So, you already have a company website. The next step is automating business processes - which can save your company considerable time and money. Linkworks^® has expertise designing and developing custom applications for client websites. Whether you need a lead tracking system or an inventory management system, we can map out the strategy and deliver a solution that will fit your needs.

With our highly skilled programming and development capabilities, Linkworks^® is well positioned to offer you effective, efficient and scalable custom programming solutions. Our web development services cover all phases of the development life cycle, from project idea and consultancy through project planning and management, architecture, design, development, testing/quality assurance, to delivery, training and ongoing support.

Comprehensive Solutions

We offer comprehensive programming solutions that are customised to meet our customers' needs and budgets. Although every solution is different, our programming and development efforts are generally focused on three primary areas:

• Database architecture
• Application development
• Front-end architecture

Database Architecture

We have experience with a number of different databases, and web technologies for integrating the database with the website, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and ColdFusion Server, making us great candidates for database migration and applications requiring database integration.

Application Development

When developing data-driven applications, we freely move between coding technolgies, depending on the nature of the project. Using these languages, we are able to build robust web and intranet applications.

Front-end Architecture

We believe that the front-end (user interface) of web applications must have elegant design and be supported by robust technologies. Applications we develop are either standards-compliant XHTML and CSS or Macromedia Flash interfaces. We also have years of experience working with JavaScript, and are familiar with the advantages of AJAX development.

The Latest Professional Standards

Using the latest in technical developments for the web, we ensure that your website is programmed to the highest professional standards, so that:

Internet Programming Technologies

Programming is the key to successful computer and internet applications. This section includes information on the languages and topics that do the behind the scenes work of the web. A guide to some of the main web technologies we use to develop state of the art, standards-compliant web sites is shown below:

• ActiveX
  A loosely defined set of technologies developed by Microsoft for sharing information among different applications.
• AJAX
  AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) is a group of inter-related web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications. A primary characteristic is the increased responsiveness and interactivity of web pages achieved by exchanging small amounts of data with the server "behind the scenes" so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, functionality and usability. AJAX is asynchronous, in that extra data is requested from the server and loaded in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page.
• ASP
  A specification for a dynamically created web page with a .ASP extension that utilises ActiveX scripting - usually VB Script or Jscript code. When a browser requests an ASP, the web server generates a page with HTML code and sends it back to the browser.
• CGI
  An abbreviation of Common Gateway Interface, a specification for transferring information between a World Wide Web server and a CGI program. A CGI program is a program designed to accept and return data conforming to the CGI specification. This could be written in C, Perl, Java, or Visual Basic or any other programming language.
• ColdFusion
  Adobe ColdFusion is an application server and software development framework used for the development of computer software in general, and dynamic web sites in particular. In this regard, ColdFusion is a similar product to Microsoft ASP.NET, JavaServer Pages (JSP) or PHP. ColdFusion was the first amongst these technologies to provide the developer the capability of creating dynamic websites that were attached to a backend database.
• CSS
  Short for Cascading Style Sheets, CSS gives both website developers and users more control over how pages are displayed. Using CSS, designers determine how the different components of a web page (such as headers, links and text),appear. CSS was created by the W3C. Cascading Style Sheets control how web pages are displayed in the browser, and allow the separation of presentation from structure and content. CSS help ensure that web pages are presented in an accessible way to all visitors, over a wide range of media.
• Flash
  Adobe Flash is a product designed to provide web sites with animation, sound, interactivity and database integration. Flash can create a truly multimedia web site, but has certain disadvantages, and is therefore best used sparingly.
• HTML
  HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of tags, surrounded by angle brackets.
• HTTP
  Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the predominant communications protocol for the transfer of information on the intranet and the World Wide Web. Its purpose is to provide a way to publish and retrieve hypertext pages over the Internet.
• Java
  Java is a high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems which contains features for use with the World Wide Web. It contains small applications known as applets which can be downloaded and run on your computer (that is client-side) within the web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox).
• JavaScript
  JavaScript is a lightweight client-side (that is, it runs on the web browser rather than the web server) scripting technology which is used alongside XHTML documents to make websites more interactive. Originally developed by Netscape, JavaScript allows web designers to create ineractive sites. It can interact with HTML source code, enabling web authors to add dynamic content to their websites.
• Joomla
  Joomla is an open source content management system for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets. The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization.
• Microsoft SQL Server
  Microsoft SQL Server is an industry standard relational database management system (RDBMS) produced by Microsoft. Its main advantage lies in its robustness for enterprise-level applications.
• MySQL
  MySQL is an industry standard, fast, open-source Relational Database Management System that uses the popular Structured Query Language (SQL). It is widely used for small to medium size websites that need database functionality, and works hand-in-hand with PHP.
• Optimization & Obfuscation
  Despite increases in bandwidth and connection speed, Internet users still have no patience for slow pages and slow code. These optimization tools help squeeze every ounce of speed out of your pages. In addition, obfuscators can help protect your hard work by obscuring your code while keeping functionality intact.
• Perl
  An abbreviation for Practical Extraction and Report Language, Perl is a programming language designed for processing text and was one of the first popular languages for writing CGI scripts. An interpretive language, Perl makes it easy to build and test simple programs.
• PHP
  PHP is an open source, server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic web pages. Since PHP is executed on the server, clients can't view the code. PHP is versatile, in that it can handly any CGI task, but its real strength its connectivity, compatibility with many databases, extensibility, and its extensive user community.
• Robots and Spiders
  A robot is program that runs without human intrevention. It's often give some artificial intelligence to deal with different situtions on the web. A spider is a program that automatically fetches web pages and are used to feed pages to search engines. It's called a spider because it crawls over the web. Since many web pages are interlinked, a spider can begin working anywhere. Large search engines can have mulitple spiders working in parallel.
• Ruby on Rails
  Ruby on Rails is a web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. Often shortened to Rails, or RoR, Ruby on Rails is written in the Ruby programming language. Amazing database support and easy learnability usher this full-stack framework to the top of the list of up and coming web technologies. Ruby on Rails sports some outstanding clientele, ensuring rapid and solid scalability in any environment.
• SSI
  An abbreviation for Server Side Include. SSI's are implemented as HTML comments that direct the web server to dynamically generate data for the web page each time it is requested.
• SSL/Secure Servers
  Unlike normal web servers, secure servers ensure that information exchanged between the visitor and the web site cannot be viewed by any third parties. A secure server is essential when handling confidential information, such as online credit card transactions or personal medical details. SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, is one method of exchanging data securely.
• XHTML
  The eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language designed to structure information for presentation as web pages. XHTML has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax. While HTML is an application of Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML), a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because they need to be well-formed, true XHTML documents allow for automated processing to be performed using standard XML tools—unlike HTML. XHTML can be thought of as the intersection of HTML and XML.
• XML/XSL
  XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a software and hardware independent markup language designed for describing and transmitting information. It is set to become the most common tool for all data manipulation and data transmission. XSL is a language for defining, transforming and formatting XML documents.