- Web 2.0 ready FEEDS, XML, Site Map, and Clean URLs all work seemlessly with drupal.
- Taxonomy (tagging and organizing your data) drupal can not be beat. You will have extensive means to sort your data, store it and relate it to each other.
- Flexible design - no limits to how the site can look. Here are some good examples Good Looking Drupal Sites
A lot of our clients or potential clients ask us about Joomla and why we recommend Drupal. There are a number of reasons we go with Drupal. And if your site is a basic site with not much for memberships, private content, extensive customizations, taxonomy etc you will be fine with either Joomla or Drupal. Here is an article about Joomla versus Drupal but over all it is a win win either way. As we learn more about Joomla Developers in that area we will let you know.
Profile - Sites we designed and or implemented
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Stop It Now! (coming soon)
Founded in 1992 by Fran Henry, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, who recognized that standard ideas about preventing sexual abuse of children weren’t working. Stop It Now!
RVTC will be implementing drupal
to make their site esaier to keep up to date. As well as adding a new online help center. Also CiviCRM 2.1 to centralize contact informations, contributions, events, online donations, grants etc. Coming End of October 2008
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Rosenberg Fund for Children (coming soon)
Since 1990, the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC) has provided support for the children of targeted progressive activists and targeted activist youth.
RVTC will help bring their hand coded site into drupal. Then over the next few years move them into CiviCRM staring with CiviCRM Mail!
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National Priorities Project
NPP is a nationally recognized NGO that provides up to date statistics on government spending . NPP has been featured in national and internal media, and averages 200,000 visitors per month
The site was converted in the different URLs merged into one site and an updated look. Drupal brought taxonomy to their website to help users find data they may not of found otherwise.
The before image is from one of their two main sites.
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Buy CT Grown
Buy CT Grown is a project of CitySeed, Inc. and the Buy CT Grown Steering Committee. It received grant funding from the CT Department of Agriculture and is also supported by the USDA Rural Development Program.
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Center for Ecological Technology (coming soon)
For more than 30 years, CET has provided residents, businesses and communities with the tools to make it easy and affordable to carry out daily life in a more environmentally sustainable manner. Our work focuses on energy efficiency, renewable energy, waste management and environmental education.
RVTC will help bring another hand coded site into drupal. Then over the next few years move them into CiviCRM staring with CiviCRM Mail!
This site will do alot with Search and Taxonomy
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Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace
FFIPP, the Faculty For Israeli-Palestinian Peace, is a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, with an affiliated international student network, working in solidarity for a complete end of the occupation and just peace.
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Valley Community Land Trust
The Valley Community Land Trust (VCLT) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that holds title to land, considering it neither as private nor public property, but as a sacred resource to be held in trust for present and future generations.
Using one of our templates they where able to easily create a more modern looking site. By editing one file they are able to change the entire color scheme of the site. Easy to edit and add content. Overall a good example of a site that allows them to have a web presence and share data as an office in a secure way.
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Hummingbird Preschool
Located in Montague Center in Montague Massachusetts, Hummingbird Preschool's backyard is a forty acre meadow conservation area which provides many opportunities for nature activities, outdoor exploration and physical exercise...
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Massachusetts Fair Housing Center (under construction)
The Massachusetts Fair Housing Center (MFHC) is a private, non-profit fair housing organization working to eliminate illegal housing discrimination in Central and Western Massachusetts.
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Pioneer Valley Historical Network
Developing a website to bring together the rich historical collections and events in the area.
Benefiting from our templates and ready-to-go websites they can invest more money into customizing the built in database.
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Safe and Green
Working to prevent Vermont Yankee Nuclear power plant from extending their license.
They need a site to organize data by towns and give email updates when new content is added or in emergencies. This site also provides the ability to allow others to manage a town's data securely. All this in a small budget thanks to drupal.org technology.
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Riverland Farm
Riverland is an organic Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm located along the banks of the Connecticut River in Western Mass
Using one of our templates they could quickly get a site created. And since they are using drupal it is very easy for them to add and edit content on the site.
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The Institute for Natural Learning
In ancient times (and still in many places today), there were no "schools." Instead, in what we call the "Invisible School," elders, aunties and uncles mentored their youngers with care and wisdom, with the goal that each person would walk their own paths...
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The Night Kitchen
An acclaimed restaurant in the bucolic village of Montague, MA; described by the Boston Globe as "..enchantment...the stuff of storybooks..."
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