• Ina O Murchu
• Tue, 06/21/2011 - 07:25
• Comments

From an early age, Keith Killilea realised that he wanted to build software and create games as a creator instead of an end user. He began his career in tech with a Commodore 64 at the age of 12. Since then he has worked on more than 30 different gaming projects and setup his own game company called Star Cave Studios.

Established in June 2004, Star Cave Studios created “Camelot Galway – City Of The Tribes” which was published online by GarageGames Inc. in 2006. The company employed 14 in-house development staff of high-skilled experienced and non-experienced staff from Ireland, plus 12 external staff located in the US, Australia, Brazil and China. Star Cave Studios also held the first Galway Games Conference in 2004.

It was while taking a break from the gaming industry that Keith saw emerging opportunities on the Web that seemed to be following a similar pattern to what he had seen previously in the gaming industry. He observed that content management systems (CMS) had evolved to a similar point that games engines had reached in their own evolution.

Like games, CMS was beginning to have a wider appeal beyond just the aficionados - not only to end users but also to developers and graphic designers. This was largely because a lot of the principles of CMS had become established. Technically, there was no longer any need to reinvent the wheel at every iteration and prices were dropping as the market was expanding.

Wiccle takes the middle-ground approach to using CMS. It takes advantage of the ease of use that CMSs like Wordpress have and combines it with the sort of robust code found in Drupal and Joomla.

Answering the question as to what makes Wiccle so unique Keith says, "Whether you're just looking at posting blogs, sharing photos on your website, or developing a full-featured eCommerce portal, a flexible social network, or a rich media content portal, the Wiccle CMS differs by packing in dozen of modules by default.

"Whereas other CMSs on the market utilise only the core part of their system, Wiccle’s modules represent an independent software that you can literally create any kind of website from."

Wiccle also differs from other CMS systems in that it come fully integrated as opposed to being modularised with various plug-ins. Keith says that, "This way it can properly utilise the core of the system better. Wiccle has an SEO engine under the hood across the entire core platform and the major advantage of this is to correctly do search engine optimisation of everything that is inputted by the end user with regards to their text.

"The very first line of code in the Wiccle CMS has SEO focus in mind and in this way it is built up from the creation of its framework, its core, its modules and its CMS all working in sync together.

"The administration panel is split up into two parts where a typical admin panel has been built and also where a builder panel is found. The builder is where any user of any level of skill can reshape their entire website around drag and drop through clicking and selecting for ease of use."

Also, Wiccle has the capacity to build social networks. These can range from small social networks with forms to a massive social network with proper profiles, wall, status updates and forms and chat.

By building the CMS in this way, Wiccle has in effect created a playground for all its end users. They can shape anything and everything they want in order to create a unique bespoke website.

As downloads in the United States have exceeded expectations, Wiccle has decided open up an office in the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose, California. Keith is hoping to extend Wiccle's reach further into the North American market.

Since Wiccle has had over 15,000 downloads in over 100 different countries globally, there are plans to introduce a software as a service version. It will be a version where users can quickly create any sort of website in a few minutes using a cloud-based platform.