What we do

We are a Toronto Canada based firm highly specialised in using Open Source Software to foster community online.

Design Guru works with an array of individuals and organisations around the world to build spaces online which allow people to interact comfortably - our practice is not just building websites but rather 'online placemaking.'

Online Placemaking entails producing spaces on the web where people can come together - irrespective of whether their aims are to work together or simply interact for leisure.

Our approach to online placemaking sees us working as consultants as well as web producers - taking on a select number of clients for holistic website development projects per year.

All of the websites we build are scalable and modular; which means that features can be upgraded and added from them as their communities grow in time. We use Drupal and Joomla - two Open Source packages which offer amazing flexibility and user communities numbering in the tens of 1,000s of people around the world well versed in their use and development.

Just some of the features a Design Guru website may have:

• Community profiles
• Private messaging
• Custom content types
• Google map integration with content (eg. map user profiles on the same map dynamically)
• Streaming on-demand audio and video
• Multi-contributor publishing; where many people log into the same site with differing permissions and edit their own sections of the site
• Group blogging