The benefits of a content management system (CMS)
Many organizations find it easy to create an initial web site, but it is often difficult for groups to maintain them. There are many reasons for this. Non-profit groups, in particular, are often constrained by having only one or two members who are technically proficient enough to maintain the web site using the tools the maintainers have set up. Thus, the webmaster becomes a bottleneck for any new content that might be added to the web site.
Web site design with traditional tools still requires a strong understanding of web templates and ways to maintain a consistent look and feel across the site. There are packages such as Contribute, that make this somewhat easier, but many groups will need a solution that makes site maintenance more straightforward.
This is where Web Content Management Systems come into play. Content Management systems (or CMS’s) separate the content of the web site from its presentation. This frees your staff to concentrate on the most important feature of your web site – its content.
There are many different Content Management solutions. Some of these are commercial products, which can be very smooth and easy to use, but in general are fairly expensive. There are also several Open-Source content management systems available, which may be a little rougher around the edges, but are free and easily extensible to solve your own problems.
Two of the most popular Open Source solutions are Joomla and Drupal. They both accomplish roughly the same thing, but have very different orientations. Joomla is somewhat easier to learn to use (it has a smaller learning curve) and Drupal is more easily extensible. Joomla may be a good choice for a group that wants to easily set up a system that can be maintained by a group of people. It has may add-on modules that can extend the functionality of the web site. Many of these modules are more oriented toward a commercial web site, or some sort of profit-making venture.
Drupal, on the other hand, is more useful to a community-based site. It has many add-on modules oriented toward building an on-line community. It is a little more difficult to learn or deploy, but it has a very well-documented interface for adding on modules, and can be extended very easily for customized features.
Both of these packages have very active developer and support communities that are ready to help and answer questions. They are both very powerful. The wonderful thing about Open Source solutions is that you don’t pay your money, and you take your choice.
Social capitalism: Monetizing the social network
We are turning into an internet-based world where everything is possible. With more social networking sites and most likely one popping up every week
Although the problem I have pointed at (Social networks: Popular, Yes, But How to Monetize them?) gives the impression of being very minor in first contrast to the potential of social networking platforms. But question remains tangible. , I think it’s a challenge left to the brand managers and media developers. The web 2.0 promises many things and media is gearing up to make money. Should we just wait and watch.
Nevertheless there is undeniably a marketplace for services that facilitate social functions on intranets and corporate websites. If you remember at the Drupal community (an open source content management system) there was a project for an Open Social’ module before the Google published the actual API.
Matt Asay (Open Road- CNET.COM) believes “The value is in pairing back all that activity to meaningful, person-to-person interaction. There’s got to be a lot of money in that.” (He wrote a preliminary analysis on this issue)
Another reader (Luciano Brito) firmly believes there is nothing significantly new or innovative in the current social networks. People gather in another medium, faster, globally.
Just for archetype how a social network makes money (normally subscription price, selective statuses, promotions, affiliations, etc). In addition to its (Xing) strong revenues from subscription-based Premium Memberships operates an innovative job listing tool (XING Marketplace). Xing announced earlier this month that it will incorporate online advertising onto the platform before the end of Q4 2007 as well.
Imagine a CRM that integrates with LinkedIn, Xing and tells you that Mr X at the reception knows Mr. Y in company ABC where you want to pitch your product. Or an e-shop that tells you that your friend bought the same product a month ago.
But like most sites everyone is in a test’ mode and we really don’t have a thumb rule to follow.
Magento development team
In the period of June-July, Offshore software development India has delivered Magento customization to their UK, USA, Canadian clients. Following are the customized solutions for the Magento to different clients.
(1) Magento custom design templates and themes
Magento themes from PSD/JPEG/Any Site
Magento module development
Payment module solutions
Cart module solutions
Migrate OSCommerce site to Magento
Migrating Data to Magento Site
(2) Creating multiple online storefronts and store websites
Magento setup hosting
Magento Development team at offshore software development India has expertise to deliver Magento Customized solution in 15 working days for an average project. Magento developers at offshore software development India has good experience on Magento customization and development based on the Zend framework. Zend framework is core framework used by Magento. All the application development at offshore software development India are based on Zend framework.
Please find more details at Magento development page on http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/.
Please contact info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com for the inquiry of logo design, flash website design, theme design, and website development using Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Wordpress and development based on Zend framework.
About Magento Commerce:
Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. With Magento, never feel trapped in your eCommerce solution again. You can Control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more. There are no limits to creativity with Magento.
Please visit http://www.magentocommerce.com/ for more details.
About Offshore Software Development India:
OSDI offering a wide range of skills in IT Services, Mainly focusing in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Software Development, IT Consultancy, Web Designing / Web Development, Offshore Outsourcing, Multimedia, Customized Software Applications and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
OSDI offers following services
•B2B, B2C portal Designing, CMS, E accounting solution,
•Web development of full-scale enterprise applications using Asp.NET. PHP, Flash
•Customization of Drupal Themes, Joomla Templates, Magento Commerce Layouts, Oscommerce
•PHP Development using Zend framework, Symfony framework.
•Enterprise solutions using share point server and project server
•Solutions, administrations and maintenance for the Microsoft Commerce Server.
•Development using Microsoft BizTalk Server
•Programming, designing, customized software development, script installation.
•Hire dedicated team, Designer and Developer.
For more information please refer http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/php-mysql-pgsql-programming/magento-customization-solutions.html.
Reunion Island: Where Fire Meets the Sea
Unlike Madagascar, where there is a profusion of indigenous wildlife, the island gem of La Reunion, its neighbour to the south-west, has very few; one of these is the spectacular Panther chameleon, a mini-kaleidescope-coloured monster which can grow to a length of 50 cms. Lying on the crossroads between Asia and Africa, fluorescent rivers of molten lava occasionally spew out of the earth’s crust and plunge into the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean, searing everything in their path. This island –jewel, similar to Hawaii, insofar as both are located above hotspots in the earth’s crust, is between Madagascar and Mauritius. And is 63 km x 45 km. There are three volcanoes here, one extinct, swathed in forests, where mountains, gorges, and spectacular waterfalls jostle shoulder-to-shoulder, vying for one’s attention.
La Reunion is the southernmost French overseas departément; it has the same administrative status as those on France’s mainland. French is the official language and the currency is the euro. The first Europeans to land here were the Portuguese in 1635, but it was soon annexed by the French in 1638, apart from a brief occupation by the British between 1810 -1814. After that it became an important stopover on the East Indies trade route, until the Suez Canal was opened. The ethnic mix on the island is a melting-pot of French, African, Chinese, Malay and Indian immigrants, and those who are born on the island, called Creoles, are the largest group.
There are numerous activities to pursue on Reunion, scuba-diving, surfing, deep-sea fishing, climbing, abseiling, para-gliding, riding, white-water rafting, mountain biking and walking. Rambling and hiking is one of the most popular pastimes on the island, through exhilarating scenery. A spectacular trek is to the live 2,633m Piton de la Fournaise volcano which erupted (safely) three times just last year. Guided tours around the island take the tourist to magical places, such as a village labelled “one of the most beautiful in France.†This is Hell-Bourg, a jumble of candy-coloured houses surrounded by cascading banana trees and exotic blossoms.
The capital, St Denis, perches jauntily on the tropical north coast, well-removed from the mist-clad forests. The visitor will not be surprised by the familiar trappings of a French country town, as Renaults and Citroens chug past Carrefour supermarkets or a Monsieur Bricolage, alongside superb French restaurants, and other eateries of fusion cuisine. Whilst sipping an icy kir on the café-line beach resort of Boucau Canot one could easily be forgiven for imagining for an instant that one was on the beach at St. Tropez, gazing over the Mediterranean.
There are several daily non-stop 9-hour flights from Paris to La Reunion with easy connections from the UK.
The Reunion has many options for vacation accommodation. There are villas and apartments to rent on Reunion Island. You will need to contact specialists on the island or book your Reunion villa or apartment online. You can rent apartments and villas in St Denni, and most of the other holiday towns in the Reunion.
Blogging with WordPress – Part 3
WordPress is a platform that has been designed for blogging. It is produced by WordPress.org as open source and has been designed by a team of writers in the public domain. Anyone can work on the program particularly the themes and plugins.
As a blogging software program it is excellent and is easy to learn to use, even for a computer novice. There are many themes and theme variations ranging from single column to four or more columns. Two and three column themes are the most popular. The theme designs are unlimited and are only limited to the imagination of the theme writers.
To use WordPress you just install it and it is ready to go. you can use the default theme or download a theme you like and install. You can write blog style chronological entries or dedicated content pages. The blog contents are only limited by your style, imagination and effort.
Once you get the hang of WordPress you can start to install plugins that have been designed to make life easier. Plugins range from anti spam, comment management, RSS or email subscription management, advertising and side bar management just to name a few.
A word of warning when using plugins. WordPress loads all installed plugins irrespective of their activation status. Every plugin you install will slow the program just that little bit more so if you do have plugins installed but not activated and you have no real intention of using them, delete them.
One of the features of WordPress is that it is really made up of modules. The header or top part of the blog is one file. The sidebars are individual files as is the footer and the separate page files. This means that once you become experienced in the use of these files and you can do quite a lot to customize it to your taste.
If you enjoy blogging and want an industry standard robust blogging platform then I really do recommend WordPress. Most self hosted domains include WordPress at no extra cost which is an even better option. It can be installed through the Fantastico control panel. You can also apply most upgrades through the same control panel.
If you want to blog then I highly recommend WordPress.
Great Plains Add-ons: Dexterity Programming and Development
Microsoft Dynamics GP has large number of installations and successfully implemented for various industries: wholesale, retail, transportation & logistics, pharmaceutical, project organization, non-profit, government and others. GP has vertical and horizontal solutions, which you can purchase in the form of modules. In some cases you business processes are so unique or customization scope is small that it is feasible to develop add-on to GP standard ERP logic from scratch. In this small article we would like to highlight tools and scenarios:
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1.      GP Dex. This is the foundation of GP technology. Microsoft Dexterity has its own programming language Sanscript, plus integrated development environment, database indexing and data reading and writing mechanism. Most of traditional add-ons or also referred as GP satellite products are written in Great Plains Dexterity and are distributed in the form of Dex chunk, which is automatically integrated to GP user workstation software at the first launch of your Dynamics GP. If you review Dynamics.set file – you will see all Dex add-ons, currently pre-integrated in your installation
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2.      Developing in Dexterity. If you are convinced programmer who is ready to learn new programming language, you can install Dexterity from CD#2 (please check licensing requirement with your GP VAR). We also recommend you to consider contracting Dex development project to Dexterity ISV partner, as Dex is pretty proprietary and in some cases it is not feasible to come through Dex training for your in-house IT professionals
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3.      Alternatives to Dexterity. When Microsoft acquired Great Plains Software – Great Plains Dynamics was reoriented to become dedicated to Microsoft technologies exclusively: Microsoft SQL Server, .Net, Sharepoint, SRS. The new tool, initially intended to eCommerce developer – eConnect (which is the set of encrypted SQL stored procedures) was emphasized as new development platform. eConnect opens GP objects realm to Microsoft Visual Studio C# and VB programmers. eConnect is especially good, when you are creating sort of integration, and it is a bit restricted when you are creating new forms and windows, which should be seamlessly integrated with GP user workstation. If all you need is simple data feeding routine, then instead of using eConnect, you can create simple SQL stored procedure or DTS package to do the job
Great Plains Ecommerce: Order Management and Business Portal Notes for Consultant
If you are consulting Great Plains Dynamics customers, you probably remember old good days when eCommerce solution could be built on eOrder module platform. eOrder was written in Interdev as ASP application, and as such could be modified deirectly in its ASP pages. This customization did the job until new version upgrade, when as part of the upgrade you had to reapply your custom changes to eOrder Asp pages as new version update simply was wiping out old version eOrder pages and placing new version pages on the top. Order Management module is in essence successor of eOrder, however it is now hosted in MS Sharepoint and it is part of Microsoft Dynamics GP Business Portal modules family. Let’s quickly review what it means to you if you were supporting and implementing old eOrder and now you will have to move your customer to GP Business Portal platform:
1. Business Portal Setup. This is definitely an overhead, as you will have to read BP administrator guide to setup your existing GP users as well as thin Business Portal users (who do not have to be Great Plains users, which potentially saves you software licensing money). When that work is behind you and you are now expert in setting up Business Portal – then you are pretty much at the point of settings for Order Management, which as similar to old eOrder settings
2. Order Management setup. Here cental part is Catalogue manegment, which has separate program needed to be installed separate from Business Portal. If you remember eOrder catalog management should be reasonably intuitive for you to set it up
3. eConnect stack. Business Portal and Order Management deploy eConnect in the back side. eConnect is the set of SQL stored procedures, allowing you to create various Great Plains master records and transactions. This excurse may seem not really informative, but you may expect eConnect and so, Business portal installation problems, if you do not have the idea about eConnect architecture
4. Legacy e-commerce phasing out step by step. If your website is written in legacy ASP pages, you should not switch to new e-commerce over night. Instead you should consider scenario when you register your business portal Url with your domain registrar, keeping the main web site at the same old ip address
Joomla Templates Why Use It
Free Templates
If you are really determined to get out of the models, a better way to do this is to use those who come for free software with all that you use. Joomla or Word Press, for example, is very clean, attractive models. But you do, though, you must understand that freedom will never be unique templates: your site will be just like hundreds of other Web sites there are the same model as you did it for free.Exclusive Templates
After seeing how some people dislike the other sites being able to use their design, but many sites began selling exclusive models of those sold only once, to a site, then removed. They met a runaway hit on their hands. Joomla – Why Use It?When the Internet began, all sites are simple HTML pages in very simple. They existed as a page or several pages of a site. The browser went to these sites, the browser introduced these files for you and you just read or looked at the content and it was about everything that happened. CMS. Officially Joomla is called a content management system or CMS. That title means he knows how to manipulate the content of your site, where the content is a reference in an article you write, or that you display photos on pages or movies or audio clips that you play. How all this content is presented to the viewer is controlled by software that we call Joomla. Joomla Versus the old method. The reason Joomla is valuable for the construction of a web site by hand, one page at a time is that Joomla organizes everything, and provides functionality that has been de-bugged, tested and used by hundreds others – so that, with little effort, you can install a complex site. What is the maintenance? A healthier must constantly add content to this site. Joomla provides tools to add content and functionality of the site. It also provides functions you need for a website for general use. It comes with pages of contact for sending e-mails from visitors, without spammers hijacking function. It allows you to add advertisements in your Web pages easily. It allows you to edit files, change models and to modify and customize the appearance of the site. More useful functions. There are other benefits to a facility Joomla. There is a strong community of developers who provides modules, plug-ins and add-ons. They are easily installed in Joomla and give you items such as forums, services, community-based, email lists, and other tools. You can customize your site – for free – well beyond what you could do, even with a limited budget. There are hundreds of modules which allow additional functionality. Most of them are free, but there are also many commercial modules.
So if you want an easy, fast, high-performance computing to build your site, do not need to go any where else use ” title=”Joomla Tutorials”>Joomla Tutorials and make your website.
How to Install a faster blog with Wordpress
If you are getting an internet business off the ground, or you have been in the game for a while, but don’t understand why you can’t get a good response from your clients or prospective clients, than you already know that communication is one of the most important currencies around when it comes to doing businesses online. When you are looking to communicate with the people involved in your business, you will soon learn that one of the most easy ways to do so is with a blog, and that WordPress is one of the easiest blogs to set up! Essentially, when you put up a weblog, you are putting up material that feels a great deal more intimate when it comes to your clients learning about the ins and outs of your business.
You are also allowing them a chance to respond to what you put up, and you’ll realize that the more personal that they find you, the more likely they are to think about you when you they need your services. Take advantage of what WordPress offers when it comes to helping you get a real rapport with your customers. You’ll find that WordPress is a great way to get started, especially if you don’t have a lot of web-knowhow. Even if you don’t have a webpage of your own, or your own domain and hosting, you can get a free WordPress blog what will host for you. You’ll find that you can simply go to your site and choose the option that allows you to start Your WordPress Blog. After that, you will create your username, which will be part of the address of your blog as well as part of your blog’s title. This should represent you, so choose wisely. You’ll need to give a valid e-mail address and to create a password, but then you’ll be able to create your blog.
Your blog at WordPress will have the URL of username.wordpress com and you’ll find that that you’ll be asked to choose things like theme, layout and various other small details. Remember that it is important that your blog be readable and easily navigated, so take a look at other similar WordPress blogs. You’ll find that they have the same tools to work with as you do, and look at them not for content, but for their layouts and how easy they are to use. If you are thinking about finding a great way to interact with your customers, you can even look for further ways to make your WordPress blogging account more accessible. Remember that content is always key, but that there are many ways to facilitate the use of your blog and to make it more useful for you. You can earn more by using Wordpress as your main platform. Install SEO Wordpress Blogs easily with this tutorial Wordpress video set so that you can start to blog Wordpress right away. Many professional bloggers are using Wordpress as their top choice of blogging platform now and so should you!
Most Remarkabale Changes in Joomla 1.5
I still didn’t present the details of the changes in Joomla 1.5 to my readers yet. Joomla 1.5 is undoubtedly far better and stable than its former Joomla 1.0. However it is important that I tell my fellow website developers about the changes that actually made Joomla 1.5 so good.
To start with, I’ll discuss the change that I most obvious as soon as you open up you content managements system. The Interface. The website interface in Joomla 1.5 is far more improved than Joomla 1.0. It is more usable and has thus help improve the website administration process greatly.
Website Administration in Joomla 1.5 is something totally new when compared with 1.0. Due to the regrouped extensions administration has become more fun and less complex. The installer and uninstallers are unifies in this version of Joomla. It would have been easier to understand if I could supply you an image of what I want to say. I’ll do that sooner though I am sure my fellow readers must have understood what I want to say.
The other great change is that in Joomla 1.5 implementing parameters in templates is as easy and similar as of adding modules. The templates have been revised in such a manner that adding parameters is not a big deal now. The best thing is that all parameters and operatrions related to them are available at one place in the parameter template. They all can be viewed at one place. You can make the necessary changes; apply them on your WebPages and save it directly from one place.
The CSS templates can now be completely edited with the Joomla 1.5. This was not possible earlier with 1.0 as one could only use the multiple CSS file and could not edit it. But Joomla 1.5 allows you to do so and customize all the CSS files used by the templates according to your own personal requirements.
The word Mambot has now been replaced forever by Plug-ins. Sounds more techno to the ear but is the same thing! Plug-ins of course, does come with additional functionalities than Mambots. The Plug-in manager have all the available Plug-ins listed and categorized for you to choose from.
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