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Orchard CMS vs WordPress: Battle Royale

September 19, 2014 admin Leave a comment

One common question that people always seem to ask Orchard CMS developers is why they do not enjoy working with WordPress on their website. From the perspective of a developer, I would like to point out that although WordPress is an option, it is not something I would ideally want to work with. Continuing to tinker with and extending the engine I was planning on using was exactly what I wanted but to learn PHP code for the same? No! Orchard CMS is an equally robust and stable development platform.

In order to have some fun, let us now put both the content management systems in a head-on battle.

Orchard CMS

At one end, we have the continually evolving, community driven, free and open-source solution for the development of ASP .NET applications that are capable of leveraging the available components.

WordPress

On the other side of the ring we have WordPress. An open-source blogging and content management tool, it includes a plug-in architecture and template system. These aspects serve to permit extension of the core installation.

So it is time to begin our Battle Royale..

Standing

If popularity was the only benchmark of success, WordPress would emerge as clear winners. As per the recent statistics, out of the ten million or so websites around the Internet, as many as 20% make use of the WordPress CMS platform. This is the system used more than any other by the bloggers.

Early exchanges

Orchard CMS gets full support from Microsoft so there is every possibility that the platform is always going to be taken seriously. That means that the developer community will have a strong support base to fall back upon.

As opposed to its compatriot, WordPress is capable of generating substantially better speeds. Thus when they are put in a side-by-side comparison, bloggers always lent their preference to this CMS.

Of the two, Orchard CMS is capable of producing a layout that is far more flexible to work with. With options such as plug ability and custom modules, it allows creation of custom types, placements and a number of other similar operations. The high range of themes gives WordPress a higher marks. Although it makes use of the Razor View Engine, Orchard CMS does not have such a wide range of themes on offer.

Thought: Now that both the competitors have dealt their respective first blows, it seems a judgement can be delivered based only on personal taste.

The ravaging blows

Semantic Modelling

With an administrative interface in tow, Orchard CMS allows the creation of custom content types. They can also be utilized in the creation of custom content. This is one major area where WordPress tends to fall short. Orchard CMS is capable of architecture that would be seemingly hard to achieve using the WordPress CMS framework.

Orchard CMS emerges the winner in this first round!

Community

Although Orchard CMS has the smaller community it is surprisingly accessible. CodePlex is popular for responding to bugs within a matter of twenty-four hours. As far as WordPress is concerned, that is unlikely to happen. On the other hand, there is probably not a single module of WordPress that has not addressed any issue, a video that details its usage, or a blog that breaks it down into a simpler form.

WordPress is the undoubted winner in this regard!

Designer Control

WordPress is all about customization. Yet, when its themes or modules have to be used, a certain degree of hacking needs to be implemented. Orchard CMS was engineered specifically for the creation of alternatives to templates. It features metadata files that allow high level formatting at a serious level.

Orchard CMS once again emerges a winner in this regard!

Although WordPress has the greater audience, its the fact that Orchard CMS is a new product and more technologically advanced along with a solid design keeps it a step ahead of the chasing pack. For the novice developers, flexibility on offer from Orchard makes it the perfect place to start out. From an administrative point of view, it is very much similar to Joomla and can be put to productive use over a short period of time. WordPress, on the other hand, is nothing more than a blog engine!

Final verdict: In this battle of supremacy between WordPress and Orchard CMS, the latter succeeds in taking the belt thanks to its ease of usage and the potential on offer as far as future development is concerned.

website development

Mistakes That Small Business Websites Make Over The Course Of Their Development

September 18, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Now that the world has gone online, every business- be it big or small- wants to have a presence on the Internet. This is largely evident from the number of small business websites that keep cropping up all over the online world. Sadly, in their hurry to create an online presence, some of these small-scale businesses overlook the aspect of website design and simply go ahead with all that is offered quickly. This is the worst thing that any business can do to itself. Design of a small business website requires the same attention and thought as a bigger one.

Let us now take a look at some of the aspects where a small business tends to go wrong. By defining them, we try to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated in the future.

Being in a hurry

For every single day that your business does not stay on the Web, you tend to lose out on an opportunity of connecting with your web-obsessed customer base. However, being in a hurry to get the work of the website done with can cause you to overlook certain critical aspects such as research, demographics and target audience. Some aspects of this demography can help in determining very basic elements of your website design. Hence, it is better to give the whole process a thought rather than rushing through it.

Lack of clarity

With big businesses, you get marketing professionals who inform the designers precisely what is required from the website. However, the same cannot be said of the small businesses who lack such insights and awareness. As a result, they end up with websites that fail to accomplish anything worthwhile for their business. Hence, businesses need to start by streamlining the thought process. It is important that they are clear about what they want, be it helping customers in locating their brick-and-mortar store or willing them to make a purchase. Availing professional help in this regard will pay off only when you are aware of what needs to be accomplished.

Decaying content and a website in tatters

This phase normally comes when a website becomes a little older. With small business websites, it has been found that they start gathering dust within a year or two of their initial launch. Neither is the content renewed nor is any website maintenance undertaken by hiring a professional firm who can take care of the platform. This is a common problem of small business websites whose owners tend to forget about them over a period of time. However, with an increasing number of web savvy businessmen entering the picture this scenario is fast changing.

Being hasty about hiring a designer

As far as the knowhow of a website design is concerned, businessmen tend to be very inexperienced. Even when they have some basic idea of designing, it would not be a very wise idea to start out professionally with experiments on their business website. This is where hiring a web design firm comes into the picture. While making critical business-related decisions is a forte of most businessmen, they do not consider it to be their cup of tea when it comes to choosing a web designer. Extensive research, and consultation with relatives and friends is a good way to start your search for a good web designer.

One of the biggest aspects where most small businesses tend to get it wrong is their narrow mindset. While on the lookout for a design firm, they usually work on the presumption that a higher package price translates to a better development platform. As a result, they unwittingly wreck havoc on their budget. It is important that they consider that best web design services may also be on offer from the companies that offer a reasonable priced package.

If small businesses can take care of these small aspects in their website development, they will soon prove to be a real match for the big guns in the industry as well.

Dot Net programmers

Umbraco And eCommerce: The Link Within

September 17, 2014 admin Leave a comment

A number of CMS products out there have an eCommerce platform to their name. Sitefinity, epiServer, Sitecore, Kentico, the list is a seemingly endless one. As a result, this is a question that many people very often ask, does Umbraco have an eCommerce platform too?

Truth be told, there are many! In fact, four of them are well known and extremely popular among the community of Umbraco developers.

While the core Umbraco CMS product offers and sells official packages, there is nothing available with regards to an eCommerce package. Almost all of the products in this regard are offered by third party companies and developers as packages that easily integrate the Umbraco CMS system.

Among all Umbraco users, both old and new, the most well known is probably uCommerce.

The premier .NET eCommerce platform- uCommerce

Of all the eCommerce packages currently available for Umbraco, uCommerce is probably the most matured one. It is also offered as a Sitecore add-on though its origin was totally from the womb of Umbraco.

uCommerce offers three different licenses: Free, Pro and Enterprise. The Pro license is available at around 2500 EUR a year with the Enterprise license being 4500 EUR annually. And Free, it does not go without saying, is definitely free.

Yes, it does seem a bit steep for a community that is so used to paying little for an awesome ecosystem and CMS. However, consider this to be a complete solution for your online business and this is merely a drop in the bucket.

uCommerce has a number of great features on offer for the developers such as multiple categories, variant pricing, related products, and inventory management. However, not all of them are available under either the Pro or Free licensed versions. Checking the feature comparison chart will provide the full list of features and the license under which it is offered.

uWebshop Umbraco eCommerce

It was during the last days of the Umbraco 4 CMS version that uWebshop first came into being. Immediately, it came to be regarded as an alternative solution to the use of uCommerce.

uWebshop has a domain based licensing model. The minimum price is 299 EUR and it goes up to a maximum of 1599 EUR along with complete support for a year. Support packages tend to be purchased separately while certification courses are also on offer.

Among the strong set of features available for this Umbraco-based eCommerce tool are promo and discount supports, unlimited variants and products, unlimited stores and categories, custom templates and layouts.

Expect simplicity from Tea Commerce

Following on the footsteps of uCommerce and uWebshop came the release of Tea Commerce. Its claim to fame is fuelled by the numerous development APIs that are available to support almost every type of online solution that a business owner may want to have. .NET, XSLT, Razor, and JavaScript (jQuery) are some of the APIs that are available in this regard.

Some of its elegent features are multiple out-of-the-box payment providers, multipe languages, multiple brand stores, and segregation of states, region and country.

Although Tea Commerce seems a little more Euro-centric, it does not mean that it cannot be used for development of store fronts around the world. A little bit of duct tape and the framework will be up and running.

Freedom to sell with Merchello

Merchello is undoubtedly the hipster of all Umbraco eCommerce solutions. When I say hipster, I mean that it works in accordance with the latest trends which is undoubtedly a good thing. The world of the Internet is a rapidly changing one so the solutions should be updated accordingly. This should be done in order to keep up with the customers, their wants and all their needs.

Merchello is an active project at present and undergoing rapid development. Presently it is available as a version 1.3 which was released in the year 2013 during the month of December. It is also built to run completely under the latest and greatest version of Umbraco CMS, the version 7!

There is just one license available for Merchello which comes free of cost. Some of its features are multiple catalogs, multiple currencies, orders and invoicing, payment providers support, and shipping providers support, among others.

Umbraco is a CMS that is based on the Dot Net framework. If you are looking for integration of this CMS system into your business website, considering hiring Dot Net programmers and Umbraco developers from a reputed hire services company. These professionals have the required skills and expertise that will help in taking your business to the very top levels of success.

Silverlight Experts

Silverlight Will Not Work In Chrome So What Next?

September 13, 2014 admin Leave a comment

Giving viewers a better experience

Films and episodic television content delivered over an IP would have been seemingly impossible but for Digital Rights Management (DRM). When implemented in the correct manner, it is invisible to the viewers and provides a seamless user experience.

Google Chrome and Silverlight

The Silverlight browser plugin has served as an enabler that gives secure content access to Internet users. While the low penetration rate often prompted users to perform additional installations or step upgrades, the reward of getting across to content of the highest quality was worth the modifications.

Google is now looking to reduce the number of plugins in its Chrome browser. This transition began back in September 2013 with an announcement from the Google Chrome team that NPAPI was fast recording a depreciation. This is the interface used by all Chrome browser plugins and that includes the likes of Silverlight. Flash Player, on the other hand, has not been affected thanks to the fact that it is embedded into the Chrome browser within a secure sandbox environment. It also makes use of the Pepper interface, is auto-updated and largely protected by the browser itself.

This suggests that by the end of 2014, Chrome browser will stop supporting the Silverlight plugin. This represents roughly 45% of audience, as per statistical data on browser usage released in June 2014. On the other hand, OSX is moving ahead to a 64-bit version upgrade for Chrome and will do away with the support for all 32-bit plugins.

While Silverlight has a 64-bit version in place for Windows, there is no equivalent in place for OSX. Thus, the 64-bit Chrome users on Mac systems will not be granted any access to content that is protected by Silverlight. Moreover, the Silverlight-enabled premium contents will also not work on some of the configurations of the Chrome browser. This is likely to happen long before the Silverlight plugin support for Chrome officially comes to an end by the turn of the year.

Content migration, the path towards salvation

Given the expected changes that are soon to be implemented, a suboptimal viewer experience is likely to arise. Thus, the Silverlight-based players are required to migrate to a new technology platform in order to ensure complete protection for their website content.

A number of paths exist for enabling DRM protection to the users so that they can better handle life in the post-Silverlight world. Let us take a look at them in greater detail.

Switch over to an HTML5-based DRM solution for all the browsers. At present, this will require licensing different DRM solutions on every browser. On Mozilla Firefox, for example, Adobe Primetime DRM is the prevalent HTML5 DRM technology.

Make the switch to Adobe Primetime in order to enable better DRM protection. Use only a single solution across all OTT devices, gaming consoles, mobile and browser platforms. Using a Flash Player will allow you to cover DRM for the various desktop browsers.

Deploy a hybrid model that implements a mix of Silverlight and Flash for specific browsers and HTML5 DRM for the remaining. A possible choice would be the use of Primetime DRM HTML5 for Firefox, and Primetime DRM along with Flash Player for all remaining browsers.

With multiple DRMs giving rise to complexity in infrastructure and licensing, Adobe Primetime DRM is regarded as the only solution that provides a single DRM environment for use on the desktop. Moreover, this DRM can be used for OTT devices, mobile platforms and gaming consoles, thus providing a simple workflow with regards to content protection.

The use of Silverlight is definitely on the decline with the plugin fast expected to make way for bigger and better things. Thankfully, a number of options exist in the market that will provide smooth transition for the users. Nevertheless, a migration is necessary and this is the time to take action.

CMS developers

Things To Like And Dislike About Umbraco 7

September 12, 2014 admin Leave a comment

About Umbraco

If you are someone who is not too familiar with Umbraco, it is a commonly used Content Management System. An open-source tool built on the Microsoft ASP .NET framework, it has registered as many as 200,000 installations till date and ranks as one of the most popular open-source tools. It features incredible extensibility and allows complete customization. This makes it a desirable tool for all agencies who are looking to build custom web development projects.

While a number of CMS tools exist that have been developed based on the .NET framework, we will focus on the latest release of Umbraco- version 7- and analyse all the good and bad that it has to offer.

Let us start by getting all the dislikes out of the way first.

The dislikes

Timeout:

The timeout needs to be set explicitly if you want to have full control over management of your website content. You may write tons of content and then forget to save it. This will log you out and take you back to the root content node. Apparently, this is a kink in the logic of the CMS tool that will lead all your content to be deleted and your effort to go waste.

Responsive design:

The new mobile layout is pretty slick and when used on a tablet it looks pretty nice. However, the same cannot be said of its application on a phone where it proves to be simply unusable. While it is unlikely that website owners will be administering the stacks of website content from their smartphones, this new design hinders smooth flow of even the simplest features. Whether you wish to check a status, switch a template, or toggle a checkbox, everything becomes seemingly difficult on the new responsive layout of Umbraco 7. A new left-to-right UX experience prevents the right view panel from loading owing to the limited menu width.

The new website:

While this is far from being a technical drawback, it is hard to fathom as to what exactly Umbraco have in find as far as their new website is concerned. The lady and the man, stairs and photos (replacing the previously seen toothless kid) all seem out of place for the website. However, considering how well it is working for the company, there is not much to complain about in this regard.

The positives

The new layout looks great: The old unfaithful UX has finally been done away with. In its place, now we have a fluid backend office to work with. Not only does it look stylish but is also fast. One of the most prominent updates in the latest release, it is also probably the most significant one that Umbraco has launched till date. Moreover, its responsive layout allows the backend office features to be used on various screen resolutions and sizes. The nav icons can cleverly shift based on their priority and size while the menus slide in and out, the perfect combination for an excellent UX experience. You are sure to become a fan of it!

Media picker: A single click of a button in your article and the new media manager will slide in from the right! You have a slick “folder explore type navigation” in front of you now that allows you to sort through all media with ease. Moreover, it also gives you the opportunity to add a media item then and there, making for a significant improvement! Now you don’t have to follow a multi-step procedure anymore, everything can be done with a single click. Simply add your media file and it will append not only to your article but also to the media manager tool. Definitely, an improvement that is worth admiring!

Umbraco 7 is fast:

To put it in simple perspective, with everything already loaded in via Ajax during the development of the CMS tool, clicking through the backend offices of Umbraco is a seamless procedure. It is built on the popular .NET frameworks that developers are adept at using, pointing to a bright future in the market for this CMS tool. Umbraco have fallen back on the use of Twitter Bootstrap and AngularJS for their respective CSS and JS frameworks. This allows an incredibly easy customisation of components and views. Moreover there is a massive developer community that supports these couple of frameworks alone so if you ever encounter any problem, help will be close at hand.

Search navigation:

This is probably the biggest of all updates featured in the Umbraco 7 release. Even if your content structure features deep, complex and large number of nodes, you need not have cause for worry. The “search” function will get you out of the mess and, if reviews are to be trusted, the feature works wonders. A few simple tweaks to its existing layout has resulted in one of the most outstanding updates from the Umbraco CMS developers.

To summarise the analysis the good certainly outweighs all the bad from the latest release of Umbraco and this is certain to improve the fanbase for this CMS. Undoubtedly, Umbraco developers will look to take care of all the negatives and rectify the errors. If that can be done, then the future of Umbraco as a CMS undoubtedly looks bright!

All posts by admin

Orchard CMS vs WordPress: Battle Royale

Mistakes That Small Business Websites Make Over The Course Of Their Development

Umbraco And eCommerce: The Link Within

Silverlight Will Not Work In Chrome So What Next?

Things To Like And Dislike About Umbraco 7

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