The beginnings:
It was still in the late 90s when Markus Rössler and Thomas Renner, two young nerds (the expression was probably not very common at the time) from Tulln on the Danube, discovered the magic of the Internet for themselves.
The website of an Austrian cabaret artist brought the two together for their first joint cooperation.
A partnership developed, which ultimately resulted in the establishment of an OG. The company name webshapers and the logo with the planer were program: even then we stood for tailor-made solutions for each of our customers. The company address was Tullner Bahnhofstrasse 70, where a small office was moved into under the private premises of the Rössler family.
Even then, we could look back on a number of successful projects. The "sms-breezr", a homemade tool for mass sending SMS, was just as much a part of the product range as an online tariff calculator, which at that time already guaranteed a clear view of the tariff jungle of mobile phone providers (without data tariffs, of course).
In order to be able to handle the projects more efficiently, efforts were made to develop an in-house CMS (Content Management System), even if this term was not yet known at the time.
After reading the CSS instructional video on "Little Boxes", the afterword came across an advertisement for another textbook, "Drupal 5 for Beginners".
Having become curious, it was decided to give the thing a try.
With that the plans for the self-made CMS were history.
Drupal
Drupal has fascinated us from day one. It presented itself to us as a captivating concept that could do so much more than make a page title, text and a few pictures displayable and editable. We were not even aware of many of the options for categorizing, versioning, listing and linking content, the entire authorization system, and the options for user control. A completely new horizon opened up to us, a system with which we could implement every project and cope with every requirement.
We quickly realized that Drupal was more than code that could be freely downloaded at any time. Drupal is also the people behind it, the community, to which we quickly found access. At numerous camps and conferences we got to know many developers of the system, whom we gladly bought a beer from time to time.
Our knowledge of the PHP programming language also made it easier for us to write code ourselves to further tailor Drupal and adapt it to the needs of our customers.
Our new office
In January 2018 we had the opportunity to take over the premises of an old traditional Tulln inn on Wiener Straße and convert it into an office. Unfortunately, we have only partially succeeded in doing this. We just couldn't remove the still functional bar with 3 cooled tapping circuits and the cozy bar. Sometimes you gotta spoil yourself.