Highlighting The Importance of a Custom Software Development
In today’s business environment, services and products must be produced faster to remain competitive in the market. This trend makes companies with innovative staff, dynamic processes and unique services thrive in the market. Though most businesses still have their internal processes in place, but they still may have some requirements that may be totally different from others. Fortunately, technology has helped to make this much easier and attain a workflow management for the desired outcomes.
Commercial off the shelf products may not meet your business needs so developing a custom software is the only solution. This type of software is especially created for a single customer or some customers who decide on the functions that the software will have and what solution it will offer.
What makes custom software development so important?
Optimized business processes:
Most business organizations ask software developers to highly optimize their in-house processes so that they can remain competitive in the market. Be it a simple database or any complex solution for any large enterprise, custom software development solutions always help to solve issues of the customers.
Innovation ahead:
The ability to organize various in-house processes is a way to success. Developing customized solutions help to implement innovative solutions and also participate in a process suggesting necessary options. A tailor made app that is bespoke is entirely your invention that shows your creative approach to various business challenges.
Reliability and uniqueness:
Customized software is not a luxury item, it is essential to establish yourself as a trustworthy partner and show that you care about your company. It is very important to stand out of the crowd or else if it resembles others, sooner or later it is bound to disappear. Custom solutions helps to remain unique in the market adopt an offbeat approach.
Security:
Off the shelf products are built for general purpose and so you cannot rely on it for complete security. With rising issues of cybersecurity, you can order and develop different levels of security that you need. This helps to manage business operations without having to lose important business data to unauthorized people.
Reduces long term costs:
The first thing that usually comes to the mind when we talk about bespoke solutions is its cost. Most business owners thing that opting for a custom software would often cost more to them. But the truth is that developing custom will cost more money during the initial stage, but with time, the costs will actually get highly reduced.
Adaptability and scalability:
With custom development, you can actually have anything that you want and not purchase anything that the market forces you to buy. You can use latest tools and techniques according to your company’s aims and objectives and this of course helps to enhance the performance of your business. With time, your business will also grow and so will your needs. with custom solutions, you will easily be able to adapt to the changes in the era of rapid tech development.
Complete satisfaction:
In most of the cases, companies that purchase third party software often are dissatisfied from product release frequency, support offered or even the level of autonomy. With bespoke solutions, you can easily mix technologies and also hire skilled experts to develop anything that you exactly want.
Summary:
The positive impact of customized solution is realized when the software is completely developed and implemented. Its immense flexibility, adaptability and robustness allow the business owners to easily complete their core activities smoothly and efficiently.
Sitefinity and WordPress Support: A Guide and Comparison
CMS has become a hot topic of discussion among developers and marketers. Choosing a perfect CMS is vital to enhance the performance of the website as it provides capabilities for multiple users with various permission levels to manage the content, data or any other information of a website, intranet or internet applications. CMS development helps to improve the search engine rankings and also to maintain the look and feel of the site. But once your website is developed, it is very important to maintain the site and update it with latest tools so that it leads to amplified productivity.
Sitefinity and WordPress are two most popular CMSs that are widely used by the marketers and developers. Simply while talking more about these platforms, let’s consider the support options that they have to offer. The type of support that you get for your website, especially after it goes live, actually makes a big difference. If in case you choose a CMS that is made by a developer on his own, then chances are high that you might not get much support a year later. It is only by choosing a CMS that is developed by popular companies having developers and staffs that you can have a reliable support for a longer time period.
Areas where you will need support for your CMS:
- Load failures
- Version upgrades
- Security patches
- Page rendering issues
- Customization
- Hacks and bugs
- Setup help
- License expirations and renewals
Here in this blog we will discuss WordPress and Sitefinity CMS support options:
WordPress support options:
It is said that WordPress’ strengths is also one of its weaknesses. When it comes to support services, there are many third party developers who contribute to the library of WordPress themes and plugins. But there are also some who do not provide support for their plugins and themes and this means that there is no one whom you can call if your WordPress site is not working properly. It is here, that you will have to find the support options to check why your site is not working properly.
Some WordPress support options available to the users:
- WordPress Codex: Codex is a huge knowledge base and it comes with plenty of documentation on various WordPress functions, how to get support and how to use it. You can make it your first stop for WordPress support.
- org Forms: This can be your second priority if in case the Codex doesn’t help you with your issue.
- Third party developers: For plugins and themes, hiring a third party developer can be of great help in terms of support.
Sitefinity support options:
Since Sitefinity is developed by a private company, the support options are available by contacting that company or even its partners.
Progress Sitefinity forums: These forums are used by the Sitefinity developers and those who are willing to assist others with support related queries.
The Sitefinity support center: This helps you with a knowledge base, a link to the forums, documentation support tickets and also a phone support link. The information is useful for solving small issues.
Progress Sitefinity support (Direct): Those who are Sitefinity licensees, progress offers them a support ticket system. But before that you will need a Progress ID to access them and Progress may also forward you to a partner for the support that you are interested in.
Progress’ Sitefinity partner support: This support services are offered by Sitefinity partners to the customers. Unless the error is from the core CMS, such support services are best for you.
So, when choosing your website’s CMS, do consider how often you need to update your website and how you can support your site for minor issues. Sitefinity support model is more stable, but WordPress is also coming up with more support options today.
What You Need to Consider While Migrating from Magento 1 to 2.0 Version?
Magento has always been the first choice of both the developers and the business owners when it comes to creating a successful ecommerce platform. The different versions of Magento have come up with many new features and has rectified the previous errors also. And with Magento 2.0 in the market, the ecommerce industry is already in a shift of momentum towards the latest version. This is very essential to remain competitive in the market and there is also a need of urgency for various stores move to 2.0 because of the rich features that it has to offer.
But before you prepare for a Magento 1 to Magento 2 migration, here are few things that you should know and also consider. Some important basics that you should consider during your migration:
- Data
- Custom code
- Extensions
- Theme
While deciding to upgrade your store to Magento 2, you should come up with a detailed migration plan that includes the specific actions that will be implemented during the process. This will make the entire switch easier and help you to divide the project into smaller milestones.
Considering Magento 2 migration difficulties:
Migrating from the previous Magento development version to the latest one is not at all an easy process. Since 2.0 comes with a compete different database design and architecture, it is about 20% larger than the earlier version. It is only with a proper plan that you would be able to calculate the amount of time and effort that smooth migration would involve. The migration process totally depends on the complexity of the project, customizations and also the number of extensions that are at present running on the store.
Extension and theme compatibility:
Another most important part that needs to be reviewed are the Magento 1 extensions on your store. You have to decide on the ones that are mandatory so that your store keeps on running while you carry out the migration process. You need to consider if the extensions and themes are compatible or available with the 2.0 version. There are two things that can happen when you do this. You will be able to easily get rid of the unnecessary data from your Magento 1 site and the other one is that things will remain less complicated if you use any old extensions for your new store.
Importing data:
Magento has prepared a tool to assist importing of product or customer data easily to the new 2.0 version. The Magento 2 data migration tool uses map files to transform the data to your store and while doing this it verifies the consistency between the two database structures and also tracks the data transfer progress, runs data verification of tests and also creates logs. It operates in three ways: migrating the main data in the database, configuration settings, transferring incremental data updates to the admin panel and storefront.
Considering the performance of the web store:
Another major point to consider is the performance of the website. There are chances that your migration process may not function perfectly in spite of proper planning and implementation. You might run into some weird errors and also get some very unexpected errors after the migration. The performance of your site may not be the same.
“Migration to Magento 2 is essential for your ecommerce store in order to keep up with the innovations and latest features. Though it may seem to be a tedious task, but with a little planning and some essential tips will help to maintain a smooth migration process.”
Be Aware of the Latest LMS Security Attacks and Why Addressing Them Are Important
The learning management system in various corporate training sectors, mostly contain sensitive information that we always want to keep safe. For example, we won’t like to share the employee data or some of our internal data with the outsiders, especially those who are working for our competitors. So, to find any kinds of cyber threats, the companies have already started to work on cyber safety and find solutions to combat them. But the first step is to understand the kind of vulnerabilities of the system and consider the delicate spots of the LMS.
Why does LMS security matter to us?
The LMS industry may handle various trade secrets, marketing strategies and other sensitive data that could create havoc in the wrong hands. Any breach in the LMS website could simply result in the loss of competitive advantage or even loss of students interested in taking up the course. Most of the leading LMSs have good security practices that secure the infrastructure, use SSL, adhere to certification and also get external security audits. In order to fight the security threats, many organizations have started taking steps to understand the different kinds of vulnerabilities in the LMS:
Authentication attacks:
Session management and authentication include various aspects that are necessary to manage any active session. The identification process is very sensitive and even in case of complicated mechanisms, it can be easily broken due to insufficient management functions of data identification that may include password change, or forgotten password that needs to be restored and etc.
Confidentiality attacks:
This type of attacks allows prohibited access to confidential data and resources. The chief purpose of the attacker is not to alter the data, but data distribution and access. The most popular confidentiality flaws are insecure cryptographic storage, improper error handling, insecure direct object reference and also information leakage.
Denial of Service attacks:
The main purpose of this type of attack is to make the organization’s education system unavailable for the users. When an organization comes under the DoS attack, any web services may be affected including the banking services. There are mainly two types of DoS attacks, the logical and the flooding. Logical attacks mainly use the VLE’s existing errors, which makes the system enter an endless cycle of actions. With the flooding attack, a huge number of requests are made, making the system unable to manage and respond to all of them.
Integrity attacks:
This type of attack usually targets to create, modify and even damage the existing e-learning system data. The various types of Integrity attacks are buffer overflow, injection flaws, cross site scripting, failure to restrict URL access. Harmful files can also be uploaded as homework that is not controlled by the LMS.
Security policies in LMS development should always support authorization, authentication, confidentiality and accountability. It is also by analyzing the user’s behavior that you can add an additional layer of security to your LMS. By monitoring things like locations, devices and also the time of the day the LMS is accessed, you can gather data and cross reference them to know more about hacker profiles and risky IP addresses.
IDS Logic Pvt Ltd 