Customized or built-in CMS: Which is better?

Custom-made or built-in CMS? This is a question that often plagues people as they are caught between two different benefits. So, what really differentiates the two? Though both Custom and Pre-Built Content Management Systems (CMS) offer similar benefits, for most businesses, budget is the key factor that decides the choice. We explore the two approaches to see which of them most likely get the job done with a smaller budget fulfilling your needs.

Application or No Application

The first question is whether you’re going to have a custom application on your Website. If you do need packaged CMS would mean your developer will have to follow existing protocols and architecture to build your custom application. This takes more time than something in-built.

But custom CMS won’t be limited by the rules of packaged CM Systems, allowing the developer to build around the content of your Website. Pre-built CMS solutions have several plug-ins that can extend functionality, but if it’s something new that you’re looking for, a custom solution may be a better in the long term.

Users

The two main factors here are the number of users and their skill levels. For a multi-tiered organization with a descriptive work flow process, a custom CMS would fit. A built-in CMS has roles in place ready for its users, and a few vary on the degree of customization they allow. A custom CMS would allow users and roles to be built the existing workflow, which will provide clarity and to those users already in the workflow.

The benefit of a custom CMS, would be a customization of labels that would help users identify data and actions using the language they are already familiar with. Say you’ve been publishing “press releases”, you would want the button to say ‘press release’ inside the CMS, instead of Posts. This would not be available in a pre-built CMS.

Updates

Updating of the code base is another significant difference between the two systems. Having a custom CMS means that the CMS is built and built for the specific solution you want. Rarely does the code base need to be updated. If you do, you’ll have to pay your developer for new functions or modules.

Pre-built CMS are updated continually through community development, providing new features, plug-ins, options, and themes. This means the CMS becomes a more refined piece of work.

Though there are many other options you should consider for each project, you need to keep these in mind before you make a decision.

The 3 Best Aid for a Great Web Design and Development

There are many tools available in the market that aid web developers in creating responsive and adaptive websites. In this blog, we look at the best among them and how they can be of use to the user.

DESIGN

1. Responsive Wireframes 

In design, the foremost task is to layout the key ideas and to determine their placement across the page.

It is here that Responsive wireframes comes into the picture. Created by James Mellers of Adobe, it offers desktop and mobile varieties of common wireframe mock-ups including homepage, guided entry,  promoentry, product detail and comparison pages.

2. Wirefy

If you’re one of those who say ‘content first’, then Wirefy is designed specifically for you. It is a style agnostic wireframe tool built to give content precedence rather than the subjective design. It allows you to create functional, fast and responsive wireframes using standard elements. Though you need a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS to work with it, it is only a small effort towards realising a fuly functional wireframe that propels a responsive site.

3. Intuitive Colour Picker

It is an online colour picker tool that fills the whole browser gets with colour. It is a colour picker for data driven design. You can choose a colour theme and click on the screen to save that colour and continue with the second colour. You can move your mouse left to right to change the hue and up and down to adjust the brightness and change the saturation with scroll. You can create a whole collection of colours.  Here’s a screenshot which shows how it works.

DEVELOPMENT

1. Codekit

Among softwares that simplifies web building and coding on Mac, Codekit must definitely be on top of the list as it compiles everything including Less, Saas, Stylus, Javascript and Haml. Aslo allows you to auto refresh the browser without having to type commands again.

2. FitText

Prepared excellent content but not able to scale text to the device? Chill. FitText allows text to scale according to the device, resizing text on ratios with just a jquery plugin. Though there are other applications that offer precise control over typography, FitText should do just fine if you’re working with just headlines.

3. Webflow

If you’re one of those who just wants to build a website without coding at all, Webflow has specially designed drag and drop features that help you create a customized website sans code. These drag and drop features do not require specific inputs but just a basic plan as to the outward content of the website.

Re-platforming your ecommerce website

In the ecommerce world, robustness and stability are often touted as the watchwords. Then, why do businesses change platforms? Is it because they need to keep changing with the current trends? In simple terms, it could be said that the answer lies in our businesses’ endless quest for flexibility. As customer preferences keep changing, e-business platforms too, need to undergo change so as to reflect their priorities. But, there are many underlying factors that compel a business to change platform. In this article, we look the why and how of re-platforming and exactly what makes a strong ecommerce platform.

Why business re-platform

In 2013, more than 20% of businesses were planning an ecommerce re-platforming. One of the important reasons behind this is increased web complexity. As ecommerce channels grew rapidly, third party integrations too have grown at the same pace not wanting to be left behind. These third party integrations have risen to pose a challenge to the platforms currently implemented.

As we saw earlier, customer’s changing requirements regarding functionality and performance too, have compelled businesses to tinker with their platforms. This, apart from competitive pressures and vendor conflicts (Platform vendors who don’t support current versions) inevitable in any economy have driven businesses to change shop.

What to look for when you re-platform

• Performance Scalability

Optimization of Page load time and accommodation of multiple concurrent users specially at peak hours must be on top your list.

• Multi-Channel Integration

Catering to customers across every utilized channel such as web, shop, mobile, social etc.

• Enhanced User experience

This is the most important part. It is UX that decides whether a user stays or leaves a website. It is a combination of factors such as content, search, shopping cart listing, smooth checkout process etc.

• Platform flexibility

The new platform needs to be able to adapt to needs to future markets and also perform within its limitations.

How to avoid re-platforming?

If truth be told, a vast majority of clumsily done re-platforming exercises can be avoided if ecommerce site owners do a proper usability test of their current site before re-platforming. If you know where you stand, you can clearly decide where your business should go.

Re-platforming can be avoided(temporarily) if:

• The platform is ‘alive’ or in its nascent stages.
• The existing service provider is doing well or he can be replaced by someone better.
• The platform is flexible and provide optimum user experience.

Why Drupal gives you an edge

It is common knowledge for just about anyone now that Drupal leads the current crop platform content management systems. This is not only due to Drupal’s superior features or versatility but also due to its ability to adapt and change itself quickly with the times. This is a feature that every content management system has in some measure, but that which Drupal has perfected. This article takes a closer look at why your choice for a CMS must be Drupal.

First among the reasons to choose Drupal has to be that it is an Open Source CMS. Hence, you can use it to create business websites, blogs, social networking sites, discussion boards etc. In essence, you have the source code free if you want to use Drupal. For particular website tools, you can always purchase customization tools like themes and modules.

Secondly, Drupal is written in PHP and therefore can be used with just about any operating system such as Linux, Windows, Mac etc. To store all the necessary information and data you can make use of MySQL.

Nodes – You must have heard of it. Drupal makes use of these special pages to form most of its content. ‘Story’ and ‘page’ are the predefined content types in Drupal which you can customize i.e. create on your own. The real benefits of using Drupal are:

Freedom from coding restrictions

As Drupal is Open Source, you have the freedom to modify or alter the code as you wish sans any restrictions. This applies even to tools where if you are dissatisfied with the functionality of any tool, you can modify it as per your requirement.

Simplicity in debugging

With Drupal, you don't require any kind of encryption software thereby making debugging easier and hassle free.

Adaptation and versatility

Drupal scores better than the other platforms here. With its rich features that provide a wide range of functionality, Drupal ticks many boxes.

But having said all this, it is important that you hire a developer who is competent enough to make use of all these features of Drupal to give you a site that is secure, rich and easy-to-use. Looking for a developer? Why search when you have Openwave?

Do you run a small business? Try Wordpress

Do you run a small business? And do you plan to develop a website for your small business? Developing a small business website can be a time-consuming and if not done the right way, a downright frustrating experience. People usually start looking for recommendations from their friends, business partners, and their immediate circle. But nothing can substitute first-person analysis. You need to do the search yourself, and find out the antecedents and track record of the web development companies on the list. Or you can take the risky route: designing the site by yourself.

To avoid this, many small business owners take matters into their own hands.

Designing a website yourself can be challenging. But with the right solutions and tools, it can be a fun. So, where do you begin? The first step is to choose the CMS you want to work with. The CMS will be the shelf and shell that holds and presents your website content, including pages, blog posts and the like. The most effective (and free) Content Management System on the market today is WordPress. WordPress is not only easy to learn and use; it also very search engine friendly and displays nicely on a mobile device. Using WordPress to develop a website will require a few hours of learning and tinkering but the end result will be complete control of your website and that is empowering.

WordPress comes with several design options. WordPress uses themes to create the look and feel for your website. It helps frame and layout the content you enter. There are two kinds of themes. The first comes free when you install WordPress and the second that comes with a premium anywhere between $25-$100. Most small businesses will fork out the extra money for a premium theme simply because it eliminates the "cookie-cutter" format and allows for increased customization to help make your small business website look clean, professional and trustworthy. The money invested in a premium theme will be far less than paying a freelance designer or website design firm.

Even if you decide to hire a agency or website design shop to develop your WordPress website, the costs associated will be much less than if they develop the website from scratch. In fact, most Web design companies will prefer to use WordPress anyway and will be able to quickly customize your website; shaving weeks of the timing to launch the new site.  

3 Do's and Don'ts of Designing an effective web page

Creating an effective web page requires planning, skill, attention to detail and some creativity. But far removed from the flashy logos and picturesque backgrounds are certain things that every developer must be aware of before he/she ventures into creating a web page. In this article we look at 10 do’s and don'ts that you should know to create the web page that you’re looking for.

THE DO’S

1. Structure your page

It’s essential to keep your page structured. Use a lightweight grid system and layout the information in a structured and easy-to-follow format. 

2. Keep it simple

One of the first maxims of designing attractive web pages is that it pays to keep it simple. People hate doing things that take a lot of time. Your website should be as easy to view for a for year old as it is for a technology junkie.

3. Make it easy to navigate

Take this: People are not going to spend more than 5 minutes to figure out what your website is and what it has to offer. The best way to do this is to make your webpage easy to scan. This means using proper heading tags, streamlining content, and focussing on the important items.

THE DON'TS

1. Don't place boxes everywhere

We’ve seen it everywhere. Boxes of all sizes, flooding the place, not lined up properly, and worse not grabbing our attention too! We invariably end up closing the whole window in disgust. If you’re a web designer, you must know how to place things in a structured environment.

2. Don't place irrelevant ads across your page

We all want to make money and we need ads for it. But wait, they shouldn’t eat up your entire page space. Many web pages have 70% ads and 30% content. That should not be the case. Don't make ads your No.1 priority. That must be reserved for your visitors, always.

3. Don’t overdo images and colours

Colours and images are important, but you must be careful not to overdo them. Use them judiciously and with an innate aesthetic sense. Your colour scheme must have not more than 5 colours and go to sites that have user generated colour schemes posted.

The freedom platform-Magento ecommerce

If you’re one of those planning to open an online store, the biggest decision you will have to make is choose which ecommerce platform to use. A variety of factors weigh into this decision including ease of use, pricing, and integrations. In this article, we look at the factors you need to keep in mind when choosing an ecommerce platform, along with the leading players you can choose from

Customisations

• Magento is fully customisable but you will need to be either technical or have a developer to make the customizations for you.
• Bigcommerce and shopify lets you customise its templates by giving you access to CSS and HTML but not change features or edit the platform code.       

Open source

• Magento is open source which means that you get more flexibility and full ownership of your site, you will not be locked into somebody else’s development cycle.
• However, the responsibility is on you to maintain and support and there is little recourse if there are bugs with the system etc. There is a large community around Magento that can help you.
• BigCommerce and Shopify are SaaS apps. They develop, maintain and support the software for you. It will continue to improve without you needing to lift a finger. However, you have little control over what gets developed and when.

Add-ons, features, transaction fees

• Magento being fully customisable has as many features and add ons as you are prepared to integrate but it is less ‘out-of-the-box’ than the other two.
• BigCommerce comes with a lot of features built in with the initial pay plan so you are ready to go straight away.
• Shopify is missing a number of standard features so you will need to but some add-ons and on lower tariffs a 2% transactional fee may apply.

Your choice of ecommerce engine

Remember that this is rough ride to get you started. All of these solutions have their fans and detractors and it is really worth trailing each of them.

• Magento gives more freedom in how you build it at the cost of requiring or hiring more technical talent.
• BigCommerce and Shopify take a more template approach, building beautiful options but at the risk of looking like another company using the same template.

Managing many channels

Each of these ecommerce choices come with plugins and add-ons and a variety of tools to help you list and manage each one. The problem for a business though is that when they grow and add channels or volume how do they manage all of them as opposed to each of them? That is the stage where it makes sense to technology at the backend to act as a central hub.