Category: PHP Development

WordPress is very well known as the best blogging platform and slowly it is been known as the best eCommerce solution used to create well known eCommerce sites. The reason for it being considered as the most useful eCommerce platform is its powerful plugin architecture.

This makes it easy for everyone to transform any ordinary site into a well established digital shop. In such cases, you would rather develop it with old WordPress instead of using that dedicated shopping cart software.

So, are you thinking to develop an eCommerce site with Word Press then you might be confused as to which eCommerce plugin best fits your needs. Here, we have come up with few of the well known WordPress eCommerce plug-ins which are absolutely free to use and are apt for developing any kind of profitable WordPress e-store.

These plug- ins are as follows:

1. WooCommerce: This is probably the most popular and widely used free eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It comes with most of the features that are needed for an online store to be successful.

   This plugin can be easily extendable and it allows you to alter your WordPress site into a million dollar eCommerce store. The best thing about this plugin is its huge collection of free and paid themes and extensions which help you to develop an e-store that alters your needs.

   This platform is used by world’s well known brands like as Entrepreneur, Harley Davidson etc. At present, WooCommerce powers more than 18% of eCommerce websites on the entire internet.

   Some of the WordPress site features are as follows:

   • PayPal Standard Integration
   • Sales and Reviews reports
   • Multiple Shipping options
   • Flexible Couponing system
   • Easy inventory management
2. Easy Digital Downloads: This is a light weight feature rich and easy to install eCommerce solution that can be used for selling digital downloads for free. It also includes a lot of useless features like other plug ins.

   It ships with powerful reporting system which helps you to see all of your earnings and sales through interactive graphs as well as easy to analyze data tables. This software is developed keeping in mind the WordPress coding standards.

   It is the most developer friendly eCommerce solution. This means any web developer can easily alter the EDD codebase. It contains 200 themes and extensions that can be used to easily transform EDD as per your needs.

   So, if your product niche is related to the digital world then this eCommerce plug- in is for you.

3. WP eCommerce: Apart from the two eCommerce solutions mentioned here; WP eCommerce is yet another simple to use eCommerce platform which has been lasted for several years.

   This platform allows you to customize HTML and CSS so that you can have full control over the look and feel of the store. Be it physical inventory, downloads, membership or subscription, this amazing plugin is a perfect fit.

   With 2.9 million plus downloads; WP eCommerce is the second most popular plug-in in the eCommerce space. Its streamlined checkout process is its unique point which helps you to increase conversion rates.

   WP eCommerce integrates with several payment processors and shippers. One can add extra functionalities to the store by purchasing several upgrades and premium add ons.

4. Ecwid: This eCommerce Solution caters to such companies who are not in a need to start with a new site. Its primary feature is that you can take your old site and quickly combine the Ecwid system within few minutes.

   Using this plug in; you can also use the similar system on any other eCommerce site in case you wish to sell on other sites. You can easily manage all of your sites from one place instead of shifting between various dashboards.

   One of the nice features is to synchronize between multiple devices. You can also conduct transactions on the go. This means you can also make sales in a tradeshow and then all these sales will be easily reflected at your website backend.

5. Jigo shop: It is one of the reliable, secure and robust WordPress eCommerce plugin from a UK based web agency known as Jigowatt. This is best suited for small and medium business enterprises.
   

   It features an intuitive dashboard which will provide you the ability to set up and manage the e-store within few minutes. One can select from a wide range of fully fledged and highly customizable themes which are suitable for developing any kind of online store.

   There are more than one hundred powerful extensions that are offered to take your eStore to the advanced level. Jigoshop has various reporting features like as using sort able sales graphs and stock report.

   This gives you real time insights about your store performance. Due to its simple and user friendly inventory system as well as managing inventory; Jigoshop is quite easy.

6. iThemes Exchange: This is a simple intuitive WordPress eCommerce plugin that is developed by iThemes. With a user friendly interface; it makes product creation process much easier.

   There are certain plugins that create its own database tables for customers. Exchange makes most use of built in WordPress user system for adding customer information to its own page.

   This can help you to easily manage customers by viewing available downloads and products, editing transactions and adding notes to customer information.

7. Cart66 Lite: Yet, another efficient eCommerce solution for developing any kind of PCI compliant WordPress store. It gets perfectly integrated with Amazon S3 to let you sell digital products without any hassle.

   Unlike other eCommerce Plugins, Cart66 Lite is easy to use and is yet powerful. This has multiple shipping and currency options which offers’ businesses a global reach and recognition.

   It includes features like custom fields for products, affiliate platform integration, product variations and customizable email receipts. It offers professional version with more advanced features and professional support.

Wind Up

You can make use of any of these eCommerce platforms to bring your business to the next level. For more such information about latest eCommerce platforms, stay in touch with Softqube Technologies; a well known eCommerce solutions provider in India.

Joomla is one of the popular open source platforms for web development. Users are always looking forward to the launch of latest version of their software as this offers them new things to play with. There are several website maintainers who are less fond of new versions.

However, majority of them are eagerly waiting for new versions to be launched. As a software developing and using community; it is true that just releasing the version is not important what is important is to take its entire responsibility and maintain it properly.

So, all the Joomla enthusiasts; be ready to participate and offer your suggestions for the new Joomla version 3.5. This will make sure that we can move smoothly towards the new version.

Who is the Release Leader of Joomla 3.5?

Ronald Dalmulder is announced as the release leader of Joomla 3.5. This leader works to boost contribution for a particular release thus driving attention towards the patches which are needed to be tested.

This ensures that the features identified by Joomla on the roadmap of that particular release are taken care of by volunteers who are very eager to get involved in the same.

Features of Joomla 3.5:

With every new version; Joomla comes with amazing features. So, let’s see what Joomla 3.5 has to offer in terms of features:

• Update emails plugin: This new version comes with bug fix and security updates every few weeks. Many of its users are unaware of the fact till they login to the backend of their site and notice the update nag message at the top.

  A new plugin is then added that checks occasionally for updated Joomla versions and when it is found; it emails the Super users of the site to remind them.

• Improvements in Router: This new Joomla version uses a base class for component routers. It can be used for routers that are based on the rules. Such routers are dynamically extendable.
• Plugin to gather Anonymized data: Joomla 3.5 comes with opt out feature. This feature is developed by Don Gilbert. This plugin is developed to completely understand the users better.

  Along with that goal, it is necessary to better understand every sort of environment and platforms which people use for installing and running Joomla. This helps us to make decisions regarding the platforms to be supported, requirement for minimum versions and the pace at which people can be motivated to upgrade the Joomla versions.

  To get this information; a new plugin is to be included with Joomla 3.5 release which will automatically gather some basic data points. This version will have default plugins enabled but we can disable them at any point of time.

  Before installing Joomla; a message is delivered to the site owners to notify them about plugin installation followed by disabling instructions.

  The privacy of all Joomla users is important. The source code for the plugin and the server code used to collect the data are easily available in the GitHub repositories. The plugin configuration screen will show the exact information that is being shared by the plugins.

  However, there is restriction to use raw data. Only statistical results derived from the data are to be published on the Joomla’s website. Categories with small entries can be collected in “Others” category.

  Here, a unique id is generated and it is used to prevent duplicate entries. This ensures that in no way the identity of any individual site is to be deduced. These measures must make sure that individual websites must not be identified from published data.

  The plugins will unknowingly collect the PHP database, type and version as well as Joomla version that are used by the user. This project can then set PHP and MYSQL versions more accurately for further Joomla versions.

• Backwards Compatibility Break: Joomla 3.5 comes with backward compatibility promise in order to make sure that code doesn’t break suddenly. There are several circumstances which can force us to make the promise.

  In Joomla 3.5, there’s no force to keep the promise. Due to changes in PHP 7, certain changes in Joomla coding had to be renamed like as String class to String helper or else Joomla cannot run on PHP 7.

  This is a very small change that will not create any issues in the version. This version got launched completely on 1st Dec 2015.

Wind Up

So, those who are willing to use this version can easily do so as now it is easily available in the market. Wish to know more about Joomla? Stay connected with Softqube Technologies; a well known provider of Joomla web development services in India.

We have been using PHP since so long. Sometimes, I wonder how long has PHP been with us and to get answer to this question; I looked back at the time when PHP came into existence i.e. in 1994 when the original development was started in PHP.

The original release of PHP took place in 1998 and it has been 21 years since PHP is with us. We can say that PHP has a very good lifespan on the web because very rare technologies stay for so long. So, let’s take a look at the entire journey of PHP in the online world.

The initial stages of PHP:

PHP came into being with its first version known as PHP 3. During that time, people had just started learning the basics of programming and very few were about objects as well as object oriented programming.

PHP was something which was easy to learn and grasp. This was to be used for scripting as well as for driving terrible web pages. Most of the developers tend to learn from examples as well as work from other people.

They used to follow the same process to get the results. At that time; there was a large procedural file which was divided into various pages between different files. It was very tricky to develop web pages because sometimes they would post a separate file.

Had there been post variables then it would have become easy to develop any pages and then just display the page as it is. As soon as people started learning the techniques and getting more knowledge about objects as well as some other best practices then they started understanding that some things they did were completely wrong.

During those times; web meant large procedural files where codes were shared with certain statements however most part was with no frameworks and there was a wrong mindset that anything can go well.

The best example of this is early versions of phpBB. It is the main loop to develop forums and indexes or content pages is a very huge procedural mess. It has amazing code comments. The original developers found it as a complete mess.

The main drawback is that this render loop is now replaced with 10-20 lines of angular.js code and this is the true power of objects and frameworks.

Middle Age PHP 5:

Till now, whatever we were discussing was about PHP 3. Now, we will discuss about PHP 5. So, let’s move ahead:
By the time PHP 5 arrived, we got maximum support from Object oriented programming. We also got lot of in built functions in PHP having object equivalents. Just there’s a need to checkout date time documentation and you will get to know what we were talking about.

So, we have various objects and we are going to create a code using PHP 5 but here there was a huge problem. Let’s say if you have a file which defined a class then it can easily be overridden by another file which was included later on if it also had the same file with defined class. PHP overlooked namespaces.

For most parts this was not at all a problem. Generally, developers were in full control of their project and hence they made sure that none of the things were to be named the same. When the codes were shared, things started to fall separately.

This means if a widget developed by one developer is to be used by another then one had to make sure that all the classes were to be named differently from that which was used previously or the widget could not be used.

PHP 5.3:

Here, in this version the biggest problem was namespaces. In case you are unfamiliar with namespaces then we can define them for you as “an Address for your class file”. One can have multiple classes with the same name and if the namespace is different that it is fine.

Various other object oriented languages use this concept to sandbox code as this makes it easy to share and reuse pieces. The only issue with namespaces is the way they are implemented. Other languages use a (.) to divide names of namespaces however PHP uses a back slash (\).

Developments:

From the beginning itself, index.php files are cluttered. In case you are using lot of different files then at times there were tons of those which included at the top of a file. With the use of classes, the app simply knew about classes.

This resulted into a paradigm of index.php which included everything. With small apps; this is not a bad thing however for larger apps; it is like a death statement. Every request on PHP should only really load the classes which are required to fulfil the tasks at hand.

There are many frameworks that include a dynamic class loader but these are easy to develop if you want to try them for yourself.

Wind Up

Hey, here we haven’t discussed anything about PHP 7. However, this was the blog post about PHP journey till date. Let us know how you feel after reading the same. Did you enjoy? Is anything remaining to be added?

We, at Softqube Technologies; a well known PHP web application Development in India are always eager to listen to the views from our readers after all everything is about sharing and caring.

We all know that PHP is widely used in developing websites as well as applications. Here, in this blog post we will see how Google’s Platform as a Service can be used in order to develop a scalable and secure PHP Web Application. All the instructions given here are for Mac Operating System.

Connecting PHP Application with Google Cloud:

First of all, you must have a Google account and then you need to download cloud SDK. You can download this from here: “curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com/ | bash”

Now, you may need to create a new terminal and then get yourself authenticated by typing:

gcloud auth login

Here, you will have to allow some access and then install the App Engine PHP Package by typing:

gcloud components update gae-python

This is the right package which includes both PHP and Python. These are the basic steps to be ready for General Google App Engine development with PHP.

Google App Engine:

Google App Engine can be used as a deployment target for your PHP application. There are several reasons for using this app engine:

• Solid and mature deployment platform for web applications
• Auto scaling is available when demand is fluctuating
• Infrastructure is managed 24/7 by Google as per industry best practices.
• App Engine works with several different IDEs. Hence, it is easy to develop.
• Small Applications are available for free.

Google Cloud Storage:

If you wish to use Google cloud storage then first of all start a free trial where in you need to provide proper billing information to Google as a means of verification. Google offers several data storage options.

Google Cloud storage is one of the simplest and most popular ways of storing the data. Here are some of the reasons for using Google cloud storage:

• Google stores the data for you.
• Google manages data via Console
• Good Access control
• REST APIs
• It is available for free up to 5 GB.

Developing a PHP Application on GAE:

Here, we will see how a PHP application can be developed on GAE. We will develop a project directory and add a file in it:

This is the complete code for developing random web application and then this is to be uploaded on Google App Engine.

cd <parent dir of the randome-meme directory>

appcfg.py -A random-meme update randome-meme/

Now, you can easily browse your random meme.appspot.com and view your random meme.

Uploading Memes to Google Cloud Storage:

Google console is used to upload the list of memes from the previous section in a simple text file where each line will have one meme.

This can be done from Google’s developer console.

Now, is the time to connect PHP Application to Google Cloud Storage:

We have created four memes in the cloud and we can fetch them from Google cloud storage instead of using hard codes in an array in our application.

The code for the same is as follows:

Here, the function “file_get_contents”on Google App Engine supports Google Cloud storage object URLs. The contents of memes.txt are to be fetched as a string. The next line then gets involved into a complete array of strings each one is a URL to a meme image.

Everything else is same. Just select a random image and output it as an img tag into the page. Remember to update your app.

Wind Up

Hope this blog post will be useful to you whenever you want to connect your any of the PHP applications with Google Cloud storage. Let us know if you have found any better way to do so.

For more of such information about PHP, stay connected with Softqube Technologies, PHP Development Service Provider in India.

When you ask any website developer which programming language is most suitable to them then the answer is PHP. It helps web developers to create dynamic web pages. PHP code can be used easily with maximum website templates as well as frameworks in order to enhance functionality and features.

Yes, it is a tedious job to write a PHP code and reduce this time; developers can make use of PHP libraries instead of writing PHP code to add features to the website. This ultimately can reduce the web site development time thus allowing developers to focus on other major aspects of Website design.

Here, we have framed a list of some best PHP libraries which can help website developers to boost functionality of their websites as well as properly manage development time.

Best PHP Libraries:

Well, before actually take a look at some of the best PHP libraries; let’s understand what actually a PHP library is.
“PHP library is a collection of interfaces and classes which are used to solve common problems. There’s no need of external libraries to develop this extension and this is available by default in PHP5.0.0”

It offers a standard data structure as well as a set of iterators to cross over the objects, set of interfaces, standard exceptions and various classes to work with files. It offers several functions like asspl_autoload_register()

This is the definition as given by Google search results when you search for the meaning of “PHP Library”.

Hope this has made clear to you what actually a PHP library is. So, now let’s move on and see some of the best PHP libraries that can be useful to web developers.

Some of the Best PHP Libraries

• PChart: It is an impressive PHP library which helps to develop text data in the form of visual chart. The data can be displayed in terms of bar charts, pie charts as well as other formats. The PHP Script generates charts and graphs using SQL queries which help in developing amazing charts and graphs.
• PHP Captcha: It is yet another great PHP library which develops automated audio as well as visual captchas. These are completely automated challenges which make use of turing test to recognize humans and robots.

  It needs PHP4 compiled with FreeType text and GD 1 or GD 2 image generation support.

• Image Workshop: It is a great open source PHP library which offers you complete control on using the images with layers. With the help of PHP library one can crop, resize, include watermarks, create thumbnails and change the images as needed in several different ways.

  It can make it easier to enhance the images that are used in the website.

• phpAES: It is one of the class implementation PHP code with supports encryption cipher of 128, 192 and 256 bit AES. No other extension is needed by library when it comes to PHP compilation. It is completely compliant with FIPS 197.
• Mink: It is yet another useful PHP library which helps to test proper interaction of web pages with internet browsers. The library removes API differences among different browsers thus providing a perfect testing environment to the developers.
• Dispatch: It is a simple PHP library which defines URL rules to perfectly organize your site. With PHP library, one can match specific types of HTTP paths or requests render displays and lots more.

  Developers can offer powerful and simple set up by integrating dispatch with other PHP libraries described here.

• Services_JSON: This allows the transmission of human readable data. The latest version of PHP library provides great convenience in transferring data over the server.
• PHP Thumbnailer: This library is a simple image control PHP library which helps in developing thumbnails. The library doesn’t need further installation of external libraries. It offers additional control over thumbnails like as resizing the thumbnails by means of height, width, percentage, image rotation and custom crops such as square crops from the middle of the image.
• Hoa: It is a structured, modular, extensible PHP library which develops a link between research and industrial worlds. The PHP library recommends necessary proto types, mechanisms and algorithms for ensuring the reliability of Websites.
• PHP text to image: This PHP library is used to convert text into image. This is useful in such cases when there’s a need to display email addresses in the form of image because some images cannot be found programmatically.

  With this PHP library one can lessen the prospects of email addresses that are being up by web crawlers and are used as junk mail.

• Faker: It is a very useful PHP library which can help to develop fake data as and when required. With this PHP library; one can perform various tasks like as anonym zing data, bootstrapping database, developing XML docs and conducting stress tests.
• Ratchet: Web developers can develop real time two directional apps among the clients and servers with the help of Ratchet PHP library. This PHP library helps in promoting and creating event driven apps instead of using the old traditional HTTP requests.
• PHP Export XLS Class: A simple light weight and quick PHP library which can transfer various types of data to Excel. It can convert various data formats to .xls format. This can work with several worksheets, meta data like as author, title, description etc along with different font types and styles, fills, cell borders as well as gradients.

  Several PHP extensions can also be used to add images to the excel sheets.

• PHP DB class: It is a great PHP library which helps in developing PHP & MYSQL. The tool offers easy access to a complete database and reduces the amount of coding needed to perform the task.

  Along with this, PHP offers several debugging features like as developers use debugging feature to display requests as well as the resulting table. This task can be performed by adding one parameter to several methods of its class.

Wind Up

These PHP libraries will definitely be useful to all the web developers thus reducing their hard work to keep writing codes for each and every PHP need. Try using one of these libraries and let us know how easy it made your working with PHP.

Are you aware about any of such more PHP libraries then do share them with us? Do you love to get new updates every time about PHP then do stay connected with Softqube technologies, a well known PHP Development Company which offers services at affordable rates.

Be it any normal website or an eCommerce website, SEO is a critical element for every website. To get ahead of competitors; it is must to have a SEO weapon. To become successful in eCommerce World; Magento offers a huge range of SEO extensions that vary in terms of prices, support as well as update terms, installation as well as configuration conditions.

This leads to a question: How to select an effective SEO extension for Magento based eCommerce store?

Here, in this blog post; we are going to compare the normal Magento SEO functionality with some of the most popular Magento SEO solutions. So, let’s begin:

Most Popular Magento SEO Solutions

1. How to solve Typical eCommerce Duplicate Content Issues: When there are multiple URLs with similar content, canonical meta tags can inform search engines about the main URL. If you are running a special Magento based store then you will have to set the canonical URLs for every category, product or CMS Pages .

   Authorize the duplicate content on various domains; avoid content duplication for pages without trailing slash and more.

2. Developing HTML and XHTML maps: Sitemaps allows store owners to inform search engines about the website pages that are available for crawling. All the pages are conveniently organized in a perfect hierarchical structure. This helps visitors to navigate easily via them.
3. Meta SEO templates: These help you to easily manage huge amount of important data for product as well as category pages. With just a small list of attributes; one can automatically optimize such important elements of a product/category such as their name, description, URL, meta title, keywords, category meta description, keywords, alt tags and lots more.
4. Optimizing Category Pages filtered by Layered Navigation: Every small aspect matters in SEO. Apart from just optimizing home page and product pages; it is important to remember all the pages that are of secondary importance.

   These secondary pages include category pages, pages with customer reviews and pages filtered with layered navigation.

5. Crawling indexation instructions and redirects: While optimizing your Magento website; one must get full control over the way search engines see and behave on it. This includes creating a crawling map, avoiding search engine robots from accessing your site pages, prioritizing pages for indexation, setting redirects, configuring an .htaccess file and more.
6. Mark up Data Optimization: When structured data mark up is implemented properly; you can easily make your website look unique and be different. Snippets rich pages provide a higher click through rate that drives a huge amount of targeted traffic and hence helps you to bring huge amount of sales.
7. Auto Cross Links: Internal site linking pages helps you to effectively distribute ranking power among the important pages of the website while linking them to external sources will help you to develop relations with such websites that are relevant to your niche.
8. Hreflang Tag Support: If your website is multilingual or multi regional then it is important to notify Google as to which website is to be displayed to the foreign users. Here, hreflang tag is highly useful.
9. SEO Reports: An important part of Magento SEO is to determine such web pages that have duplicate issues, long meta title and descriptions, empty meta tags etc. This is boring and monotonous job which consumes lot of time. Magento offers such extensions that take care of all these stuff.
10. Money Back guarantee, Price and Support: Magento offers various SEO extensions like as Amasty, ahead Works, create group, mirasvit, mageworx etc. The prices, money back guarantee and support are as follow:
    • Amasty: This extension is available for $290 and installation charges are $59. Free support and free updates are available for four months. It offers 30 days money back guarantee.
    • Ahead Works: It is available for $159 with installation charges $75 extra. The free support and updates are available here for 90 days. It offers 45 days money back guarantee.
    • Create Group: This extension is available for free but doesn’t offer any free support or updates or any kind of money back guarantee.
    • Mirasvit: Available for $149 with $49 extra installation charges; this extension offers free support for 30 days and free updates for 1 year along with 30 days money back guarantee.
    • MageWorx: It is available for $249 with no additional installation charges. MageWorx provides free support and free updates for lifetime with 30 days money back guarantee.

Among all these extensions; Mageworx offers free basic SEO configuration and advanced SEO configuration. No other extension offers this facility. So, if you are willing to opt for SEO oriented Magento extension then MageWorx will suit your purpose.

Let us know if you find any of the changes in any of the offerings provided by the extensions. We will be happy to update the changes.

Wind Up

Hope you liked this post and will be useful to you in some or the other way. Let us know if you have more of such information about SEO extensions offered by Magento. If you are in search of proper guidance regarding online store developed on Magento then get in touch with Softqube Technologies for Magento eCommerce development in India.

Stay tuned with us for more of such information about various eCommerce platforms.

Joomla is one of the widely used content management systems. Most of the business people use Joomla to manage their websites. Today, we will learn about some of the Joomla competitors. Hence, this blog post will be suitable for all those who are willing to take knowledge about other content management systems apart from Joomla.

Few people might be surprised to know that Joomla competitors also exist. Well, you might be aware of the names like WordPress, Drupal along with Joomla. These three always are in hand to hand with each other.

However, it will be a big surprise to know that these are tough competitors of one another. These three are open source CMSes available for free. For many purposes, these are very common however they have some differences which make them useful for different tasks.

So, let’s take a look at each of them.

• WordPress: This is considered as the head of content management systems. It has nearly 1,400,000 downloads while Joomla has 50, 00,000 approximately. This makes the site powerful by making it on the top of 100 sites.

  WordPress is one of the frequent choices of users especially beginners, new site owners, bloggers, firms developing business card websites. The use of WordPress is now a considered as a legend.

  It offers thousands of plugins and themes and hence is widely opted by people. This offers a special feel to your website. When it comes to flexibility and customization space then Joomla is preferred the most.

  Joomla is opted for developing complex websites while WordPress is for those who use or love to have simple websites.

• Drupal: Drupal is a CMS that is recommended for coders by the coders. Drupal serves the purpose of those websites having complex database and multilevel structure. While talking about user friendliness; Drupal is less intuitive as compared to WordPress and Joomla.

  So, if you are thinking of expanding your website with some special functionality and are in need of specific branding options then you must opt for a platform that is more users friendly as compared to Drupal.

  Hence, if we want to rank Joomla, WordPress and Drupal then Joomla will be ranked in the middle of WordPress and Drupal when it comes to ease of use and flexibility because WordPress is more flexible while Drupal is the least and Joomla offers average flexibility.

  Yes, all of three are popular but that doesn’t mean these are the best. There are many new CMSes that are available today and which may prove better than these three. The reason we know these is due to their popularity but as these new will gain fame they too will be renowned.

So, let’s take a look at few of these content management systems which can overtake Joomla:

1. Expression Engine: This is commercial open source software by Ellis Lab. It is used by both commercial as well as non profit organizations for every kind of projects ranging from content based sites to membership websites. It offers enormous member management features.

   Even though it is open source platform, it offers best technical level support for its users. For now it is available for $49 per month and more of its paid plans will be available soon.

   It takes great care of safety and security and provides complete features to prevent your site from attacks. It has an intuitive panel which offers limitless opportunities for creating the website as per the need and want.

   Further, various addons are available that can help you to take your site to the next level. It allows to manage multiple websites from one common backend. To take complete advantage of this content management system; you can purchase its license at $299. Yes, free version can also be used but it has certain limitations.

   Yet, before subscribing to it; it is advisable to do a deep research about it and if you think that this is the CMS that is useful to you then you can definitely go for it.

2. Concrete 5: Similar to Joomla, it is a free and opensource CMS. At present, it is available in two forms: hosted and self hosted. However, it is recommended for those who have some previous experience of using a CMS.

   Various addons and themes are available that will be useful to create any kind of the website. Some of these are paid such as eCommerce addons, blogs or discussion board functionality and most of the standard ones are available at no cost.

   This CMS provides various features that make it unique. These include document management, contact management, project tracking and file distribution plugins. Hence, it can be a good tool for many businesses.

3. CMS Made Simple: It is a developer oriented CMS which offers a basic package that allows easily extending the site with proper functionality. It provides third party integration ability where missing elements can be easily coded by users themselves.

   The way it handles supporting issues is unique in this CMS. A community forum is available here to answer the questions and get any professional help from developers. It is best suitable for small and medium enterprises.

Wind Up

We all know that Joomla is a very robust stool for developing websites. However, now it is not the only one that is used to develop websites; several other options are also available here. So, you can select the one that is right for you.

Make sure to know what you need and what features you want in a CMS. This will help you to make a proper choice. You might be looking for ways to migrate your site or extend it using a CMS then you are at the right place, Softqube Technologies will help you to do this task in an easy manner.

Get in touch with our expert Web developers, discuss with them your requirements and you will get a perfect solution for your needs.

Wait for none, get started today. List your choices and choose the right tool or we can say CMS that will help to fulfill your needs.

Drupal is a wonderful CMS that is used widely by many people. At regular intervals, Drupal introduces its updated versions. Recently, the new version of Drupal – Drupal 8 was launched. Here, we will discuss how Node.js and Express JS can be implemented and linked to Drupal CMS via a Restful API.

So, before heading on with this blog; we think that you already are aware with:

• Drupal
• JavaScript
• JSON
• HTML/CSS

Node.js : It is a web server that can offer JavaScript for a client but it can also run JavaScript on the server itself. The JavaScript here performs the task of PHP. Node.js can be easily installed.

Express JS: Express JS Framework makes it easier to publish websites with Node.js. It provides routing and can be used with dynamic website applications as well as MVC based.

So, first let us understand how Drupal can be installed and configured:

1. Installing and Configuring Drupal Core: Drupal 8 core contains Restful API that allows you to implement the GETs very quickly. Additional modules are to be written when we are dealing with Drupal 8 and then choose the minimal installation as we only need API as well as some additional modules.
   

   Once Drupal 8 is installed; one can first activate Drupal administrative theme in order to get a graphic backend.

   Now, the Toolbar module is to be installed for easier navigation via Drupal backend. The modules field is also needed in order to configure content type.

   And the module “Views UI” defines the restful Web Service.

2. Unnecessary Blocks: A little clean up is to be performed here. Still, there are two unnecessary blocks at the top of the page: Tools & Administration. These blocks can be removed under admin structure block.
3. Content type “Blog”: A content type blog must include these fields: Title, Body and Image.

   Define Drupal 8 content type as well as fields. For the blog, an Image field is needed as other required fields and data are already provided by Drupal core.

Configuring Drupal8 Web Service:

Here, the content type is defined and the required Web Service can be created. First create a new view ( Admin/ structure/views/add)

Now, export the “Rest” and make sure to check it. Then give it the name “Blogs JSON export” as well as the URL “blogsexportall”.

Configuring Drupal 8 Rest export View:

Under “Show” choose “Fields” instead of ‘Entity’. The fields required here will be:

1. Title: Formatted “plain text” will be used with “link to content”.
2. Authored on: The custom format YMD is to be used as it is the right format for schema.org which will be used in the front end.
3. Blog Image: Here, large image will be added with the text on the top of the blog with Image Style “None” and “Link image to: nothing”.
4. Authored on: This will be used for the date of the blog item with the custom format DYM.
5. Body: It will be used for body text on the blog detail page with all default settings
6. Authored by: This will be used for the name of blogger with all default settings.
7. Author image: The author image is to be added at the bottom of the blog with all default settings.
8. Author signature: The signature of the blogger is to be used with his her name at the bottom of the blog with all default settings.

Wind Up:

This is the minimal sort of Drupal installation done here along with its configuration so that it can have backend where content managers can manage blogs. It subsequently generates data in proper format.

For more such guidelines and updates about Drupal, stay tuned with Softqube Technologies, Drupal web Design India.

Are you thinking to develop an eCommerce store and willing to step in the world of online business then you are reading the post because today here we are going to discuss about the top three widely used eCommerce platforms.

Basically, in eCommerce Industry; if you are looking for a best online business platform then you will hear three big names viz. Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce. These three have a huge market share in the eCommerce world.

Yes, there are many other options available however you need to identify which one suits your needs the best and according to that, you can select an online platform. So, let’s take a look at these three big platforms and compare them in order to make your life a little easier and help you to take proper decision regarding selection of eCommerce platforms.

We will compare these three platforms based on the below mentioned factors:

1. Pricing: Magento is available for free. One can download open source community edition along with access to its community forum, mobile optimized themes, app store as well as unlimited product selling without investing a single penny.

   Yes, you will need your own domain name as well as hosting service and if you wish to get it upgraded then you can ask for the quote.

   Shopify and BigCommerce have different price ranges that vary from $24.95 per month to $299.95 per month. Every tier scheme offers additional items which you can sell as well as the amount of storage as well as bandwidth that you have.

   With Shopify; one can get discounts on annual as well as biannual payments. It provides 30 day free trial along with Google Adwords and Amazon Ad credit. Here, BigCommerce doesn’t charge any transaction fees and also offers Adwords with 15 days trial.

   During initial set up; Magento is recommended as it offers opportunity to start business with no investment except your domain and hosting.

2. Design: Comparing these three platforms from design perspective we can say that Magento offers nearly 120 themes. Among these, some are free to use while some may cost around $50- 150.

   Shopify offers nearly 116 themes with paid packages. Hence, you are freed from the worries of coding and editing the current codes. FTP accounts are available here however the source code is available to everyone who needs it.

   Coming to BigCommerce, we can say it offers themes that have less quality when compared with Shopify. It offers a FTP account however it has options for adding and editing themes that are not as robust as Shopify.

3. Frontend Features: Magento excels here as it has more features as compared to other platforms. You can get custom dashboard, discount codes, sleek checkout and gift vouchers. The related products can be promoted via cross selling, wishlists and discounts for quantities and saved shopping carts.

   It also includes product reviews, reorders and image options. Shopify’s storefront is optimized for mobile devices and also includes social media integration. You will also get a website and blog along with basic features like as vouchers.

   Shopify’s frontend allows you to add apps to use features that you need whereas BigCommerce comes with most of its inbuilt stuff. Hence, it depends on you which platform to use.

4. Back end Features: Magento product pages are more complicated as compared to that of Shopify. However, it offers a bunch of features like as reports and analytics which are accessible from the dashboard.

   Shopify has many options for beginners as well as advanced users and it keeps variables and options to the minimum. It offers everything you need and it has the option to use advanced settings when you wish to use its additional features.

   The backend of BigCommerce is very similar to that of Shopify but it offers a comprehensive tour for those who are new to the system.

Wind Up:

So, here we have compared the three eCommerce giants with many basic points. There are many more such points available which can be considered for comparison but these are the main points that everyone will consider for.

Let us know how this blog post was useful to you. For more such tips and guidelines, stay connected with Softqube Technologies, a well known Magento eCommerce Development Company India.

It is essential to keep your website up to date and attractive. Using a perfect Forum can help you to have an active community which has thousands of ideas and thoughts. All difficulties get solved if you select a perfect platform.

So, here we are going to discuss about the selection of the right platform among the two that is PhP BB or Joomla Kunena. Hence, if you are in a dilemma as to which forum to choose among the two then you are at the right place.

Running a website is like maintaining the heart and soul of the business. The moment you start using a website; you will want to keep doing it daily. This is one of the easiest and useful ways to spend time.

And on the other hand, it is a great source of income. Adding several things like as blog, forum, online shop, intranet can transform a single website into a Cash cow that generates huge profit. Generally, there are two types of forum building tools viz. Bulletin boards which are developed for forum or blog creation and others are the ones that are unified with CMS platforms.

In order to catch the detailed differences; let’s compare these two PHPBB and Joomla Kunena:

1. Php Bulletin Board: This is a forum having a perfect user control panel in which forum visitors have full control on their accounts on the boards. Further, it has an admin panel which can easily customize and configure almost every detail of the web project.

   PHP bulletin board has high level of security as it offers users with password hashing offering them reliable protection for their details. In case, you wish to integrate the forum with your website or blog then it is necessary to create the one and maintain the connection between the two.

   So, make sure that your followers have two separate accounts; one for site and other for the forum.

2. Joomla Kunena: This Joomla forum platform serves as forum as well as Joomla extension which must be installed at the root. As compared to the stand alone PHP bulletin board; there’s no need to have a sub domain to connect website with a forum.
3. Single Registration: Be it website or forum, users can have a single account to get registered. Unlike phpBB, it is not necessary to have separate accounts for forum as well as website. One can operate all the web projects from a single dashboard.
4. Single Design: For Kunena forum; one can use Joomla templates. The layout can be managed separately from various styles.
5. Old Kunena Versions: The Kunena developers are professionals with great enthusiasm. All the old kunena versions are now not supported here and now all the new development processes are based on new Kunena releases.

Make the Forum Closer to the Website:

It will be easier for you to manage the website as well as forums if they both are integrated in a proper way. All the modifications can be made easily within a single dashboard. All forum items can be easily migrated from PHPBB to Kunena.

All the data can be easily converted in few minutes with no coding knowledge at all.

Wind Up:

So, now next time if you wish to choose a forum for your website then make sure to refer to this post and choose the one that is suitable to your needs. You can select the one that suits your business requirements.

For more such useful information, stay connected with Softqube Technologies; Web Development Company India.