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IndiaPHP–International Web Programming Language
If you are keen on finding a web based application that will give you both a user friendly experience and also manage your database then you need look no further than Hyper Text Pre-processor or PHP. PHP was invented in 1995 and is now the best web programming language around. If the client wants integration to take place between the project and the database, this program is perfect. PHP is an open source web development framework so it has all built – in enhancements that turn it into a complete web application developing program for any requirement. Other giants like .Net and Java lose out the PHP which has an edge over them.
These days the requisite is for a dynamic website where the content can be modified and periodically updated. Sadly there was a shortage of such sites. This made it very difficult for programming languages and things only got worse when the client asked for SEO friendly websites. With the advent of PHP the problem of a static website came to an end. Every new version that hit the market increased the performance and security of the internet programming language.
Features
The lines of code are drastically reduced with PHP. This helps the quality team in the testing process.
Safe and secure applications
PHP enabled websites show increased performance, reliability and user friendliness
Because PHP is an open source language cost and time is reduced in building an application or a website
PHP websites helps both developers and owners. Easy to maintain site and PHP has international standards of language.
Website owners who have used PHP to build up their websites have an easy search engine friendly website that develops multi features web based applications. The majority of companies hire PHP programmers as the work gets done on a project basis and on time. Web developer hire on the other hand is the best way if you want to be free of problems like managing employees, time for resources and studying about latest technologies.
Go Open Source and Become High – Tech
In a recent issue of Entrepreneur there were articles on starting a blog, virtual workforce, instant messaging, mobile banking, using Skype and choosing between BlackBerry and iPhone. How will you achieve all that without gearing up with technology? If you are a small business here are two ways…
1. Use expensive commercial software.
2. Give free open source software a try in those areas where it meets your needs
The same issue also offered useful tips to revamp small business IT for serious savings. One way; use open source software (OSS). By their estimation, by using OSS a small business could save $18,950.
What happened in the past was SMB’s hesitated to bring in OSS because of a lack of in – house skills. While deep OSS expertise is still needed to be gained by small businesses, that obstacle is now surmountable as OSS is increasing in maturity, smaller businesses are fast being supported by commercial OSS vendors and many more third party support providers are materializing. While larger enterprises are interested in reduced costs and the ability to customize and look at OSS in that way, SMB’s look at OSS as a chance to bring in the latest of technology that earlier had to be procured by expensive proprietary applications according to analysts.
For those who are still ignorant or skeptical about OSS there are hundreds of millions of downloads and a visible public profile, Linux, Apache, Firefox and Open Office provide examples of the same. Additionally we can now read everywhere about successful case studies of large enterprises using Linux, Apache, and other OSS. This doesn’t make it as daunting for the small businesses who would otherwise feel afraid of an unbeaten path
Cost savings are just the beginning. CNET Blog Network author and popular OSS columnist Matt Asay says, “Now is a great time to use open source, to tap into the innovation and flexibility with budgets being cut. Though open source isn’t only or mainly about reducing costs it’s a great side effect.”
Small businesses are naturally shy about using modern technology to improve their business. In the past every time they thought of a good idea they had to drop it immediately because of the cost which was sky high. Eventually they didn’t think about it anymore. The equation has changed dramatically with OSS. So small businesses are herewith invited to put on the thinking cap again. Get creative. With so much OSS now available you can still find an open source application to the craziest idea you can ever come up with.
Joomla Latest Features
Joomla Content Management
Joomla Contact Manager helps your users to get the right person and their contact information. This management also supports multiple contact forms for individual as well as group.
Search
Latest search option features is help navigate users to most popular search items and give the admin with search information
System Features
Quick page loads are likely with page caching, granular-level module caching, and GZIP page compression.
FTP Layer allows file operations without having to make all the folders and files writable, making your site administrator’s life easier and increasing the security of your site.
Administrators speedily and efficiently communicate with users one-on-one through private messaging or all site users via the mass mailing system.
Syndication and News feed Management
It’s easy to syndicate the site content, allowing the users to subscribe to new content in their favorite RSS reader.
Joomla Features Overview
User Management
Joomla is customizable and friendly with a new registration system that allows users to configure the type of access to be allotted. The nine user groups comprising of various types will decide upon users’ access to edit, publish and administrate based on the allowed level of permission.
With support to multiple protocols including LDAP, OpenID, and even Gmail, Joomla authenticates users which would enable them to use their existing account information to streamline the registration process.
Media Manager
This easy to access tool, Media Manager will assist users to manage their media files or folders and they can configure MIME settings which would let them access various types of files. For users to have ease in grabbing images and other files at any point of times, the Media Manager is integrated into the Article Editor tool.
Language Manager
In the new Joomla, you have ease of use by configuring your website to display in one language and access your admin panel in another language. International support is available for various languages along with UTF-8 encoding.
Banner Management
The task of setting up a banner in your website is further simplified with the help of Banner Manager. Once you create a client profile, add campaigns and the number of banners according to your requirement, after which you can move on to impression numbers, special URLs and more.
Drupal Platform Features
Apache or IIS, Unix/ Linux/ BND/ Solaris/ Windows / Mac OS Support –
Drupal comes with a multi-platform support facilitating users to make best use of it with either Apache or Microsoft IIS. Also the feature supports and Drupal easily runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris and other major platforms.
Database Independence – Drupal allows users to program in different database servers apart from SQL using the same code base. In other words, it offers the exceptional people from the majority who use Drupal on MySQL to embed their code easily. It is built on top of Database Abstraction Layer which enables the users to create a matching SQL scheme with a supporting backend containing fourteen functions.
Multi-Language – For the wider purpose of reaching users worldwide with your website, Drupal offers a multi-language support from the default language English. Content in different languages can be translated using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) either by importing existing translation or using tools such as GNU get text. With Drupal, a multi-lingual website, blog, community application or a content management system can be designed with the full framework
Drupal Blogging Features
Blogger API support – Users can now post and update content on their Drupal site using different external GUI applications such as blog tools for customized action. The blogger API lets you modify and update content using non-web browser tools that offer a more user friendly editing environment.
Content Syndication – For easier use of access for users across to gather and get notified of the contents posted, Drupal exports the content in RSS/ RDF format with which any user having a News Aggregator can browse the site feeds and be up-to-date.
News Aggregator – A powerful built-in News Aggregator is embedded with Drupal which will let you get news from other websites and blogging news in common formats such as RDF and RSS. It’s easy to embed a feed with News Aggregator in your Drupal site which will cache articles to MySQL database with user configured cache time.
Permalinks – The entire content loaded in a Drupal site is connected with each other using permanent links or Permalink. It will ensure users can browse through all the pages without being obstructed by broken links.
Drupal Content Management Features
Polls – The admin and users will be able to create polls with the help of poll module embedded within Drupal which is an easy feature used to setup a poll, set the base vote counts and the number of votes on each topic including the duration of the poll. Drupal will automatically tally the number of votes and the module will also allow users to see results, post polls based on the administrative privileges enabled.
Templating – Allowing you to customize and have control over the look of the Drupal site, the templating option distinguishes between presentation and the content. For easy access, the templates are made from standard HTML and PHP coding which saves your time spent in the learning curve to get the hang of a proprietary templating language.
Threaded Comments – Adding to the list of features is the threaded comment model offered by Drupal, a hierarchical module which groups up the comments posted on different blogs, pages, content into one similar to that of a newsgroup or forum. The powerful threaded comments enable users to publish comment, notified with updates and allow admin to segregate them.
Version Control –Drupal’s Version Control feature will help you keep track of your website by enabling a detailed page regarding the content updates, modifications done along with the date and time. It also has the feature to let you know who updated the content, who edited it and what changes they made with date and time. Version control has a reversal option by keeping track of the changes through a comment log so that you can roll back the content to an earlier version.
Drupal General Features
Collaborative Book – Coming latest in the list is the ‘Collaborative Book’ feature that enables to create a ‘book’ in the hierarchical which will contain titles, content, sub sections facilitating authorized users to create, write or edit the content. It is useful when it comes to creating guidelines, Frequently Asked Questions and information manuals.
Friendly URLs – The new Drupal program is improvised with the Apache’s mod_rewrite enabling the modification of URLs which is user friendly and optimized at its level best for search engines.
Modules – The contributed modules which are compatible with the latest Drupal 6 are plug-in that extends, build or enhance the Drupal core functionality.
Online Help – Rendering the best support to help you regarding queries, the reliable online help system built into the core text help will be available at the site created for you and works efficient despite the shortcomings found in support offered for all open source projects.
Open Source – Under the terms of GNU General Public License 2 (GPL), source code of Drupal is distributed for free which is open to be customized or extended as required unlike those of proprietary blogging or content management systems.
Personalization – With ultimate control to personalize based on individual user requirements, Drupal is embedded with a robust personalization environment enabling users to change both the content and presentation accordingly.
Role Based Permission System – Authoring the permission to operate, modify or change Drupal settings can now be done without the tedious process of assigning it individually. Administrators can setup permission based on assigned roles and group them into one for easy access.
Searching – Make better use of the search module which helps you in finding all the contents of Drupal which are completely indexed and searchable whenever required.
Future Ahead With PHP
PHP is the most user friendly programming language widely used by almost every user in the world wide web and is still being developed for improvised uses. While originally invented and referred to as personal home page in simple terms, it is a programming model based on JAVA and C+ with a wider advantage in creating dynamic web pages. The modern day websites use plenty of hardware and software resources to be as advanced as a standalone application. Rather than being pages created to display content alone, web pages are more interactive which where the PHP comes in providing user friendly deployment of rich user interface. Improved plug-in like Shockwave, Flash or Silver light can be embedded into a PHP programmed webpage for it enables the creation in web servers as well as web sites. It usually comes bundled with the Linux, SQL or Apache. With futuristic development of latest operating systems that enables touch screen interface and apps that are far more advanced, PHP provides the best platform to enhance, improvise and add feature rich pages for the upcoming future.
Magento eCommerce – Journey over the years
Introduction:
Considered to be one of the most powerful eCommerce based CMS tool today, the journey hasn’t been a smooth sailing. The content below throws light on the path taken by Magento over the years to reach where it is today.
For years people had been using a modified Zen Cart codebase which worked well, something that was easily hackable but constantly frustrated web administrators with bad system design, poor templates, low standards compliance and a weak development community. It was something people had to live with and overcame these shortfalls by making few custom modifications. Magento appeared on the scene at a time when everyone was criticizing over Web 2.0. It was a time of shiny new applications, short & brandable urls, gradients and buttons. At first it seemed too good to be true; an MVC approach (using Zend framework), latest technology, well thought out features, upgrading platform, company backed and developers not afraid to use the latest versions of PHP and MySQL. Those who tried Magento loved its features but not much was known about it’s codebase. It was really strange, it had a lot of files, a lot of directories, a completely OOP and an unusual use for XML. Those who tried this took it as a learning experience and went about using it in small real time projects to see its results. Even though a lot of this depends on several external factors like people who use it, application and its purpose, and so on it was more about ensuring the right technology is used at the right place.
Features:
With features such as product filtering, high numbers of orders, one page checkout and many such add-ons, a lot was required in terms of hacking into Zen Cart, so due to its advanced features people started using Magento. But there was one hurdle which most web developers faced. People could not understand what decision process resulted in thousands of directories and tens of thousands of files (a lot of which contain empty class declarations). Figuring out the pattern of where the code went and what the abstract folders called “Convert”, “Entity”, “Layer”, “Resource” etc. are for. The naming convention for folder names, model names etc. didn’t sink in – sometimes you needed lower case, sometimes camel case and sometimes one capital letter. To make things worse, documentation was very sketchy and not many resources were available to find out answer for the problems. Due to the Zend/OOP/MVC influence on Magento it was impossible to follow the code. Classes are referenced dynamically, various aspects are contained in XML files and there is no clear flow that you can just debug through. The sheer volume of files and folders makes finding something unbelievably tedious. Even the database is a minefield. In Magento, the use of EAV means that data is split amongst hundreds of abstract tables. Again, it doesn’t flow and it doesn’t make sense without a great deal of time developing a solid understanding of what they have done.
Hence to conclude, Magento is an advanced system which requires a lot of learning and re-learning. Once the rules are learnt and understood these application design decisions make sense.
