Tribiq (pronounced like Tribe-ik) is a UK-based consultancy specializing in custom web site design and development. Tribiq is the trading name for Tribal Limited (incorporated in England), and was previously called Tribal Internet.

The company was founded in 1996. The name “Tribal” was chosen as it conveyed the view of the internet as a medium for bringing people together.

The company rebranded in 2008 under the name Tribiq. Tribiq is a registered trademark in the EU and other countries.

The company’s activities are bespoke web design and development (mostly for customers in the UK and contintental Europe), and web-based application development.

Tribiq also develops the Tribiq CMS open source content management system.

Features

Tribiq CMS is a browser-based website content management system based on PHP and MySQL.

It allows site administrators to edit many aspects of a website: the content of individual pages can be edited with a WYSIWYG editor; the navigational structure of the site can be modified and developed; “Plugins” can be added to enhance functionality; and sites can be loaded with new “Skins” which change the appearance of web pages.

Many management features use AJAX interfaces, so that the effect of making a change can be previewed and then published, without needing to reload the web page.

The overall layout of a page is determined by a Template (of which the CMS contains a choice of 1, 2, and 3-column templates), and the Skin (which includes CSS and images and which controls the appearance of the page).

There are scalability features; when a Plugin is inserted into a page, the administrator can decide whether to apply the Plugin just to that page, to any page which uses a given Template, or across the entire site.

Tribiq CMS has multi-language capabilities. It is designed to handle content in any character set, and uses UTF-8 format for data storage so that characters in all languages can be rendered faithfully. Various tools are available to assist in the management of multiple languages, such as the “equivalence” system which creates relationships between pages which have the same meaning but are in different languages.

For administation, there is a tool called Storekeeper, which is the administrative back-end of the CMS. An administrator can perform a range of functions in Storekeeper, such as: managaing content; organising the categorization of content; installing new templates and skins; installing and managing Plugins; managing languages and their phrases; managing password-protected content and the associated Users and Groups; and other administrative tasks.

Tribiq CMS has options for federated website management, and there is a “Multisite” Plugin. This allows an administrator to run multiple websites from a single software installation. So-called “Super Administrators” can have a single admin login across all federated sites, while “Local Administrators” can edit only their designated site.

Most of the visible functionality of Tribiq CMS is delivered using Plugins. Many Plugins are built in to the standard product, and others can be installed separately. A Plugin which performs a given function can thus be removed and replaced with a different one.

Tribiq CMS can be used as a platform for web-based applications, with Storekeeper being used as an administrative interface which can be extended in bespoke ways. The CMS can be operated with Storekeeper as the sole interface, therefore with no website front-end for unauthorized visitors.

Storekeeper is designed to have the familiarity of a regular operating system, and therefore has icons, different views, pagination, sort controls, and a search feature. It has a fully documented API, with the intention that third-party developers can create new application Plugins.

The product is designed to run on any web server with PHP 5 and MySQL 5. When administering a site, it is designed to work on Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, 8, Firefox 3, and Safari.