November 2nd, 2010

Continuing with our movement to truly collaborate with as many Joomla developers as possible, we were sent a test copy of corePHP’s WordPress MU for Joomla! For the unacquainted, this is a full version of WordPress INSIDE Joomla! for those who want the best blog software inside the most versatile CMS.

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Installation
I tested on a local MAMP install and the install process was timing out, so I checked the filesize – 2.5mb  That’ll do it. This makes sense, since the component contains WordPress (duh). So I just unpacked in the tmp directory and installed from a directory and bam, the install worked in a snap.

At the end of the installed, you’re instructed to move a couple of key files for WordPress to work properly. I wish there was a link, but that’s just because I’m lazy. I like that it wasn’t automated, because I like to know when files are being moved into these particular directories.

I think clicked the link to Start Blogging, and pow, I’m in the WordPress admin. I fully expected this, but it’s still crazy at first. As a side note and time for a plug, using our AdminPraise2 Joomla! admin template with the WordPress inspired theme would really provide a seamless admin experience.

First Impressions
I clicked the link to preview my blog, and was taken to my Joomla! site, with a fully functional, fully integrated WordPress blog, and I’m severely impressed. I created a Joomla! menu item, where you can enter the ID of which blog you’d like displayed (since you can have multiple in WordPress MU), and there’s my site’s blog!

You can quickly add a new blog for a new user, as the Joomla! users are synced with WordPress.

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Additional Extensions
corePHP gives you an entire slew of modules including tags, latest, and several others. They also included every native WordPress plugin you could possibly need. Lastly, they’ve included JomSocial plugins that will give your community the ability to have their own WordPress powered blog, sweet! I didn’t get to test the JomSocial plugins, but I’m sure it shows latest blog activity on the users’ JomSocial profile, and adds blog activity into the JomSocial activity stream.

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Issues
I can’t give a perfect review of anything, it’s just not genuine (or in my nature). The only conflict I found was that the frontend layout for WordPress MU for Joomla! shares some common IDs used in Joomla! templates, such as “content” and “navigation”. These are commonly used in any layout from any CMS, so I’m sure they’re included as they would be in any WordPress layout, but to work well inside Joomla! they’d need names like “wp-content” and “wp-navigation”. This would take 2 seconds for the end user to fix, so it’s certainly not a show-stopper, but I could see a customer getting stumped and possibly confused for a moment.SuperBlog
With about 5 minutes of CSS love, I was able to get WordPress MU by corePHP working with our SuperBlog template. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Pricing
$79.95 for Single Blog, $99.95 for MU (as tested), $420.95 for 6 Site License

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Rating

• Best blog software inside the best CMS
• Superb integration (frontend and backend)
• All the extensions you’ll need
• Price point may be high for some
• Possible (tiny) template conflicts

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Update – New WordPress MU Quick Icons Admin Module!
We enjoyed our testing so much, we’ve gone ahead and created a new WP Icons admin module, with quicklinks to all the pages in the WordPress admin. Just like the AP Icons in AdminPraise2, it contains all the links with the ability to hide, or display to Manager & above, Administrator & above, or only Super Admins. Look for lots more of these types of modules from us soon!

Here’s a couple of screenshots of WP Icons in AdminPraise2 (WordPress theme) and the default admin template:

Tags: corephp, joomla, wordpress
Posted in joomla | 3 Comments »

November 2nd, 2010

How to search engine optimize your Joomla website in 10 easy steps.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag

and appear in the blue bar of your browser.The number one factor in ranking a page on search engines is the title tag. These are the words in the source of a page in

Choose the title of an article very carefully. Joomla will use the title of the article in the title tag (what appears in the blue bar). It will also be the text used in any insite links (see #5 and 6)

2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link

Anchor text is the text that appear underlined and in blue (unless it’s been styled) for a link from one webpage to another.

Try to get some inbound links to your article using the keywords you want to be ranked for. Two ways are to do this are through online press services such as PRweb.com or simply by networking.

3. Global Link Popularity of Site (PageRank)

How many pages are linking to your page is called link popularity, or in Google, PageRank.

The more sites link to you, the better. Joomla is a CMS that helps you add content quickly. Create one quality content page per day. Quality content is the most important factor to getting bound links. For a site that will perform well, you eventually need 200 odd pages of content. This is the important point. QUICK SEO IS DEAD. The only way to perform well in SEO now is to have a rich content site.

4. Age of Site

When was the domain of the site registered?

Nothing you can do about this, but there is evidence that suggests that how long you have your domain registered for makes a difference (spam sites are not registered for long). Go and extend your domain registration for a couple of years.

5. Link Popularity within the Site

This is the number of links to the page from inside your own domain.

Because of #2, it’s critical that you link to articles from within your site using the right anchor text. Make sure that you:

• Use the linked titles setting
• Make good used of the Most Read, Related Items and Latest News modules.
• Have a sitemap component linked to right from your homepage

6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links and Popularity of Linking Site

It’s important that you get quality inbound links. This means they have to be from a site that is topically related to your, and one that has a high PageRank.

• It’s worth submitting once to directories (then forget about it).
• Type “related:www.yoursite.com” into google and contact the top 20 returns for links.Link Popularity of Site in Topic Community
• Make sure you have a blog on your site, and network with others in your topical community. Make sure you frequently link to other blogs in your topical community.

7. Keyword Use in Body Text

The keyword density of the phrase you are optimizing for in the content of the page. Still important, the German study from Sistrix identified some interesting results.

• Targeted keywords in the first and last paragraphs. There is a simple trick here, write your quality content, and then use the tool of your choice to find the keyword density. THEN, take the top three words and add them to the meta keywords in the parameters part of the page (in Joomla admin). This is somewhat backwards for some maybe, it optimizes a page for what you actually wrote, rather than trying to write a page optimized for certain words (which I always find difficult).
• Keywords in H2-H6 headline tags seem to have an influence on the rankings while keywords in H1 headline tags seem to be getting less valuable. Modify the output of the core content component through a template override file.
• Using keywords in bold or strong tags – slight effect, same with img alt tags and filenames.

Additional notes:

A couple of other factors at the bottom of measured/estimated influence.

8. File Size

The file size doesn’t seem to influence the ranking of a web page on Google although smaller sites tend to have slightly higher rankings. Optimize those images!

9. Clean URL (Joomla SEF)

Although Keywords in the file name (URL) don’t seem to have a positive effect (based on the German study), a URL with few parameters (?id=123, etc.) is important. Turn on Joomla SEF but don‘t get anal about it.

Other Notes

10. Utilize Your Error Pages.

Too often companies forget about error pages (such as 404 errors). Error pages should always re-direct “lost” users to valuable, text-based pages. Placing text links to major site pages is an excellent practice. Visit www.cnet.com/error for an example of a well-utilized error page. To make the error page fit with the rest of the theme of your site, create an uncategorized article and then copy the source as viewed on a webpage, and put that into the 404 file.

You can find original post here : http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/top-10-joomla-seo-tips-for-google

Tags: joomla, joomla seo, joomla seo tips
Posted in joomla | 3 Comments »

October 27th, 2010

We have been working on building a multi-school Joomla! website and there have been many hurdles to overcome since Joomla! isn’t a multi-site CMS. After searching for anything that’s common across each school, I realized the menu for each school could be used as a common denominator. If I could set a variable depending on which menu is loaded on the page then I can do just about anything I want, such as change the logo, set a unique CSS class, etc. After meeting with our developers we figured out how to do this and I’ll share it with all of you in case you ever need to do the same.

To start we need to pull in the information of which menus are being used on the page. Place this code in the head of your template:

jimport(‘joomla.application.menu’);
$menus = JSite::getMenu();
$m = $menus->getActive();

This checks for the active menus on the page and sets it into the variable $m so we can manipulate it. Next, you need to look at the menutype in the administrator Menu Manager (under Type). This is what we will use to determine which school is being viewed. I want to take this information and set a new variable named $school:

if($m->menutype == ‘district-information’) { $school = ‘district-info’; }
if($m->menutype == ‘cityname-elementary-school’) { $school = ‘cityname-elementary’; }
if($m->menutype == ‘cityname-middle-school’) { $school = ‘cityname-middle’; }
if($m->menutype == ‘cityname-high-school’) { $school = ‘cityname-high’; }

The first thing I did was echo the variable $school into an ID on the body tag.

body id=”< ?php echo $school; ?>”

This allows me to style the CSS uniquely according to the school being viewed which gives you a lot of style control. To change the logo I can just call it by the school.

#cityname-high .logo {background: url(../images/logo-highschool.jpg);}

Another thing I did was load a unique module position according to the school so I could publish modules in all pages the menu shows up on. I did this by doing the following:

if($school == ‘district-info’) {
echo ”;
};
if($school == ‘cityname-elementary’) {
echo ”;
};
if($school == ‘cityname-middle’) {
echo ”;
};
if($school == ‘cityname-high’) {
echo ”;
};

As you can see this can give you the ability to do things you may not have been able to do before in Joomla!. I know it saved me from a major headache!

You can find original post here : http://www.corephp.com/blog/controlling-joomla-templates-depending-on-the-menu-you-use/

Tags: joomla blog
Posted in joomla | Comments Off

October 27th, 2010

The complete potential of iPhone, the multimedia gadget, can be utilized by developing ingenious applications for it. The launch of the SDK (software development kit) by Apple in 2008 boosted iPhone application developer worldwide to come up with unique and customized applications for iPhone users.

The SDK, also known as the ‘tool chain’ includes:

Xcode: It is the integrated development environment (IDE), wherein iPhone applications are developed. It is the integral part of the iPhone application development kit and consists of a graphical debugger and a powerful source editor too. Interface builder: It helps in the designing and testing of user interfaces. The graphical editing environment of the interface builder is utilized by the iPhone application developer to design user interfaces and seamlessly integrate the applications to the 3G environment of iPhone. Instruments: The instrument retrieves data, analyzes and compares performance and displays the results graphically in real-time. It plays a pivotal role in the real-time optimization of iPhone applications.

An iPhone application developer should have a sound knowledge about using the SDK. The SDK uses the objective C language and runs only on the MAC OS X 1.5 platform (the OS of iPhone). The applications developed needs to be approved by Apple and can be distributed solely through App Store.

iPhone website development

There are various categories catering to which, iPhone applications are developed. Many companies specialize in a particular category. For example, a company may specialize in the domain of iPhone website development. An iPhone mobile development domain includes useful web 2.0 applications designed exclusively for iPhone, like:

Search tools. Web utilities. Social networking. Ecommerce websites. Travel, sports and entertainment and so on.

Outsourcing of iPhone application development

Outsource of iPhone application development has several advantages which mainly includes:

Firstly, it is cost effective. Outsourcing of IPhone applications gets the job done in lower costs. Customized applications can be developed without much investment which was otherwise necessary for the technical manpower and training. The rigmaroles of the iPhone applications- approval by Apple, guidelines etc are taken care by the companies.

iPhone Cool Projects

41gNRqHs6qL. SL160 iPhone application development and outsourcing

I am the webmaster at www.synapse.co.in – a iPhone website development company in India offering numerous services, such as flash web development, flash scripting, customized applications for the iPhone,and website maintenance services

ISBN13: 9781430223573
Condition: USED – Very Good

Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

The iPhone and iPod touch have provided all software developers with a level playing field—developers working alone have the same access to consumers as multinational software publishers. Very cool indeed! To make your application stand out from the crowd, though, it has to have that something extra. You must learn the skills to take your apps from being App Store filler to download chart-topping blockbusters.

Developers with years of experience helped write this book. Spend some time understanding their code and why they took the approach they did. You will find the writing, illustrations, code, and sample applications second to none. No matter what type of application you are writing, you will find something in this book to help you make your app that little bit cooler.

The book opens with Wolfgang Ante, the developer behind the Frenzic puzzle game, showing how timers, animation, and intelligence are used to make game play engaging. It moves on to Rogue Amoeba’s Mike Ash explaining how to design a network protocol using UDP, and demonstrating its use in a peer-to-peer application—a topic not normally for the faint of heart, but explained here in a way that makes sense to mere mortals. Gary Bennett then covers the important task of multithreading. Multithreading can be used to keep the user interface responsive while working on other tasks in the background. Gary demonstrates how to do this and highlights traps to avoid along the way.

Next up, Canis Lupus (aka Matthew Rosenfeld) describes the development of the Keynote-controlling application Stage Hand, how the user interface has evolved, and the lessons he has learned from that experience. Benjamin Jackson then introduces two open source libraries: cocos2d, for 2D gaming; and Chipmunk, for rigid body physics (think “collisions”). He describes the development of Arcade Hockey, an air hockey game, and explains some of the code used for this.

Neil Mix of Pandora Radio reveals the science behind processing streaming audio. How do you debug what you can’t see? Neil guides you through the toughest challenges, sharing his experience of what works and what to watch out for when working with audio. Finally, Steven Peterson demonstrates a comprehensive integration of iPhone technologies. He weaves Core Location, networking, XML, XPath, and SQLite into a solid and very useful application.

Software development can be hard work. Introductory books lay the foundation, but it can be challenging to understand where to go next. This book shows some of the pieces that can be brought together to make complete, cool applications.

You can find original post here : http://www.theoutsourceblog.com/2010/08/iphone-application-development-and-outsourcing/

Tags: iphone, iphone application blog, iphone application development
Posted in iphone, joomla | Comments Off

October 26th, 2010

There have been endless discussions around how Joomla! is developed and maintained. One thing is clear though: development is quite slow and new significant features for the end user have not yet been introduced since the Mambo days… It’s one of the reasons we decided to build K2, so we could introduce more modern and popular features into Joomla! now.

But how could the development of Joomla! not be slow? Given that the core team are human beings and not robots that work 24 hours a day on coding and debugging Joomla!, it’s really simple to realize why the development process is slow. Additionally, it is not easy to contribute code to Joomla! because there are certain protocols need to be followed that make the entire process even slower.

Obviously this is not a post to bash the core team but a new thought on how we could possibly see Joomla! being development in the not so distant future.
So how could we speedup Joomla! development?

It’s really simple. Joomla! is modular by nature. So why not make development modular as well?

Here’s a realistic example: Joomla! is made up of components like com_content (for articles), com_menus (for the menu management system), com_polls (for the polls) and so on. The Joomla! team could easily “contract” some professional developers and have them undertake the development of a specific component or perhaps module or plugin or whatever!

Imagine this: Joomla! 1.6 will be released without comments (despite original claims for the opposite). How difficult would it be for some developers to create a comments component, contribute it to the default Joomla! 1.6 distribution and also be responsible for maintaining the code!

One thing is for sure. A lot of weight would be lifted off the core team and significantly boost Joomla!’s development. If a bug is introduced on the above example of the comments component, the developers of that component could issue an upgrade and deliver the upgrade through joomla.org to all Joomla! users. Why update an entire Joomla! website when there is a specific problem in some component?

It’s how things work in bigger software deployments like operating systems (OS). Teams and sub-teams developing and maintaining individual applications that make up the end product. The best example I guess is from the Linux world where there are applications developed for certain Linux distributions – the bond is so strong that you think they are actually part of the OS (see Ubuntu).

To conclude, I don’t think it will be hard for the Joomla! core team to find such developers to code and maintain specific elements of Joomla!. If others can do this in projects with a gazillion lines of code, then Joomla! can do it too.

We (as JoomlaWorks) have offered to code (yes, code, not debug) many times and I know a lot more people who have expressed the same interest as well. And I know it’s difficult for the core team to just give away SVN access to others. I wouldn’t easily trust other devs to code on K2! But I would certainly trust someone to develop and maintain a module of K2 and have it included in the default distribution.

The only hard part is for the Joomla! core team to actually approve that some developer can deliver quality code by some standards, but it’s really no biggie. We are a large community and there’s a lot of talent to jump in and help things out. Can you imagine what a positive impact this would have to Joomla!’s PR and especially to users of other content management systems?

What do you think?

You can find the original post here : http://blog.joomlaworks.gr/a-new-perspective-on-the-future-development-o

Tags: joomla development
Posted in joomla | 2 Comments »

October 26th, 2010

On extensions.joomla.org a lot of extensions are offered worthwhile using. Most of them are released under the GNU/GPL and free to use, others are offered under a commercial license – I don’t have a problem with this, because for me the functionality is more important than the amount of money I have to pay.

Open source or not

But one thing which I find very important is the openess of the PHP-code. If an extension is GPL-ed, the code is open source which enables me as programmer to fix problems myself instead of relying on other people to fix it for me. It allows me to solve problems much quicker.

With commercial extensions however there are two variations: Extensions which are both commercial as open source and extensions which are both commercial as closed source. I prefer the open source extensions, but sometimes you’re just stuck with closed source because of the functionality it sometimes offers. I always cross my fingers and hope that I don’t bump into a problem that makes me call some helpdesk-guy that doesn’t understand a bit of the problem.
The website is down

Now something happened which made me reconsider my point on closed source extensions (for the worse): The website was down. I have full access to the webserver, so I logged in through SSH to have a look at the Apache error-log. There I quickly discovered the problem. Some kind of Joomla! plugin gave a huge timeout.

The Joomla! plugin in question was a system plugin and depended on a helper-file. Somehow this helper-file tried to reach another remote site. And because this other remote site was down as well, the Joomla! plugin was waiting indefinitely for a response and so did my website. No timeout was being given.

I quickly logged into the Joomla! Administrator, navigated to the Plugin Manager and disabled the plugin. Hmm, the website was still down. Appearently disabling the plugin from within the Joomla! backend did not actually disable the plugin itself. With a steady hand I removed the plugin-files. The website was up again.

Next, I deciced to do a full audit on this plugin. What was causing the problem? And more importantly, why did it not give a timeout when trying to reach the remote site – for a proper PHP-script it seemed to be the most responsible thing to do.
A first glance at the evil Joomla! plugin

At a first glance the plugin looked very cool. The backend did not have any parameters, it showed an HTML description which was displayed just as plain text and not as HTML, and the plugin title did not follow the plugin naming conventions (“System – My Plugin”). But sometimes I’m just too picky about these things. Instead of becoming to frustrated I had a look at the code instead.

The main PHP-script is written following the JPlugin-class standard, which is a clear way of writing your own plugin. However the main file included a helper file, even when the plugin itself was disabled. That was a big mistake: The helper tried to fetch content from a remote site, which was down. But it tried to do this, regardless of the state of the plugin. If the plugin would be disabled, there was no need for this action anyway.

…
include_once( dirname( __FILE__ ) . ‘/evil.helper.php’ );
…
class plgSystemEvilplugin extends JPlugin
…

License and reverse engineering

The Joomla! plugin was mentioning (in the source code) a copyright but not a license. On the website I could not find any word of the license under which the source code was distributed. Now, Joomla! is released under the GNU/GPL and officially all extensions that extend Joomla! should fall under the GPL as well, and thus make it open source. I took the liberty to assume that the GPL was applied to this plugin as well and began reading the code.

The main plugin-file did not do much, except include a helper-file and call a function within this helper-file. So I opened up the helper-file to discover that it did not contain readable code but something encrypted instead. Looking at the GPL it is absolutely legal to decrypt this encrypted code, so I started decoding it.

BFkWUEZsfUtbXj9YS1gqIC47dzdzUBpQLQlaBQ9KUxgPA1g4XBZdGxwHUzZXVBYyFl1LZ
wkRSRlHDgddQx8KHQEODRUNGA4dXwRXBgBDGR9jF10UcgATSRxaVR1HS11BAVphQh0Wa2
lfFhgKHzxEAB0cTw0aBgMKFg1vHxYLHxcSRlxHTgBUEAJjQhocGgA7BFQCR1IKRwAH

Decrypting the base64 file

The file was encoded with base64 encryption, and any PHP-programmer should know that there is a PHP-function “base64_decode()” to help you with this. The difficult part was that after base64-decryption I ended up with again a base64 encryption. So again I decrypted it, but now I ended up with a base64-encryption locked with a specific encoding key.

$codelock_decrypter["t"] = base64_decode(“LlJpagxUIiZLXmc3Ijk5PzUaMCM
pKStbKikEHm48W0FZISlwKSQiVz8jLidnTz8jXxdqGExfWTExNTg+NF4MdzstNRRtHUFe
LSJWTl0NYSYrOWY …
…
$codelock_decrypter["z"] = substr($codelock_decrypter["license"], $codelock_decrypter["x"] % strlen($codelock_decrypter["license"]), 1);

This CodeLock-encryption is however not impossible to crack. Still this is not real closed source like ionCube or Zend Encryptor – it just takes some good knowledge of PHP to turn the base64-encryption into regular PHP-code. After 15 minutes of good hacking I succeeded in breaking the full encryption and store the PHP-code as a readable content.

There I found the root of the whole problem: The PHP-scripts themselves did not contain any logic by themselves. Instead the PHP-script was encrypted with CodeLock but still able to decrypt itself. After this a request was made to the remote site to get again encryted text which was then decrypted and then executed as PHP. And what was all the fuzz about? About 400 lines of code that I could write easily in one evening.
So what’s bad about this Joomla! plugin

Though the functionality of the plugin was very useful, the downtime of the remote site brought a very weak architecture into the light. This is the list:

* The plugin is not clear on the license needed to redistribute the PHP-code. I assumed the code to be GPL, which is probably legally the right assumption.
* The plugin called a helper-file even when the plugin was disabled, which shows that the manufacturor did not actually test things properly.
* The code is encrypted with encryption software written in a manner, which I have seen only with script-kiddies. It contained PHP Notices and even PHP Warnings which were manually oppressed, which is a bad habit.
* The whole functionality depends fully on a remote site. If this site is down, the plugin doesn’t work.
* They ask money for this type of software.

How could you know?

You don’t, unless you are an experienced PHP-programmer like me. It takes a lot of knowledge to find out what an extension is doing exactly and things get even more complicated with things like base64-encryption. But you can now for sure that with closed source less people are making sure that the PHP-code is of a high quality.

You can find the original post here : http://blog.opensourcenetwork.eu/blog/programming/reverse-engineering-an-qencryptedq-joomla-plugin

Tags: encrypted joomla plugin, joomla plugin
Posted in joomla | Comments Off

September 9th, 2009

hi, today i m going to write about CMS(content management system). hersi the list of some useful CMS

1. Drupal:

Drupal gets the top nod because of its ease of use, vast number of modules, great user, developer, and support community.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: core CMS, Views, CCK, Organic Groups, & huge library of contributed modules.
Disadvantages: complex, needs more top quality themes, frequent security upgrades.
Outlook: Huge potential to continue growth and expansion on this platform over time.
Website: http://www.drupal.org/

2. WordPress:

WordPress is a simple and elegant CMS, perfect for single user blogs, with a large number of themes and modules available online.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Easiest CMS to use, customize, and extend.
Disadvantages: Lacks many of the social networking functions, ecommerce, forums, wikis, etc. used on more expansive sites.
Outlook: Best for personal publishing, huge user community, will continue to be the preferred choice of bloggers for years.
Website: http://www.wordpress.org/

3. Joomla:

Joomla has one of the largest user communities of any CMS, everything you need and more to develop social networks, ecommerce, & archive sites.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Professional standards, internationalization, customization.
Disadvantages: too many commercial products for Open Source development, difficult to learn.
Outlook: Strong challenger for the top CMS spot, commercialization of extensions should continue to provide many income opportunities for 3rd party developers.
Website: http://www.joomla.org/

4. Media Wiki:

Media Wiki invented a whole new way of working on the web, and is a CMS for collective authoring of documents, used to power the one of the largest and most popular sites on the internet, Wikipedia.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: If you need a wiki, it is the best.
Disadvantages: Does not include many other functions / extensions of other CMS platforms, doesn’t theme well, most sites look the same.
Outlook: Follows the model to success of doing one thing extremely well, has the support of the Wikipedia Foundation, very popular authoring model.
Website: http://www.mediawiki.org/

5. Liferay:

Liferay is a popular new CMS that is great for building portals, and offers a professional look and feel that sets it apart from the other platforms.
License: MIT
Programming Language: Java, PHP, Ruby
Main advantages: collaboration, calendars, internationalization, design.
Disadvantages: More closely tied to a commercial outlook / corporate structure than most Open Source projects.
Outlook: Not as well known or implemented as some of the other CMS platforms, but nice design & features to set your sites apart from the crowd.
Website: http://www.liferay.com/

6. TYPO3:

One of the most complex and professional CMS platforms out of the box, TYPO3 is popular for business websites, especially with European companies.
License: GNU
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: design, extensions, customizations, flexibility, professionalism.
Disadvantages: too difficult to learn for most, too many proprietary conventions.
Outlook: Strong CMS for web development, sure to continue with a core of specialized developers and corporate clients, but loosing support and market share to other platforms.
Website: http://www.typo3.com/

7. Moodle:

Moodle is one of the most unique CMS platforms on this list, designed specifically for Course Management and Education, and used for online learning platforms.
License: GNU
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Huge user and development community, online education, no real competitors or similar products, extremely powerful.
Disadvantages: not really applicable for most web design purposes.
Outlook: Look for this “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment” to continue to be the standard online operating system for education and spawn many interesting mashups with other CMS platforms as well as many more modules & extensions.
Website: http://www.moodle.org/

8. Dolphin:

Boonex Dolphin is popular among web designers who want the latest in social networking, with an industry standard look and all of the features of the popular online communities out of the box.
License: Creative Commons
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Plug-n-Play user community with all the bells & whistles.
Disadvantages: not really Open Source, must pay to remove ads, requires specific hosting requirements, difficult to install, buggy.
Outlook: Look for Dolphin to continue to be a popular choice for social networking, though its “cookie cutter” design runs the risk of becoming stale with too many sites implementing the same design.
Website: http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

9. Pligg:

Pligg is a Digg clone that provides social bookmarking functionality for websites, allowing users to post links, vote them up or down, and leave comments.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Best for Social Bookmarking, can be themed and extended to build top quality sites like Mixx, Redditt, Del.icio.us, etc.
Disadvantages: difficult to install, mod rewrite problems, poor support on community boards, questionable Open Source future.
Outlook: With the 1.0 release of Pligg upcoming within a couple of months, look for a big surge of use back to this platform but watch out for increased commercialization.
Website: http://www.pligg.com/

10. Movable Type:

Movable Type is the main challenger to WordPress for a personal blog platform, and supports multiple users, Themes, and Tags.
License: GNU
Programming Language: Perl
Main advantages: Blogs
Disadvantages: Too closely tied to commercial products and services compared to most Open Source communities, Perl.
Outlook: Look for MT to fall off the list as other of the blogging platforms below increase in popularity, but sustain development as PR for the company’s commercial offerings.
Website: http://movabletype.org/

i hope you like this details content originaly by http://webdevnews.net/2008/09/the-top-10-open-source-content-management-systems/

from,

kiran vadariya

Tags: CMS, content management system, useful cms
Posted in drupal, joomla, magento, php development, web development, wordpress | 1 Comment »

July 30th, 2009

In response to overwhelming interest and requests from the Joomla community, the Joomla Project is pleased to announce the Joomla Resource Directory goes online today at resources.joomla.org. If you’re a Joomla user, there’s no easier way to find developers, service providers, and other valuable resources.

“We think this will be a great way to connect end-users and service providers in the Joomla Community,” said Wendy Robinson of the JRD Team.”Most small businesses can’t afford to advertise on the Joomla.org sites and this will provide them wide exposure. With close to a million visitors and 14 million page views a month, the JED has proven that there is wide interest in products related to Joomla.”

The JRD builds on the success of the JED—the most popular place to find Joomla Extensions. Both are powered by the Mosets Tree 2.1 directory extension, a GPL extension that also powers the Joomla Site Showcase.

If you’re a service provider, listing in the Resource Directory is free of charge (premium listings will be offered in the future for a fee). This includes consultants, template designers, tutorial sites, and just about any other Joomla service. Users can post reviews of these services and share their experiences with the community.

Tags: CMS, directory, India, joomla, PHP, Web devlopment
Posted in joomla, php development, web development | 1 Comment »

May 6th, 2009

If you’re a familier with the word ‘PHP’ then here is some useful creative uses for it.

E-Commerce

E-commerce is one of the major uses for PHP. From a small business level to an enterprise level, businesses are always looking to create additional streams of revenue online. If you know how to integrate existing e-commerce solutions or build your own from scratch, this gives you a distinct advantage with your clients.

Beginners

• Magento
• Zen Cart
• Shopify

Advanced Coders

· CodeIgniter

· CakePHP.

Graphical User Interface

If PHP is your favorite programming language, then you can use some of these PHP extensions to get you started creating GUI applications.

• PHP GTK – This extension is a popular open source that implements the GIMP toolkit
• ZZEE PHP GUI – A paid solution that allows you to turn your PHP scripts into Windows applications

Image Processing and Generation

Using the GD library with PHP, you can do more than just output HTML to the browser! You can output images in different file types including jpeg, png, and gif. This feature of PHP is useful because it allows you to create thumbnail pictures, add watermarks, resize and crop images, and even create a photo gallery!

Mailing Lists

You can write your own script to send e-mail newsletters to your client, or use a ready-made script. The PHP online documentation explains PHP mailing functions in more detail. There are also scripts you can download and install on your website:

• PHP list

Developing Facebook Applications

You can integrate Facebook with your website using PHP. If you have developed Facebook applications using another language or you would like to get started with PHP, the Facebook developer’s wiki can help you to get started.

Create Graphs and Charts

Do you need visual representations of numbers on your site? PHP can create graphs and charts too! Using Image_Graph, you can create up to fourteen different types of charts including pie charts, bar graphs,.

Generating PDF Files

The PDF format is Adobe’s proprietary file type for document exchange. Using a library called PDFLib, you can generate PDF files with PHP. This library is already included with PHP5; to access it, you need to uncomment the appropriate lines in your PHP configuration file. An example of why creating PDF files might come in useful is, if you were building an online invoicing application and you wanted to output an HTML-generated invoice in PDF format.

Parsing XML Files

PHP allows you to parse XML files. Parsing XML is an important feature of PHP 5 because not all browsers can output the contents of an XML file; so you can create a parser in PHP to facilitate this process. Using XML is important for RSS feeds, and also for data storage and rendering data on different devices – for example, cell phones use an implementation of XML called WML (Wireless Markup Language). Working with XML files in PHP is similar to handling the opening, closing, and reading of a file.

Content Management Systems

One of the most popular uses of PHP is creating or using Content Management System. A good CMS allows your clients to update their website and add content without any in-depth knowledge of HTML and CSS. You can use one of the widely available free or commercial solutions listed below:

• Drupal
• Wordpress
• Joomla

Create Dynamic Website Templates

Using PHP, you can make it easier to add pages and elements to your websites dynamically. You begin by creating the HTML page and splitting it into the header, main content, and footer sections. Add the .php extension to your subsequent pages and use server-side Includes for the header and footer for each new page. You can also have dynamic sidebars and top navigation sections. As a matter of fact, the more “templated” your site is, the easier it is to update the content.

Building an Online Community

You can build your own PHP-driven online community, or choose from widely available scripts that you can implement into your website. Some popular ones include:

• php BB
• vBulletin
• Pun BB

from kiran vadariya

Tags: creative use, online community, PHP, uses, web development
Posted in database, drupal, javascript, joomla, php development, web design, web development | 1 Comment »

April 30th, 2009

1. Community Builder Community Builder suite (CB) extends the Joomla! user management system. Key features: extra fields in profile, enhanced registration workflows, user lists, connection paths between users, admin defined tabs and user profiles, image upload, front-end workflow management, integration with other components, like PMS, Newsletter, Forum, Galleries. Release 1.1 is compatible with all Joomla! 1.0.x (including 1.0.15) and Mambo 4.5.2-4.6.4. New CB version 1.2 RC brings Joomla 1.5 native compatibility (and keeping Joomla 1.0.x and Mambo 4.5.2-4.6.4 native compatibility), multi-criteria user searches, full field controls of core fields, ajax email and username checkers, new lost username/password form and many more features and fixes. note:  This extension requires registration to download.

2. JCE An advanced, configurable WYSIWYG editor for Joomla! based on Moxiecode’s TinyMCE. Includes advanced Image/Media and File handling, plugin support, and an Administration interface for editor configuration. note: This extension requires registration to download.

3. sh404SEF sh404SEF rewrites Joomla URL to a more user-friendly format (SEF URL or URL rewriting): mysite.com/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=69&id=34… becomes mysite.com/en/sh404SEF-and-url-rewriting/list-of-available-plugins.html). It is also a security component and manages title and meta tags : automatic tags, or manual for every page. It works with or without .htaccess file. Fully Joomfish compatible. Caching system for high speed and very small DB queries overhead. Support many components natively but uses also sef_ext from OpenSEF/SEF Advanced. VirtueMart, Fireboard, Community Builder, mosetsTree, HotProperty, Sobi2, Docman, myBlog, iJoomla Magazine,News Portal, Remository and more supported natively. SSL switch, automatic 301 redirection from non-sef to sef and from Joomla SEF to sh404SEF, insert Google news style numerical ID,.. Many backend parameters to control URL construction behavior.

4. JoomlaPack JoomlaPack is an open-source backup component for the Joomla! CMS, quite a bit different than its competition. Its mission is simple: create a site backup that can be restored on any Joomla!-capable server. It creates a full backup of your site in a single ZIP archive. The archive contains all the files, a database snapshot and an installer derived from the standard Joomla! installer. The backup and restore process is AJAX powered to avoid server timeouts, even with huge sites. Alternatively, you can make a backup of only your database. If you want a reliable, easy to use, open source backup solution for your Joomla! site

5. VirtueMart The complete e-Commerce shopping cart solution for Joomla! – used by thousands of store owners. It can be run in Store- and Catalog-Mode. With its powerful Administration Tool you can handle an unlimited Number of Categories, Products, Orders, Discounts, Shopper Groups and Customers.

6. JEvents                     This project brings the well known and loved Events Calendar to Joomla. JEvents consists of a Joomfish compatible Joomla component and a number of modules and mambots. Component * One-off Events and complex repeating patterns of events can be created and viewed in an attractive calendar and a variety of list formats. * Events can be categorised and calendar views can be customised to show all or some of these categories Modules * Mini-calendar module (events_cal) which gives a quick overview of events which can be placed on any page * Latest events modue (events_latest) which gives a highly configurable summary of upcoming events * Events legend (events_legend) – displayed alongside the component gives you a summary of event categories and an easy way to limit the events shown to specific categories Mambots/Plugin * A search mambot/plugin that enables the global Joomla search to return results from the events calendar * Post event report feedback that allows event reports or photo gallery links to be shown in the event detail after a set date

7. AllVideos                 AllVideos (by JoomlaWorks) is truely the all-in-one media management solution for Joomla!. You can use the plugin to easily embed videos hosted on popular services like YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo (and many more) inside your Joomla! articles (content items). Additionally, it allows you to playback almost any video/audio filetype directly from your server or a remote server, giving you the competitive edge when it comes to rich media content.

8. Joom!Fish               The Joom!Fish project is your add-on for managing multilingual content within the content management system Joomla!. The project, which was formally known as MambelFish is rewritten and enhanced in order to be compatible with the new versions of the Joomla! project. The Joom!Fish is an add-on component for Joomla! which allows you to maintain and organize your manual translated content in your Joomla! database. Check out our website for more details about the features and possibilities. The new version Joom!Fish 2.0 incorporate natively with Joomla! 1.5 and allows you to manage your translations now also within the new Joomla! Framework.

9. FireBoard Forum FireBoard is fully integrated forum solution for Joomla!/Mambo which requires no bridges or hacking core files. It can be easily installed like any other component. note:FireBoard is compatible with joomla 1.5 in legacy mode.

10. JoomlaXplorer joomlaXplorer is a File- and FTP – Manager. It allows you to edit files, delete, copy, rename, archive and unpack files/directories directly on your server. You can – Browse Directories & Files – Edit, Copy, Move and Delete files – Search, Upload and Downloading files – Create new files and directories – Change file permissions (chmod) and much more This script is based on QuiXplorer 2.3.1

from,

hiren

Tags: all videos, extentions, jomla, top10
Posted in joomla, php development, web development | Comments Off