Friday, May 2, 2008

Benefits of Having a Content Management System (CMS) based Website

As the internet is maturing the existence and Web applications are emerging, web development is becoming essential for proper growth of business on internet. Web development make your work easy to be done on the internet and gives some lots and lots of advantages with high increase in revenue as with web development you can hit the international market as your target market.

A website is important if you are looking for an online presence. But once your website is up, it s crucial that you manage the content in an organized way. You will need to make many changes on your site. This is where E-Commerce Websites packages, OS commerce, Content Management System, CMS in short, come into play. Content Management System (CMS): This system is the core of web development and used to manage contents of a web site, providing the facilities for the creation, modification, archiving and removal of information resources from an organized repository usually saved in a database.

This tool allows you to maintain your site. CMS is a web application designed to manage the content on the website. Most companies, who put their contents on their sites, use it.

CMS is extremely crucial to the success of any website. It helps creation, storage, management and publishing of all information in an organized way. In short, it streamlines all the data in a consistent and accessible way.

Here are some reasons why your website needs a CMS:

1. Content updation on desire : Your website needs to be updated, as nobody wants to read stale content. With CMS you can update your web content in no time. It allows you to create, edit, organize, manage, and publish contents (be it graphics, image, documents, etc.) very easily.

2. Technical Knowledge not Necessary : CMS is for you. No HTML or programming skills required, which means you don t need to be technically sound to update the content. All technical details are handled by CMS. It allows you, your colleagues, and non-technical staff, content authors to update the contents.

3. No Time restriction : Don t let your site go without updates due to time constraint. CMS will allow you to carry out changes when they re needed. This is important if your business relies highly on the website. CMS usually simplifies the process required to post content.

4. Reduce Website Maintenance Cost : As mentioned before, you don t need to be tech-savvy to update contents. This not only reduces the site maintenance costs, but also lessens the need of website administration staff. The IT team can use their time more productively.

5. Archive Your Web Content : Archiving content is much easier, since a CMS uses a database to store, manage, and retrieve content. New contents get updated and older ones get stored. You can always revert back when the need arises.

6. Build Site Navigation : Content Management System navigation is usually dynamically driven, which means that future updates can be made without losing all the contents. Menus are generated automatically based on the database content.

7. Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) : If you want to drive the website s traffic based on keywords and phrases, then CMS can prove to be a good option. Many CMSs have built-in options that include keywords, meta tags, hyperlinks, descriptions, etc. These can be automatically generated from the site s content, resulting in improved SEO.

Source: design4web.wordpress.com

Web 2.0 helps firms innovate, allows closer monitoring of marketing spend

To fulfil the aspirations of a young workforce, continuously asking for seamless, real-time interaction, companies are allowing the use of Web 2.0 applications such as Skype, LinkedIn, Facebook, Joomla!, Second Life and S for business purposes to generate sales leads, recruit talent and test and improve products.

Subash A K Rao, director, human resources, Cisco India — a leader in networking for the internet — says the company uses a broad suite of social networking tools like blogs and wikis. It also uses richer applications like TelePresence to connect and collaborate.

Infogain, a technology solutions company, uses its internal as well as external blog sites to connect communities of dispersed knowledge workers for collaborative benefit. Eddie Chandhok, president, global delivery organisation, Infogain, says: "We expect to leverage the power of collaboration by getting innovative ideas from individuals, who are free to send theirtechnology/business ideas to the our CTO office directly."

Soon, the company is planning to use these communities (through Infogain Blog, Infogain Wiki) to get feedback on new services feedback. This will help in raising the efficacy of its marketing.

APC-MGE, a leading global provider of critical power and cooling solutions, (a part of Schnieder Electric) uses mashups besides wikis, instant messaging services and others.

Subodh Tagare, marketing director, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh region, APC-MGE, says: "Our employees use mashup to manage leads emanating from diverse sources. It helps in consolidation and tracking of leads and to ensure closures."

Salesforce.com is another hit among sales and marketing employees across the world for automation of sales and marketing tasks. Anand Dhand, director, Salesforce.com, India, says: "Though Salesforce applications are used across all the verticals, Business-2-Business, Business-2-Customer, Salesforce Automation (SFA), partner — and customer- relationship management are the most widely-used services."

Vineet Tyagi, associate director, engineering, Impetus Technologies, says his company's sales team in the US extensively uses Salesforce.com for research, lead generation and prospect management. "Our recruitment team uses a variety of social networking websites to narrow down on talent and communicate about the work options the company offers.

Not only this, Impetus marketing and communication team makes wonderful use of social content sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia for branding," he says.

Sunil Mangalore, CEO, Datacraft India Ltd, a leading IT services and solutions provider and a strategic partner of Microsoft, concurs: "We use blogs, wikis, discussion forums, shared calendars, shared project-tracking tools to collaborate on leads, projects, problem resolution."

Sundararaj S, Partner, Anantara Solutions, a provider of business and IT consulting services, says: "We use sugarCRM for customer relationship management, basecamphq for managing and tracking projects, LinkedIn for business connections and as a recruitment aid and Skype for messaging and for tele-conversations." Anantara has an office in Second Life and uses this extensively to socialise and connect.

here are inherent risks like data privacy, application security, information integrity and information silos in using Web 2.0 applications, note experts. There is a chance that inaccurate, or occasionally even offensive, information may get out. But social networks can help monitor and control this situation. "Over time, we think the social norms around these collaboration tools will develop and become second nature.

For example, there was a lot of concern around abuse and misuse when email was first deployed in enterprises. Now, people know what is acceptable to email and what is not," Rao from Cisco says.


Source: business-standard.com/common

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Congratulations to All Webware Top 100 Winners

Audio: Amazon MP3, BlogTalkRadio, eMusic, FineTune, ilike, iTunes, Last.fm, live365, Pandora and Zune Marketplace
Browsing: Firefox, Google Reader, iGoogle, Internet Explorer 7, iphone, Maxthon, My Yahoo!, Opera, Safari and Windows Live Home
Commerce: Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, Etsy, Google AdWords, Kayak, PayPal, Woot, Yahoo! Shopping and Zillow
Communication: AIM, Gmail, iChat, meebo, Microsoft Windows Live Messenger, ooVoo, Pidgin, Skype, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail
Productivity: 30 Boxes, Basecamp, Google Calendar, Google Docs, I Want Sandy, Microsoft Office Live Workspace, Mint, Remember the Milk, Yahoo Calendar and Zoho
Publishing: .Mac, Blogger, Drupal, Flickr, FotoFlexer, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, Twitter, Wordpress & Wordpress.com and Worth 1000
Search: Answers.com, Ask.com, Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, Hakia, Live Search, Wikia, Wikipedia and Yahoo
Social: Bebo, Deviantart, Facebook, Friendster, Gaia Online, Google Groups, LiveJournal, Myspace, Stardoll, Yahoo Groups
Utility: Amazon S3, BitTorrent, Box.net, LogMeIn, OpenDNS, OpenID, Pando, ShareFile, Yahoo Briefcase and Yousendit
Video: Amazon Unbox, FixMyMovie, Joost, Miro, Netflix, uStream, Veodia, Vimeo, VoiceThread and YouTube

Source: cmswire.com

Joomla! and the latest trends in the open source revolution

Australia's Andrew Eddie and Brad Baker, two of the core team members of Joomla!, the free open-source Internet content management system (CMS) that in three years has grown into a global development community with more than three million downloads in a year, will be guest speakers at a special event in Sydney on May 19, 2008.

The content management system has grown into a global development community with more than three million downloads a year.

Eddie and Baker will talk about the latest trends in the open source revolution.

In a statement they said:"We will talk about the latest trends in the open-source revolution that has liberated online software from the proprietorial designs of companies like Microsoft and made feature-rich Web sites affordable for all businesses, not-for-profit groups and individuals."

Eddie and Baker are keynote speakers at the annual JoomlaDay Conference being held at the Sydney Conference and Exhbition Centre in Darling Harbour.

The Joomla! project has deep Australian roots.

It began in 2005 as an offshoot of the Sydney-based Mambo content management system, after members of the Mambo development team became concerned about protecting key open source principles they believed were being violated.

Andrew Eddy (aka "MasterChief") wrote an open letter that within a day had garnered the support of a thousand developers in the global free software community.

The name later chosen for the new open source project is derived from the Swahili "jumla", meaning "all together" or "as a whole".

Since then the community has grown exponentially.

As of February 2008, the official Joomla support forum, moderated by Brad Baker, has more than 260,000 threads and 1.2 million posts from more than 170,000 registered members in 40 languages.

Joomla! leverages much open source and Web 2.0 technology, and now offers more than 3,000 add-on features, from podcasts to calendars, wikis to social networking tools.

A live demonstration of the power of Joomla! will be held on May 20, 2008, with a team of developers building a fully functional Web site for a nominated charity in less than seven hours.

More information: sydney.joomladay.org.au

Joomla! Accessibility by Joshue O Connor

The book's cover This book concentrates mainly on making websites accessible, particularly to the visually impaired. These techniques are then used, more briefly, to explain how to make Joomla! sites accessible. The book’s author, Joshue O Connor, is clearly an expert on accessibility and has covered these areas well.

Joomla! Accessibility - A quick guide to creating accessible websites with Joomla!, published by Packt is a short book that contains materials that every web designer should know and offers sound advice on understanding the problems faced by web users with disabilities and ways to deal with these problems.

Read Full Article

Friday, April 18, 2008

Web based (E) Accounting Solution

Web based e-accounting solution by offshore software development india

Access your accounts information anytime, anywhere with E - Accounting Solution. This solution does not need an internal book keeping or final accounts application. This solution provides you with the web based facility that is extremely accurate, with fast data processing. The solution can be used as internet as well as intranet application. By using the internet it can take accounting industry into the online age and beyond imagination. Our web based accounting solution gives you direct access and control over your accounts from your desktop.

Key Features of E - Accounting Software
» Anytime anywhere access
» Fast access quick result
» Relate multiple users and locations
» Secure data processing
» Minimize technology hassles

Major modules of E - Accounting Software
» Customer and Sales
» Suppliers and Purchases
» Banking
» Invoicing
» Nominal Ledger
» Financial module
» Reports
» Security and user management
» Configuration module

More Information: - (Financial Accounting System)
http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/online-accounting-fas-india
/financial-accounting-system.htm


About OffshoreSoftwareDevelopmentIndia.com

Offshore Software Development India is a software solution provider based in Ahmedabad, India. We offer IT services and solutions in the areas of Web Designing, Web Developing, E-Accounting, E-Business, Enterprise Application Integration, On-site Consulting, Customized Application Development, Offshore software development and Outsourcing.

Visit this site: - http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com

Ecommerce Development Tips - Components of Ecommerce

Ecommerce or electronic commerce is the process of conducting business activities like buying and selling through various electronic systems like the internet or other computer networks. Hundreds and thousands of people are dialy jumping onto the ecommerce bandwagon to start their online business. If you are also one of the many who want to be a part of this revolutionary idea of doing business then the first thing that you must do is to hire ecommerce development services.

Some Components of ecommerce

The most integral component of ecommerce is the development of your own website. You need to have an internet presence if you want to be a part of this process of doing business. Herein, many a ecommerce development company, India will come to your rescue, who have the proven expertise in not only developing an ecommerce website but also in various other components like Search Engine Optimization, special online carts, development of special transaction pages, search engine marketing, internet market, amongst a host of others.

Special Components

Ecommerce or open source Commerce is an online store-management software program and hence a very important component when it comes to ecommerce. The best part about this program is that is an open source software meaning that it is available free of charge under the aegis of the GNU General Public License. It has across the board browser compatibility and can cater to an infinite number of products and categories. These are just some of the advantage of this special component. The ecommerce development services of any company would profess expertise in this significant component.

An online store management software branched out from the open source software mentioned earlier and this is known as Zen Cart. This project differs from the other project on not only aesthetic lines, but also as a result of a few extra features like a Voucher/Gift Certificate module, sales download mangers, amongst other aspects. There are many more components that help in getting your ecommerce business on track and giving it a push in the right direction.

Choice of the Best Services

The choice when it comes to an ecommerce development company, India that has professional expertise in the field of ecommerce is seemingly endless. However, you must be sure to choose the one that can meet all your demands and requirements to the T. Therefore, it's best that you undertake your selection with the utmost care, analysis and research.

Like any other business, the business of ecommerce also requires the requisite attention. You just cannot take it for granted and it is proper planning and management that would see your getting the best of results in this regard. So, understand ecommerce first up and only then embark on your journey.

Article Source: ezineArticles.com

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Open Source Joomla Emerges as a Top CMS Tool

The Joomla website proclaims that, "Joomla is one of the most powerful open source content management systems on the planet." Sure, they're biased about their collaborative open source creation. But there's no arguing that Joomla is quickly becoming one of the top content management system (CMS) platforms on the Internet. Late last year Joomla won the best PHP Open Source Web CMS award.

Since its first release in fall 2005, Joomla has become one of the most downloaded content management systems on the web and recently released a retooled version 1.5 in January.

How does it stack up for use within an intranet? Let's take a look at its capabilities and technologies.

Features

Out of the (virtual) box, Joomla provides all the basic features needed to create a website that can be managed day to day by non-technical content contributors. It helps remove the webmaster bottleneck by providing an easy-to-use, browser-based way to add and edit content and pages using a word processor style interface. Users can control elements such as navigation menus and page layout and have the ability to add unlimited sections to the website.

Basic content management features are included in the core such as:

  • Categorizing content
  • Archiving content
  • "Most read" and "latest" content
  • Search
  • Sections (ability to limit access to content based on user permissions)
  • Publish content to an RSS feed
  • Built-in templates provide a starting place from which to build your look and feel. You can customize as little or as much as you like to ensure company branding is prevalent throughout your site.

    The core features are powerful enough to create an intranet portal. As with many open source applications the real power lies in the insane amount of additional functionality offered by extensions. There are currently several extensions available for Intranet and Groupware type applications: capabilities such as contacts, LDAP integration, CRM, and project/task management. Of course if the extensions available through Joomla don't meet your needs, your in-house developers can use the Joomla API to build your own.

    Joomla supports multiple languages so this is helpful to companies with the need for multilingual support.

    Technology

    With the release of version 1.5 Joomla adopts an MVC model as the basis of its three-tiered system which follows an object-oriented pattern-based methodology and design pattern. The distinct framework, application, and extension tiers enable rapid prototyping and great extensibility.

    Joomla is a cross-platform application and is written in PHP (version 4 and 5 support) and uses a mySQL backend.

    Getting Started

    As with most open source applications it pays to jump right in. A vast array of wiki style documentation is available at http://docs.joomla.org/ and addresses concerns from the beginner to expert.

    Joomla Tutorials also offers a variety of animated and visual tutorials to help you determine if it is right for you and to get started.

    As with any CMS initiative it depends on your company's size, budget, and resources to determine which solution is right for you. For Intranets and Extranets that need a lot of functionality without a great deal of complexity or cost, Joomla can be a very satisfying solution.

    For more information and a wealth of everything for developers and users alike, visit Joomla's website.

    Source: intranetjournal.com

    Offshore software development India has successfully delivered project based on Zend framework.

    Offshore software development India has successfully delivered project based on Zend framework. The ECF portal for the UK is based on Zend framework using PHP 5.2 and PostgreSQL 8.2. This is back to back successful implementation of another framework after Symfony framework in PHP and share point server site definition in .net. The ECF portal is going to live by end of March, 2008. The best part of the project is the enhancement of the core Zend framework 1.0.3. Layouts and LDAP modules are extended from 1.0 .3 which are now available in version 1.5.

    The team at Offshore Software Development India has developed such expertise that made them possible to deliver portal based on different framework like Zend, Symfony and open sources like Drupal, Joomla, SugarCRM, Magento.

    The friendly approach of OSDI to the clients and different technologies helps them to translate their IT strategies into clients’ business advantages.

    Please contact info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com for the inquiry and development using Zend framework or any other open source.

    About Zend framework:

    Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr, as well as API providers and cataloguers like StrikeIron and ProgrammableWeb.

    • An extensible and well-tested code base – easy to augment
    • A flexible architecture – not locked-in to a rigid application structure
    • No configuration files necessary to get up and running – or when maintaining and deploying your apps

    About Offshore Software Development India:

    OSDI offering a wide range of skills in IT Services, Mainly focusing in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Software Development, IT Consultancy, Web Designing / Web Development, Offshore Outsourcing, Multimedia, Customized Software Applications and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

    For more information please refer http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com

    Yahoo! Announces Agreement to Acquire IndexTools' Analytics Business

    Acquisition intended to enhance platform for comprehensive Web
    analytics and extend offerings for on-line marketers

    SUNNYVALE, Calif., Apr 09, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Tensa Kft., more commonly known as IndexTools, a leading provider of Web analytics software for online marketing. The acquisition includes IndexTools' Web analytics business and technology as well as its Tensa R&D Kft. subsidiary. Upon completion of the acquisition, the addition of the IndexTools' assets is intended to expand Yahoo!'s powerful set of services designed to maximize its clients' online marketing efforts.

    "Yahoo! believes that the ability to generate the most valuable and relevant insights is essential to seizing market opportunities and creating successful campaigns," said Bassel Ojjeh, senior vice president and head of Yahoo!'s Strategic Data Solutions group. "We expect that the IndexTools' technology platform will provide our customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!'s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world's advertisers."

    The acquired technology is expected to extend Yahoo!'s current analytics offerings by adding capabilities to deliver relevant insights and metrics for online campaigns that run across the entire Yahoo! network. Following the acquisition, the first group of customers to benefit from these enhanced tools will be more than 150,000 small-to-medium businesses marketing on the Web with Yahoo!. Additional capabilities enabling third-party developers to monitor and optimize the traffic performance of their applications are expected to follow throughout the year following the acquisition.

    "At the IndexTools group, we have developed a large base of global customers by delivering a reliable, scalable and comprehensive platform for monitoring and analyzing sophisticated marketing campaigns," said Marton Szoke, Managing Director of Tensa. "Our commitment to generating the most important insights, and placing them at our customers' fingertips, makes the IndexTools platform a wonderful match with Yahoo! and we are thrilled to have this opportunity to help advance online advertising as part of one of the world's leading brands."

    "The passionate and talented engineers at IndexTools have built a powerful analytics solution and just as importantly, their focus on delighting customers with the features and tools they truly need to excel is an excellent fit with Yahoo!," said Ojjeh. "We're excited and looking forward to welcoming these engineers to Yahoo!'s own deep engineering team."

    IndexTools offers a scalable analytics platform for companies' online marketing activity in each phase of the customer lifecycle. With IndexTools Web Analytics and Bid Management, businesses gain accurate, insightful and timely intelligence about the effectiveness of their online marketing.

    The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2008.

    About Yahoo!

    Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

    This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning the proposed transaction (including without limitation the statements contained in the quotations from management in this press release), as well as Yahoo!'s strategic and operational plans. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this press release due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the possibility that the transaction will not close or that the closing may be delayed; and the anticipated benefits to Yahoo! and its business customers, advertisers and publishers may not be realized. More information about potential factors that could affect Yahoo!'s business and financial results is included under the captions, "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, which is on file with the SEC and available at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

    Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

    SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.

    Yahoo! Inc.
    Denis Roy, 408-349-2570 (Media)
    denisroy@yahoo-inc.com
    Cathy La Rocca, 408-349-5188 (Investor Relations)
    cathy@yahoo-inc.com

    Copyright Business Wire 2008

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