A Check List Before Partnering with a Moodle Hosting Service Provider and Tips to Speed Up
Moodle is a popular LMS platform that allows learners to take the advantage of learning without being physically present in the class. The platform has helped millions of students to learn on the go and as per their convenience. Educational organizations are putting their best efforts to make their courses easily available to all, but one thing that they should also consider is their Moodle web hosting plan. Without proper web hosting services, your website will not perform well and your final business objective to attract students won’t be successful.
So here in this blog, I will share with you the points that you should consider for a high performance and what to look for while choosing the best Moodle hosting service provider.
A low website speed and poor functionality is enough to spoil the reputation of your business. So, it is very important to replenish the performance of your Moodle site and for that here is what you can do.
The basic tweaks to optimization:
Don’t ignore your Moodle hosting
While choosing a hosting plan, the first thing that you should consider is whether the features of the plan suit your website or not. Whether it is shared hosting, dedicated servers or virtual servers, consider what you need and what your webhosting service provider can offer you. Try to invest in a plan that offers adequate resources for your site and is secure from any cyber-crimes.
Check the operating system:
Moodle can run on any operating systems that include Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS. However, experts recommend Linux to be the core OS on the servers for best Moodle performance. So you should address your hosting provider if they provide the recommended configuration to Moodle. In case they are not, then it’s time to change.
Optimize the performance of Apache server:
In case your service provider is using a windows server that has Apache installed, then we suggest you to use the apache Lounge version. It is stated that the build of it offers better stability and performance metrics than the official one. But note that with this version, you won’t be able to keep up with the latest releases of apache and the official patches.
Use tools to boost performance:
Your web hosting provider should be aware of the latest techniques that can help to reduce the loading time of your site. Moodle owners can also use CDN that will make the site easily accessible all over the world. They can also use the secondary caching systems like Memcached, that allows quick rendering of the web pages to the visitors. But remember that the security features are not very strong and may increase your internet vulnerabilities.
Choosing a Moodle hosting provider? Here is what you should look for
Most web hosting service providers offer the general features that are needed for every site, but there are some who are dedicated to Moodle site hosting and can help your educational site to function properly.
Capacity and security:
The prime thing that you need to consider is the number of students who will be accessing and using the site simultaneously. In case your site has too many students and your hosting service provider is unable to provide proper resources, then the site can run slowly, resulting in a poor user experience. So, ensure that your host can accommodate multiple users on your site during peak usage time. Check whether they are offering proper security of your website.
Control panel and compression:
Select a Moodle hosting service provider who can offer a complete control panel through which you can easily compress files. This will make easier for you to switch the hosts in future. You can choose a service provider who offers dedicated Moodle hosting, so that you have to worry only about creating high quality educational content for your students. The rest will be taken care of your hosting service provider.
Why Drupal 8 Is A Popular Choice of Media and Publishing Organizations
Drupal is a popular open source platform preferred by media and publishing organization. Every organization has their own business process, terminologies and style of work. Over the past many years, it is noticed that organizations use many proprietary platforms available in the market to make their publishing task. But slowly there has been a big shift in the mindset and instead of using such a proprietary platform, they are more interested and inclined to customized solutions that fit their working style and also use open source platforms that relieve them from paying heavy license fees.
Drupal 8 is what they love because it comes with rich features that help organizations to publish their web content easily even without having some serious technical skills. Here in this blog, I will state some reasons why I too love to publish content in Drupal 8. Here are some of the top reasons:
WYSIWYG editor:
The WYSIWYG editor (CKEditor) is now the standard editor in Drupal 8 core and this means that there is no need to consider the HTML every time you want to include any link, add an image or even stylize a heading. The feature helps to save a lot of time and publishing is simply awesome. It also prevents the marketers or publishers from using any sloppy codes that could become an issue later in case we migrate the content. Drafts can now be easily created and web security is also better implemented here.
Multilingual ready:
Drupal 8 supports extensive multilingual features so that developers can create sites that can be presented in various languages to target specific markets. The admin interface has built-in translations and users can create pages that has language based Views filtering and also block visibility. The translation updates that are created by the community are automatically facilitated.
Quick edits:
Keeping your website updated with regular changes is essential to keep your visitors engaged. Seeing something great that requires changes and having the ability to make the changes without much time is what everyone looks for. Now Quick Edit is a feature of Drupal 8, and if you are logged into Drupal content, then you can edit the text directly by using quick edits and also make additions from the front end.
Easy customization
Website is considered to be a vital marketing tool for our agency. It is the place to share knowledge with the audience and offers various ways to keep the audience engaged. Drupal 8 development comes with various customizable features like the call to action buttons that can be displayed in various places on the site. These buttons help the visitors to sign up for newsletter, register for a webinar or take any other action that the users hope the visitors take.
Field types:
Drupal 8 comes with loads of field types in the core, thereby making the content structure capabilities very powerful. New field types like reference, date, email, telephone, etc. aid the content creation and with Drupal 8, you can easily attach the fields to the contents and also create customized contact forms by attaching various fields to them.
The above features that Drupal 8 offers have helped media and publishing organizations share tailored content with the audience without having to worry about the technical issues.
Things You Should Avoid So That Your Mobile App Doesn’t Fail
While building a mobile app for your business, there are various things that have to be considered. Proper functionality is simply the beginning. If you want your users to remain engaged and attached to your business, then the first thing should be to create an interactive mobile app that offers the right information at the right time to the right audience. Though apps are used more often today than ever before, they are not downloaded often. This means that the market competition is high and gaining users’ attention is crucial.
Having worked on various mobile app development projects, I have observed some main reasons why apps fail in the market. Here in this blog, I will share with you those reasons that leads to the failure of a mobile app.
Failure is not always the result of a bad luck. In many cases there are contributing factors that lead to the failure and this can’t be chalked up simply to the tough market competition.
1)- Poor market and audience research:
Even if you have a great idea, it doesn’t ensure that it would make a great app in practice. The decision to develop a mobile app project should always be research driven. You should be clear about the reason behind developing the app, the people who want to use the app, the unique feature that it provides and etc. It is, in fact a thorough research about the market and your audience that will offer you the answers to all your queries. If you consider building an app without proper research, then you may find that your product doesn’t offer the features that the audience actually wants.
2)- Considering innovation for value:
Simply because you can include some features in your app doesn’t mean that you should. With new technologies coming up every now and then, there is always a competition about who should be first to implement them. The problem with this approach is that the drive to be innovative may often overshadow the value proposition. It is important to design a product keeping the needs of the user base. All the features of your mobile app should add true values to the end users. It should ultimately benefit the users.
3)- Ignoring the platforms:
Android and iOS are the two most popular platforms having intuitive interface guidelines. They also differ in the gestures and operate in different manners. Based on the hardware of the phone, users are accustomed to it and this can actually affect the user experience. If your app doesn’t perform well across the devices, operating systems and networks, then it would actually become a major problem. Users will easily get frustrated and this can mean the failure of your mobile app. Choosing the best platform for your app is one of the most important things to consider.
4)- Not considering the competitive threats:
Market condition is the foundation of every mobile app product. It is very important for business owners to understand that the competitive environment of the industry matters a lot in the success of a mobile app. Part of this means using latest technologies to predict and also be aware of the potential competitive threats. Understanding the competition’s weaknesses and strengths will help you set your product apart. With research, you can now define your product and optimize it for the users over time.
5)- Improper testing:
Most mobile apps fail in the market due to poor performance like apps crashing or some components shutting down while using it. Testing is very important so that there are not bugs in it even after launch and all the features and functionalities are working properly. A single crash is enough to stop the users from using it again and any negative reviews about the performance related to app crashing will surely make your app fail in the market.
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