In a traditional agency model, you have a team of developers, copywriters, project managers, graphic designers, and a few other things like SEO experts, ad buyers, and admins. Typically that team would rely on one “stack” as it’s called—usually WordPress—and that stack relies on plug-ins.
At DM Holdings, we don’t rely on a single stack. We have our own stack. What sets us apart from an agency that relies on a single stack is that we are able to do more compared to what a traditional agency is capable of doing. Not only can we use plug-ins, but we can build plug-ins on top of stacks like WordPress.
We have a system—and we maintain the source code for that system. It’s highly secure. We run regular “pentests” and “bug bounties” almost every day to ensure that it’s safe. Instead of being confined to what WordPress has to offer, instead, we are able to build our own “WordPress” that allows us to have more functionality.
One of the drawbacks of WordPress is that it’s built on an older framework—PHP. PHP is something that I have personally used in the past but (due to a lot of SQL injection vulnerabilities) I found it easier to use a new type of server-side language—Node.js. Node is safer, it’s reliable, it’s just as fast (if not faster) than some of the other server-side languages like Python and Ruby, but also it allows us to maintain the same language throughout the server and the client—ECMAscript (aka. JS or “JavaScript”—not to be confused with Java).
WordPress itself is open-source, but some of the other plug-ins provided by the company that owns WordPress—Automattic—are paid plug-ins. WordPress uses the money from those plug-ins to pay for things like pentests and bug bounties to keep their platform safe.
Notice how one thing was released for free and then there were lots of paid “add-ons” that funded the security and development of that “free” operation. At DM Holdings, we intend to do the same thing! We want to make our own system open-source and then fund the development of those systems using paid add-ons.
One other thing that is worth mentioning is that we don’t separate the roles of developers, copywriters, project managers, graphic designers, SEO experts, ad buyers, and admins! We combine all of those roles and (with one stack), we use our own internal systems to assist us in those tasks. Instead of separating those roles, we just have one role: “Agent”.
For example, instead of paying for a copywriter to write for one page, we might use OpenAI to help us get an idea of what we should be writing (or The Hoth if it’s too much). Instead of hiring project mangers, our developers do their own project management and communicate with the client directly. Instead of hiring a graphic designer, we might use something like Wonder to give us some ideas and then take those ideas to Canva to perfect them! Instead of hiring SEO experts, our developers are themselves SEO experts and ad buyers!
So, combining these roles into a single “Agent” role eliminates a lot of the “middle men”, it makes the process go faster, and it allows us to do exactly what a traditional agency does for 1/4 of the price.
At DM Holdings, we don’t rely on a single stack.
Donald Moore, Owner
A lot of people, when they hear about HTML, CSS, and JS, they think of the browser and they consider JS to be a client-side language. That all changed in 2009 with the release of Node.js. Not only that, but with the release of Next.js in 2016, ECMAscript developers now have the capability of building server-side rendered websites like WordPress.
So, when you think of DM Holdings, don’t think of WordPress. Think of a full-stack “server” that we use to run our system internally.
We don’t just use WordPress, we can build our own plug-ins, we can conduct web security operations to ensure that our systems have no vulnerabilities, we can build static sites using JS, mobile apps, desktop apps, and pretty much anything under the Sun!
It took me a long time as a programmer to learn how to develop these types of systems. I graduated from Ashworth College in 2017 with a degree in Computer Information Systems and it just sort of took off from there!
In conclusion, when you think of DM Holdings, don’t just think of WordPress. Think of web security, custom plug-ins, custom websites, mobile apps, and pretty much anything tech!