How Implementing SharePoint Based CMS Collaboration Can Helps Your Business System?
Microsoft SharePoint has been in the market since 2001 and is considered to be one of the best business collaboration tools of today. For any small or medium sized business and corporation, an enterprise CMS is the heart of the organization’s digital presence. Using a CMS together with a collaboration tool helps the users to employ a range of content and document types on the website and also modify and even expand the information posted without the need of a web programmer to set up the website and also do the updates.
Today, both the content management system and SharePoint helps to provide the organization with a business environment that is very organized and does not contain multiple duplicate items in various locations.
A system that is mostly needed is something that can organize the web content, have security controls to prevent unauthorized access, deletion and changes, and at the same time publish the capabilities of the company for a greater view and also manage the workflow successfully for automating, publishing and reviewing the content of the site.
SharePoint is an effective CMS that can help you to take your organization beyond some basic file storage.
Helps to remove version confusion:
There are cases when the same document is sent out several times and each copy is revised by different team members and there are several versions that float around. With time, multiple versions get accumulated and there are endless connections to it like phone calls and emails. And at some time, you realize that no one is actually aware of the version of the plan that they should have. This creates a lot of confusion among the team members regarding the timetables, data and responsibilities.
Using SharePoint to manage your web content helps to remove these problems and keep everything centralized since the latest document is stored in the SharePoint website. Together with this, you can add project calendars, so that the delivery dates and the responsibilities of each team members are clear. When anyone searches other projects in your company, they can easily find the related documents, databases, videos and also spreadsheets.
Flexible folders:
Traditional files share only offer one option to organize a large collection of documents. But with time, these folders can grow into deep hierarchies of nested subfolders over time. And marketers and publishers might need to traverse up or down the folder hierarchy in search of documents and this can be very frustrating. With SharePoint development as your CMS, you will be able to use a combination of metadata fields and metadata hierarchy to organize and even tag the documents.
This enables the users to create different hierarchies and views of the same document, organize it based on the category, authors, keywords, key dates and etc. as per your needs.
Storing and securing business critical documents:
Using SharePoint as your CMS helps you to manage, store and also organize business critical documents. The documents that are stored are often protected from deletion, overwriting and can also be tagged with retention policies that allows the users to find the best content at the right time. SharePoint offers the tools that help you to store, protect and also retrieve the content easily.
In SharePoint, the user roles and permissions can also be configured as per the needs. The documents are automatically secured based on the rules for the folder or the target library. Flyers and employee handbooks can also be visible to the users and the sales materials can be secured for few managers and executives.
SharePoint CMS removes the need for paper:
SharePoint content management system supports the paperless office and this increases the productivity by storing the documents digitally with searchable metadata. This makes it very easy to search, share, retrieve and edit the document present in the content library.
Effectively re-purpose content:
Content authors and business users can easily create and submit the content for approval and deployment on the intranet and internet sites. Managing the multilingual content is made easy through new document library templates that are designed to keep a relationship with the original version and the various translations of the document.
With all business websites, it is very important to accomplish and get the most efficient means to manage website content. Using the features of SharePoint to manage web content is a smart choice for your company.
Why Is Ecommerce Maintenance & Support an Integral Part of Your Business
Website maintenance is something that all the business owners who wish to stay in the market for a long time period is ready to implement on a periodical basis. Whether you are a small business or a large organization selling products or services to your customers, it is very important that your website performs well without any errors. Keeping the customer engaged on your site needs careful planning and implementing all the latest updates and patches on your site. And all these things can only be done by a professional ecommerce maintenance and support service provider.
Now the question arises, why is it essential to hire a company for the services? Can the business owners handle everything themselves? Especially with the complexities and the amount of data an Ecommerce website has to handle, regular website maintenance is more of a necessity if you are serious about your business. Companies that are continuously engaged with their technical team for maintenance and upgrade tasks usually have an upper hand over the others for some reasons:
Regular maintenance and support services can help you with
Increased up time:
By increased up time it means that your website would function properly, it will have reliability, more customers and ultimately more sales. Each ecommerce site consists of an ecosystem of services and most of these are covered automatically, but there are still some 3rd party services that need regular maintenance that are related to versioning, which may lead to the system becoming unstable. These needs small fixes in order to make the website operate normally. There may be critical outages during heavy traffic, especially during the sales season and this may cause loss of business opportunities. Hiring a reliable website maintenance and support company to fix the problems will help you to maintain consistency of service to the customers.
Keep updated with latest features and versions
The digital commerce landscape is moving fast and there are more and more features being added every single day. Sometimes these features become a part of the eCommerce platform and sometimes they are the native things that require some extra website development or some upgrades of 3rd party services. Since there is always a need to keep pace with the market competition, and internal resources are not always free to carry out such operations, it is best to hire web agencies offering maintenance and support services. They have years of experience and can help you solve problems without wasting your crucial time.
Starting A New Ecommerce Store? Avoid These Common Mistakes for Success
High performing websites:
Any ecommerce websites that are designed and developed to work fast is sure to succeed. But there are times when hidden bugs and glitches may cause the site to slow down. Fixing such problems and at the same time introducing new protocols that can add up speed and performance of the site is important as it helps the company to remain ahead of the other competitors. Customer usually get very frustrated with slow shopping experience and even if they make a purchase on the site, they are not very likely to come back for more.
The size of your business:
Smaller businesses have modest needs for maintenance since they have a small number of products and limited number of pages. They usually have the basic services in their website without many advanced features and 3rd party extensions or modules. with limited traffic and sales, the retailers are in need of minimum maintenance, but a large business needs a lot of attention. Their sales and traffic volumes are high and the number of channels through which business is done are also high. This means that they need a lot of maintenance work to keep everything running smoothly. Since such companies aim for constant improvements to their UX and internal processes, hiring a reliable maintenance company offers great helps.
On premises vs SaaS
The SaaS platforms require less maintenance than the on premises options, as they have a centralized system, which means that the updates will be applied automatically. But on premises platforms like Magento needs maintenance in terms of connectivity and hardware and also need special attention when it comes to updates and versioning. The updates are not seamless, so they should be carried out by experts.
Check Out the Options While Customizing Your Moodle Mobile App
Moodle is a popular open source Learning Management System (LMS) that is growing in popularity among the educators all over the world. Since it is highly customizable and has no user costs to pay, it is widely used and is effectively integrated with the management system and allows you to offer personalized learning that encourages the involvement of a huge community of the institutions.
As a business owner, have you ever thought of customizing your Moodle mobile app for a wonderful experience for the teachers and learners? The official Moodle mobile app has various options and ways to customize the App so that it can meet your specific requirements. Let’s take a look at some of the options that can make your customization task easier.
Changing the appearance for your website:
If you have a specific design or theme for your website, which you want the visitors to view on their mobile, then the first thing that you should do is to make sure that the appearance or theme of the Moodle mobile app matches the web version of your site. The Moodle mobile app can easily retrieve your custom styles for your site and for this you need to go to the Site Administration> mobile app> mobile appearance and from there and add a link to the CSS file that contains your custom styles.
Customize the language strings:
In Moodle LMS, you can change any language string for your mobile application. You can choose to use familiar words for the links and menu items and also for the labels. You can easily customize the language strings from Custom Language Strings setting in Administration> Site Administration> Mobile App> Mobile Features.
Disable the features that are not needed:
There are various features in the app for different needs. You may need some and may not need any of them. In order to customize the Moodle mobile experience, you can check out the features that you need most. You can easily enable or disable any feature in the Moodle mobile app including the Moodle activities. This will make the app perfect as per your requirements.
Add some new menu items:
What are the menu items that you would like to be shown in your mobile app? If you want any additional items to be added to the main app’s menu, then you can specify them in the custom menu items under the Administration > Site Administration > Mobile App> Mobile Features. The link on the main menu can be opened in the same app, embedded browser or external browser.
The security options:
If you are willing to increase the security of your app for your users, then there is an option to ensure that the right users have access to the app and they will have to enter their password every time they come back by checking the Force Log Out checkbox under the settings.
Following the above options and ways that are already available in the Moodle Mobile App settings, you can easily customize the mobile experience for your learners and educators. For customization and to add some additional features to your Moodle mobile app, you can also add some plugins or upgrade to the latest version.
Important Drupal 8 Modules That You Cannot Ignore in 2018 During Website Development
Drupal is a popular content management system that helps web developers to build completely scalable and flexible solutions written on programmatic language PHP and database MySQL. This open source platform mainly helps in online management of the websites and also delivers fruitful results.
It is because of its vast range of features and free add-on-modules that most website owners prefer to use Drupal as it helps to accomplish almost anything that you need to add to your website even in the future.
There are about 3000 modules available for Drupal 8, however, a lot of them make usage of the website easier each day. Here in this blog, I will discuss with you some of the top Drupal 8 modules that you know about while developing your website.
Why Drupal 8 Is A Popular Choice of Media and Publishing Organizations?
Modules for the Admin:
A responsive admin menu that comes with extra functionalities is always important when it comes to managing the Drupal website. Some important Drupal 8 modules that you can use for the Admin menu includes:
Admin toolbar: The original admin menu is replaced with a responsive version of Admin toolbar and this helps to greatly improve the original menu’s features and functionalities by adding to it some drop down menus. This enhances the access speed to all the administration pages. The functionality could be extended by adding extra links for flushing the cache and then running Cron jobs.
Linkit: This is a very useful module that enables auto complete features for all the external and internal links. The content producers don’t have to remember the accurate URL. The process of hyperlinking and adding the URL is now easy because of the user-friendly UI of the module.
Field Group: This module helps marketers and publishers to easily organize their content by grouping the fields together in either horizontal or vertical tabs, accordions and etc. The module highly improves the use experience for the content editors.
PathAuto: Choosing significant and easy to remember URLs are a good practice for the SEO of the website. This module automatically helps to generate easy and appropriate URLs according to your web pages. These URLs also ensure that the pages on the site rank better with the search engines and all the pages perform well in the SERP.
Some other important modules:
Configuration split:
This Drupal configuration Split module often makes Drupal 8 configuration management customizable and more manageable. This means that you can easily set up some configurations, which can be edited on the live site without having to interfere with the configuration management workflow. Instead of importing and exporting the entire set of a site’s configuration, the module allows the users to define the set of configuration to export to different directories that automatically helps to merge again when they are imported.
Deploy content staging module:
This module helps to make things easier to stage and also preview the content for a Drupal site. It is also used to deploy the content from one site to another. The latest version is redesigned for Drupal 8 based on the Replication and Multiversion modules that makes everything more flexible and efficient.
Jason API:
This module helps to format your JSON requests and responses and helps them to become compliant with the JSON API specification. The module is the key to set up Drupal as a backend so that the user can implement the front end using React or by using the front-end platform of their choice.
Drupal Commerce:
The latest release of Drupal Commerce is very useful to start building ecommerce sites using the latest Drupal 8 version. The module is completely rebuilt for Drupal 8, and this module doesn’t assume a specific ecommerce business model, thereby enabling the developers to easily customize the module so that it suits the specific merchant’s needs.
Webform:
This Drupal webform module has come up with a new release for the Drupal 8 version. Lots of work has been placed inside the modules and it is like a whole form-building application that is inside the Drupal 8 website. Integrating forms into any Drupal 8 website allows you to create, publish and duplicate webforms. You can also manage and download submissions and then send the confirmations to the users.
UI patterns:
In case you are using Drupal 8 development and you are looking for a means to implement an atomic design in Drupal, then the UI patterns project is a great option. It consists of six modules that enables you to expose and define the UI patterns as Drupal plugins. You can then use it as the drop in templates for all the entity types that includes views, field groups, paragraphs and etc.
“With many useful Drupal 8 modules easily available for you, it is now easy to add any specific features to your website to make it more rich and functional. All the modules are highly customizable and this is a great advantage during Drupal web development.”
List of Questions That You Should Ask Before Hiring Certified Sitefinity Developers
Whether you are a start-up business about to launch your first website or you already have an existing one, you might be thinking about the type of CMS that you should choose to manage your web content.
Earlier, businesses relied on static pages that were uploaded directly to the servers to publish the web content. Many organizations continued to update their sites in this way, but this has some serious limitations on their ability to scale and also improve their online presence.
With CMS becoming available to the marketers, it was then time to choose the best one that could satisfy their unique business requirements.
Sitefinity, a CMS platform gained much popularity because of its built in functionalities, extensible software architecture and design that enables the marketers to extend the functionality of almost every module or widget. Adding any new functionality or modifying the existing one or integrating any third party application needs great expertise. And for this, you have to hire a certified Sitefinity developer.
But before finalizing, here are some questions that you should ask to judge their competencies:
How Many Years have You Worked with Sitefnity CMS?
Since Sitefinity is regularly updated with various enhancements and latest features, it is important that your certified Sitefinity developer has experience with the latest version of the CMS. He should also know how to upgrade an old Sitefinity site, and has experience from performing many upgrades.
How Many Certified Sitefinity Developers do You have and What is Their Average Experience?
Choosing a reliable and experienced Sitefinity partner is important as they will be able to work on your project effectively. With a complete team of certified consultants and developers having many years of experience, it would be easy for you to build a feature rich website that meets your business objectives easily. So ask your development agency about the number of certified Sitefinity developers that they have and their total work experience.
How do Your Developers Plan Your Project Before They Start Coding?
Before finalizing your Sitefinity developers, ask them about how they plan before they begin with the project and what are their considerations that are specific to a CMS implementation that should be taken into account. Understanding and knowing that your partner always creates a blueprint before the implementation is important as this will help to run the project smoothly without any hassles.
Do Your Developers have Experience in Integrating Third Party Tools with Sitefinity? Can They Make Necessary Customization?
To make your website, feature rich and highly functional, it has to be integrated with various third party tools and systems that include customer relationship management software, product databases, portals, data feeds, and etc. There are many third party tools that have existing connectors for Sitefinity, but there are many that don’t have. In such cases you will have to rely on your certified Sitefinity developers and their ability to write custom integrations.
What is Your Process for Code Management and Deployment?
Your website development partner should maintain a transparent process that instills confidence in you. Knowing about their code management is also important from the point of security. Here are some specific questions that you should ask:
- Do you use modern practices like continuous integration?
- Do you keep a code history and a file backup during the development process?
- Do you employ staging, development and production environments?
- Do you have a checklist while deploying the code for production to lessen potential down time?
Do Your Developers Ensure Compliance with Regulations?
Security, data privacy and accessibility are of critical importance and some laws and regulations have been introduced to address these concerns like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). These are already applied and their importance is also growing with each day. It is very important for your Sitefinity development partner to have experience in assisting and implementing these standards with compliance.
“To conclude, we can say that it is true that no software development partner is 100% perfect, but by asking the right questions will of course ensure that you are engaging a team of Sitefinity developers who are competent, have the ability to plan properly, use modern techniques, conduct quality assurance testing and at the same time specialize in Sitefinity.”
Enabling SSL Certificate to Secure Your DNN Website
Website security has always been the prime focus of business owners since there are a number of high profile compromises and vulnerabilities due to cyber-attacks. As website operators and developers are trying to implement the best practices for security, it is also time to take a look at enhancements regardless of the technical ability.
What keeps the managers awake at night is the thought whether their site is protected against any exploits or vulnerabilities. As a business owner and a non-technical person, you can still validate or even enhance the security of your DNN website with a little more information.
Why should you choose an SSL certificate for higher security of your DNN website?
SSl or Secure Socket Layer is the old standard for transferring secure data online and that is now known as TLS Transport Layer Security. The new encryption standard is based on another layer of the OSI model. What we keep hearing is the term SSL that represents both.
When you are looking for the security of your DNN website, it is important to have a clear understanding that SSL is effective at securing any transport of data. It has nothing to do with securing the website. in case you have any website security issues, then it is not that SSL will be able to solve it like a magic.
Why your DNN website should use SSL to remain safe?
- If your DNN website deals with online transactions and uses credit cards, then SSL is required to be PCI compliant so that the payments are done through safe mode.
- SSL certificate helps to remove the sense of danger when modern browsers like Chrome add a Not Secure icon on the left side of the website address as you enter a form. The form can be anything from a search field or etc. this is enough to scare away the users from your website.
- Using SSL for your DNN website will offer a sense of trust to the visitors because they will find the green lock appearing next to your website address.
- SSL may be helpful for the SEO of your website. Search algorithms always prefer websites that are secure and are reliable and trustworthy. Having an SSL certificate may create a small preference than the sites that are not using the certificate. This added advantage will help to secure a higher ranking in the SERPs.
The different types of SSL certificates that can be used for your DNN website:
When it comes to securing the transmission of data, the only thing that counts is the length of the key. The longer it is; the more time it takes to crack. A 2048-bit key is a standard one as it would take about 1200 years to crack the key, but things will also change very quickly with Quantum computers.
Domain validation (DV) certificates: These SSL certificates only verify that the person requesting the certificate has control on the domain name of the site. The certificates are available either for free or at a very small costing. They can be obtained in minutes or hours and needs you to prove that you can now control the domain name. It shows a green lock next to the address of the website.
Organization Validation or OV certificate: This is used to verify the company behind the website. This is done by verifying the public governmental records where the company address and contact information changes. These certificates require some money and they can be obtained in a few days. It displays a green lock in most browsers and the certificate also shows the details of the organization that includes the address and contact information
Extended Validation or EV certification: This helps to go a step further and the issuer conducts a small audit of the company and the owner. This costs money and the certificate shows a green address bar or a large lock with the name of the company in most browsers.
“Purchasing and installing an SSL certificate is easy; you can ask your web hosting service provider about it and follow their instructions to install.”
Quick Tips to Create Your Mobile App Monetization Strategy
If you are the owner of a software development company, it is no surprise that sooner or later you will be creating mobile applications for your customers. as per Gartner’s forecast in 2018, consumers will listen more to their friends, recommendation services and advertising and also social networks instead of searching any app on the play store.
Most users may not even browse the paid options when you have many fee ones. The competition is very tough and this fact should be considered while choosing the strategy of monetization and promotion for mobile apps.
Advertising:
The best means to make money using your mobile app is through advertising. You can display third party advertisements within your application and then generate revenues from view, clicks and also actual conversions. Based on the type of your application, you can choose the advertisement formats:
Interstitial ads: this ads fill the entire application window hiding its content and they also attract more attention of the users. The effect is more pronounced and users can either skip the ad or return to the application.
Banners: This type of ad is mostly used for mobile app monetization and you must have seen the rectangular ads at the bottom of your screen. Banners demand extremely precise designs as they rely on the brand recognition. Use banner ads carefully while making money from your mobile app.
Native advertising: This is considered to be the most elegant format of ads as they don’t look like ads at all. They only seem to be part of the application content. In many cases the advertising is marked with “Featured”, “Sponsored by” and etc.
Choose the Freemium App Model:
This is a common way to generate revenue from your app. The user base is created first by using the free version and later on it is upgraded to the premium model once the mobile app succeeds to engage the audience. This is an effective app monetization idea as users can try the product before purchasing before moving to the premium version. it is also easy to invite the users to download the app and give it a try.
In-app purchases:
Most mobile apps are unpaid but this does not mean that the users never spend money within the app. In-app purchases will help you to make money and also allow the customers to interact directly with the product. Here users have no upfront cost, they need to pay for gated features and any business can make use of this.
Partnership with other apps:
Partnership often helps in popularizing your app and any collaboration with another mobile app often helps to take the promotional advantage from their platform and helps in growing the revenue. In this process, it is not mandatory to partner with a highly successful app. Choosing any app that is moderately popular can also help to reach maximum number of potential users.
White labeling:
White label product means something that is produced by a company and sold under the brand of another company. To the end users, the product seems to be made by the branded company. If your application offers positive user experience and us supported by top-notch code, then you can try selling it through other hands.
There are many brands that prefer ready to use application solutions and market them under their names. In this way the developing company delivers the actual product and the marketing partner looks after the promotion, advertising and distribution.
SMS marketing:
You can use in-app prompts like the ones that are used for collecting email addresses. You can send app updates, contests, promotions, reminders straight from to the user’s text message inboxes. This is one of the most effective means of strengthening your brand as it drives the users back to the app. The SMS can be used to reach and retain the high value users.
Be an affiliate and earn:
Your mobile app can also help other brands to generate revenue and earn profit out of it. the advertiser displays their ads in your app or runs some campaigns for the app users. when a business generates leads via your app, you can earn an incentive for the same. This is a common app monetization model and is very effective in gamin app as players respond to integrated campaigns in order to redeem points or avail other benefits.
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