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We have a long history of using automation to enable teams to deliver regularly without drama. When we start a consulting relationship, one of our first steps is evaluating the process required to automate deployment of whatever we’re building for them. This process of thinking through how to simply and easily get our work out for testing and production usage pushes the team to think earlier about real value for real customers.

When one of our partners needs a software solution that’s fast, reliable, and easy to maintain, we consistently choose to build its backend upon .NET. We’ve grown to trust its enterprise-minded community to deliver solutions that meet the needs of small prototypes while maturing to support extreme workloads when necessary.

When building a website, the choice of platform to build upon is multifaceted. Traditionally, a platform supplied the visual display of content to end users as well as the editing and management of that content. However, a different approach is becoming more popular and is worth considering for most public-facing sites. This headless approach separates content management from the display of that content, allowing each tool to be optimized, creating a more performant, secure, and flexible result.

If your website is driven by dynamic content, a Content Management System (CMS) is usually a good choice. While there are a lot of viable CMS options out there today, lately we have been more interested in exploring headless options (where the backend is separated from the frontend) which turned our attention to Payload CMS. Payload comes with many advantages, especially catered to developers, giving the team a modern stack (JavaScript, React, Node.js) with a lot of control without sacrificing performance, scalability, and the ability to customize to business needs.

Many developers who try out programming in a functional programming language describe it as an “a-ha” moment and begin to look for and make opportunities to use functional languages. However, CTOs and other technical leaders often approach these languages with trepidation or dismissal. Are the benefits of functional languages truly worth the investment in increased training and costlier hiring?

When faced with building a modern website that is content-focused, Astro is an easy framework choice to make. The features and benefits of Astro make for a compelling option when balancing page performance, great SEO, reliability, and hosting cost considerations.

While we believe technology should never dictate your strategy, the reality of legacy or existing architecture often plays a major part in guiding the direction of designing cohesive software experiences. We build with intention with an aim for organizational growth, collaboration, and operational health, no matter the tech stack.

Intuition is powerful, but insight is unstoppable. Great brands don't guess, they listen. They listen to how users move through their site, where resistance appears, what gets ignored, and what actually converts. Behind every smart decision is data composed from meaningful signals that reveal how people actually experience your brand.

Behind every seamless digital experience is an architecture you never notice, and that’s usually the point. When systems are thoughtfully designed, aligned, and optimized, they fade into the background and let your business shine. A failing infrastructure slows teams down, fractures customer experiences, and quietly can kill your growth.

Your business isn’t generic, so why should your software be? Off-the-shelf tools are designed for the average use case, often the broadest audience, the safest assumptions, and the lowest common denominator. While they might work for a few months, they eventually reveal their limits through clunky workflows, rigid systems, hidden risks, and growth bottlenecks you didn’t plan for.

Security isn’t just an IT concern, it’s a brand responsibility. We think about trust the same way we think about design: it’s invisible when done right and catastrophic when ignored. Your website, applications, and digital systems are more than just tools, they’re the front door of your business and that door needs to be reinforced.

Technology should never dictate your strategy, but rather support and express your needs. Custom software consulting isn’t about choosing tools, it’s more about shaping systems that reflect how your organization operates, collaborates, and grows. In 2026 the most successful businesses aren’t stacking software. They’re designing cohesive digital ecosystems.

Elm is a functional programming language, with a focus on the front-end of web applications. It is famous for providing a delightful developer experience, while also providing many useful constraints which allow tooling to optimize it in a variety of ways. These constraints which the language imposes are viewed as either impractical roadblocks or incredible multipliers, depending on the viewpoint of the team involved.

Open source projects come with many pros, such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility and customization, and community collaboration, but they also can run into some challenging cons like lack of dedicated support, strain on maintainers and volunteers, as well as the amount of time it takes to design, develop, and test to release changes and improvements.

What does it mean to have a great team? How to make good teams cross over into great territory? Working together is more than just doing the work.

When working within a CMS system that gives a lot of freedom, it is important to instill guardrails and best practices to keep designs and content consistent and usable. Using design and content best practices together is the key to making pages more compelling and overall effective.

At Engage, a handful of us get together once a week as a book club to read and discuss selected titles over the course of a couple months. We recently read The AI Con by Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender.

DNN Platform is a web application platform for .NET Framework which was started in late 2002 (under the name DotNetNuke). Engage has a long history of supporting and building on DNN and has created decades of connections with businesses that have built web-based solutions upon DNN. When you consider your organization’s investment in DNN, are you concerned about if you’re getting enough out of it? Let Engage’s experts help you explore what DNN is best for, what to expect from DNN in the future, and what other options you may want to consider.

On the heels of a recent string of supply chain security incidents in the JavaScript ecosystem, I thought it might be timely to look at security within the ecosystem of the Elm programming language.

At Engage, we like to go beyond the guesswork in our approach to projects and build products that are not only functional but also intuitive, enjoyable, and genuinely useful. But how do we move beyond our own assumptions to really understand what our users need? The answer lies in the continuous practice of user research.

Over the years of delivering working software we have carefully carved a pathway to how we do our best work. Many of these habits and workflows resemble agile methodologies very closely, while others were more ideas that evolved from traditional agile approaches. Like any successful project, our approach is also expected to grow and iterate over time. The following is a representation of how we are currently working together to build software products.

We believe the best solutions come from working together. Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do, including striving for full team discovery. We value diverse perspectives and open communication to achieve the best outcomes, and by working together to plan our work, we can deliver optimal solutions through shared understanding and clarity.

At Engage, a handful of us get together once a week as a book club to read and discuss selected titles over the course of a couple months. We recently read Software Teaming by Woody Zuill and Kevin Meadows and shared our review and a few take-aways at one of our weekly Lunch & Learn sessions. Here is a transcript (lightly edited for readability) of the presentation.

We recently migrated our primary marketing website, engagesoftware.com, from DNN Platform to Astro. This post will cover the technical details of that migration.

Our primary marketing website, engagesoftware.com, has been built upon the DNN Platform for more than a decade. After redesigning the content and flow of the site at the beginning of the year, we realized that we weren’t really using much of the functionality that DNN provided. In concert with some other work to move toward static sites, we started a small project to see what would happen if we migrated off of DNN and onto Astro. This is the story of that migration.

One big benefit of DNN is its theme architecture which allows for the separation of presentation and content, giving web designers the ability to develop the structure and look and feel of the website. DNN comes with a couple of themes out of the box to get you started, however these are rarely the right fit and are generic on purpose. There are also many commercial themes, with pre-made design concepts and templates, but their “one-size-fits-all” approach often fails to deliver a good experience for a specific audience or are too off-brand.

At Engage, we’ve been making websites since forever. With the resurgence of static HTML websites, we wanted to take a stroll down memory lane and think about all of the ways HTML files have been a part of our website journey through the years.

Custom software can be the difference between a solution that’s adequate and one that’s gamechanging. The upfront investment required for custom software versus off-the-shelf solutions necessitates a clear vision for how to get the best results from the team. Working with a team that is confident in methods to find and amplify value is a shortcut to delivering excellence.

Website personalization has a huge influence on how users experience your business. Tailoring content and appearance to individual users creates unique experiences for your site visitors and can foster increased engagement, higher conversion rates, longer site visits, and a better understanding of your loyal customer base.

Every custom software initiative is different. If it’s all been done already, just buy a solution off the shelf. If it deserves the investment of custom software, it will be solving unprecedented challenges. Cookie-cutter approaches to architecture, team makeup, or delivery methods can contribute to a lower-than-hoped-for return on investment. Instead, having the whole team explore options allows an optimal solution to emerge.

Building usable software is about understanding your users' mental models and how they interact with your product. That’s where usability testing comes in. Whether you're building a new feature or redesigning an entire product, usability testing is one of the most powerful tools in a user researcher’s tool box to ensure your team is heading in the right direction.

It’s common to hear business people talk about a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) nowadays, but it’s not always clear if everyone is talking about the same thing, or if what they’re talking about is something that’s valuable and solves a real problem.

Mercenaries build whatever they’re told to build. They take orders. Their job starts and ends with executing tasks. They may be competent, but they’re not invested in the problem space or the outcome. Missionaries, on the other hand, are passionate about what they’re building. They deeply believe in the problem they’re solving. They own the outcome, not just the output.

DNN Platform is an open source web application platform with a strong security focus. Learn steps to take to ensure it stays secure over the long run.

The Elm programming language is “a delightful language for reliable web applications.” It would be used as an alternative to React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, and other web application frameworks. Elm is an opinionated, niche language and framework that is not for everyone, but those who use it often find it a defining experience that forever changes how they approach building applications.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a creative approach to problem-solving that starts with understanding the people you're designing for and ends with solutions tailored to their needs. It’s more than a buzzword, it’s a philosophy and a practical methodology that helps teams create intuitive, useful, and impactful products.

Associations, colleges, and even telecommunications providers often have member-facing portals which collect information from a wide variety of systems and allow those members to make changes to that information (e.g. by adding a new subscription). Ideally, all of the details of that change are immediately available to the member throughout the portal and any 3rd party they may be redirected to. For example, if their new subscription gives them access to a research platform, they expect to see a new link to that platform show up, and give them the access they paid for.

At Engage, we believe that great software isn’t just built, it’s refined. One of the key practices in our workflow is the retrospective, a dedicated time for teams to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve. But what exactly is a retrospective, and why does it matter to our teams and clients?

A business’s website is more than just an online presence, it’s a critical driver of growth, customer engagement, and brand reputation. Yet, many organizations overlook a vital component of their digital strategy: accessibility. An accessible website ensures that all users, including those with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments, can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with online content. Often viewed merely as a legal requirement, accessibility should instead be embraced as a strategic advantage that enhances inclusivity, expands audience reach, and strengthens overall impact.

Creating successful tech products is about ensuring great ideas align with real user needs. By grounding decisions in data and user insights, businesses can build products that people actually want to use– leading to higher adoption, stronger customer loyalty, and better business outcomes. Research-driven design ensures product market fit, enhances user experience, and encourages adoption. It also saves time and budget in the long term and builds brand loyalty. Understanding your goals and the problem you are trying to solve will help you choose the right research methods at each stage of development.

DevOps is an approach to creating software which works to reduce the gap between coding and deploying, allowing the same team which created the code to deploy and monitor the application, generally through automating much of that deployment and monitoring process. In order to achieve the strong outcomes associated with teams practicing DevOps, the DORA Core model highlights building capabilities in the following categories: Climate of Learning, Fast Flow, and Fast Feedback.

Software teams typically include people with a wide variety of skills, including management, software architecture, visual design, UX design, data design, and business insights. A common “money-saving” approach is to have someone with management skills work closely with customers closest to the business goals in order to decide what should be done next, and then that management person will turn those ideas into tasks that the engineers and designers implement. However, the best teams understand that using designers and engineers only for implementation is a waste of their talents, and instead create a virtuous cycle of collaboration by bringing everyone to the table.

You know your product/business better than anyone else. Working directly with your design and development team helps them to design and build specific features and functionality around your exact needs. When your business needs change, having software built upon a flexible foundation can allow your product to quickly meet the challenge, whether that’s scaling, increased security, or an entirely new integration or product line. By starting with a custom approach to your business’ software, you have full control over the direction and impact of your vision.

Released in 2002, .NET Framework introduced the world to the C# language and came to be a stable, productive foundation for many Windows-based applications, including web sites through the ASP.NET framework. A new cross-platform version of .NET (originally called .NET Core, and now just .NET) was released in 2016, which saw the lion’s share of investment from Microsoft. .NET Framework had its last major release in 2019 (version 4.8), with 4.8.1 coming in 2022. Knowing the level of attention given to the newer cross-platform .NET, why would teams in 2025 choose to start new projects using .NET Framework instead of using the newest platforms and libraries?

How can you know how long a new initiative to build a custom software product will take? What’s a reasonable amount to plan to pay to get started turning your vision into technically excellent software that can go live and start producing value? Once an estimate of the effort has been created, how close should you expect the true cost to be?

DNN Platform (open-source) 10.3.2 is the latest stable version of the DNN CMS. It was officially released on May 5, 2026. Evoq is on 9.13.10, which was released on November 3, 2025 and is based on DNN platform 9.13.9.

Finding the right software firm to help you build and maintain your systems can be quite the challenge. Typically, it is who you know. "I know a guy who does development. Let me ask him if he can help/let me ask him who he'd recommend." But, what is the right method for evaluating whether your guy's recommendation is the right fit for your company?

We’ve been patiently waiting for the next major release of DNN, and it is finally here (DNN 10.0.0 was published on April 9)! This update will be more disruptive than others in the past, as the maintainers have taken this opportunity to remove features that have been deprecated since DNN 8, going back to January 2016. In addition to clearing some accumulated clutter from years past, DNN 10 offers a number of improvements for both administrators and developers.

User experience (UX) design is a human-first approach to a user’s interaction with a product, platform, or brand. Through research, data analysis, and testing, UX designers optimize experiences to be smooth, intuitive, and efficient, allowing users to complete their tasks with minimal frustration. By helping users achieve their goals more easily, the product or brand leaves a better impression and creates more satisfaction overall.

Within your DNN site, each module has a menu for MODULE SETTINGS.  You access the module settings by going into edit mode and then on the module, hover over the gear wheel of the module and click on settings. Learn more about the different settings and what you do with them.

In order to edit existing content, you need to have editing access to the site.  That will either be an Administrator role or a specific content editor type role.  If you need editing access, you will have to reach out to your site's manager. Step 1 - Login Step 2 - Navigate to the page you want to edit, then click on the edit pencil icon in the lower left corner

DNN has the ability to assign roles to users, to create business-specific roles, and show/hide content based on those roles.  The three basic roles are Administrators, Registered Users, and Subscribers.  Administrators are your web experts who need access to the back end of things.  There is also Host/SuperUser access, which should be reserved for the website builder and expert developers.

We are going to cover Page Settings, Page Appearance and Page Permissions within DNN platform. The Licensed version, Evoq, has slightly different options, but the basics are the same. To access a page's settings, you can hover over the CONTENT icon and then click on Pages.

How do WCAG and ADA work together? And, do websites have to be ADA compliant? WCAG is the set of guidelines that websites need to follow in order to be ADA compliant. Following WCAG improves the user experience and avoids the possibility of a lawsuit. Simply put, websites need to be ADA compliant because it’s the law.

How do you add new content to a page?  DNN has two methods depending on if you are creating something from scratch or if you have a pattern that you want to mimic.   From scratch - you would choose the "ADD NEW MODULE" option Mimic a pattern - pick "ADD EXISTING MODULE" Here are the steps to do both.

DNN is a secure website platform, but no CMS stays secure without regular updates. A cautionary tale and what you can do to protect your website from being hacked.

Associations everywhere have suddenly found themselves struggling to pivot their plans for their in-person, live events into digital experiences on platforms like Zoom.

At Engage, we've been excited to embrace a new technology for creating web applications that are more maintainable, performant, and reliable. Elm is a programming language that compiles to JavaScript, designed from the ground up for creating web applications, in a way that guides developers towards well-architected code, which we've been excited to explore and have now officially decided to adopt as our primary front-end development language.

I've written about the high level benefits of using the Elm language, this post deals with the developer experience of using Elm.