Articles - Page 148

The Top 10 AI Tools for Small Business: From Automation to a Coordinated Team of AI Agents

matt-garrepy

User experience is one of the most important parts of website development processes. Website owners should place a particular emphasis on the perfect user experience because today it is a huge trend.
According to <a href="https://experiencematters.blog/2014/01/31/data-snapshot-cx-expectations-and-plans-for-2014/">statistics</a>, 84% of companies expect to increase their focus on customer experience measurement and metrics.
A great user experience is what draws your visitors in and compels them to stay on your website longer. However, if a website is difficult to use and people can’t find any information, they will leave.
61% of users <a href="http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com.by/2012/09/mobile-friendly-sites-turn-visitors.html">say</a> that if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, they’d quickly move on to another one.
If you want to create a website with the perfect interactive elements to provide a great user experience on Drupal, but you feel that the platform itself doesn’t give you enough space for creativity, integrate it with Angular.
Let’s find out why these frameworks are a good option.
<h2>What is Drupal 8 and What are Its Benefits?</h2>
Drupal is a <a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal">popular</a> open-source website development platform which simplifies the online management of content and users. It's used to make many of the websites and applications we use every day. It has great standard features, like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security.
Due to its powerful functionality, Drupal provides excellent opportunities for the development of complex websites.

Within 90 days of the <a href="http://buytaert.net/drupal-8-0-0-released">release of Drupal 8.0.0</a>, the new version outpaced Drupal 7 by more than 200%.
Drupal was released under the GNU General Public License, which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License">guarantees</a> end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software.
Thus, Drupal is free to download from Drupal.org. Anyone can modify and extend the platform by adding various extensions, plugins and integrating frameworks, for example, Angular.
Drupal has more than 2,000 free design templates and more than 34,000 free plugins.
Drupal has the following benefits:
<ul>
<li></li>
<li></li>
<li></li>
<li></li>
<li></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
1. Technically Advanced. Drupal is one the most technically advanced content management systems. Being one of the most powerful tools, it requires some expertise and experience to operate.
</li>
<li>
2. High Performance. Drupal pages load quickly and have fast response time. It is less resource-intensive and requires a less expensive server or hosting setup.
</li>
<li>
3. Customizable. Drupal is highly customizable. The platform may be integrated with many widely available plug-ins, themes and other configurable options to choose from. You can also edit the root files and code directly. Drupal is perfect for those developers who want to make more significant changes and customize the platform the way they want.
</li>
<li>
4. Free of charge. Anyone can download the Drupal software for free on Drupal.org, and install it on a hosting server.
</li>
<li>
5. Flexible Сontent Delivery. Drupal is known for its ability to tag, categorize, and organize complex content.
</li>
</ul>
Drupal is best for complex, advanced, and flexible websites that require complex data organization in addition to online stores for community platform websites with multiple users and. All of these benefits sustain Drupal and help the platform remain highly competitive.
<h2>Which Sites Can be Created on Drupal?</h2>
Drupal.org <a href="https://www.drupal.org/about">writes</a> that Drupal platform is suitable for any type of website creation.
It is ideal for community web portals, personal websites or blogs, E-commerce applications, social networking websites, games and entertainment websites and many more.
Awwwards <a href="https://www.awwwards.com/websites/drupal/">gathered</a> the best websites examples of Drupal designs.

An Italian restaurant website which is designed in a scrolling manner.
www.ristorantesangenesio.com

A website of a Swiss watch company with background videos
www.girard-perregaux.com
<h2>What is Angular 2 and What are Its Benefits?</h2>
Angular is a JavaScript framework that helps developers build applications. AngularJS was developed to make applications more interactive for the end user.
It was designed to overcome the limitations of HTML. Its library provides a number of features that make it trivial to implement the complex requirements of modern applications, such as data binding, routing, and animations.
Angular 2 is not an upgrade version of Angular 1, it is a complete rewrite of AngularJS.
Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_(application_platform)">says</a>:
“Angular (commonly referred to as “Angular 2+” or “Angular 2″) is a TypeScript-based open-source front-end web application platform led by the Angular Team at Google and by a community of individuals and corporations to address all of the parts of the developer's workflow while building complex web applications. Angular is a complete rewrite from the same team that built AngularJS.”
With the help of Angular 2, you may design applications that present data and manipulate it and make lists of names and data.
Angular 2 also gives you a possibility to store products and design dynamic widgets, control smart forms and create miscellaneous interactive elements.
<h2>Angular 2 has the following benefits:</h2>
<ul>
<li>
Simplicity. Angular 2 framework is considered to be simpler than Angular 1 as it has fewer concepts, making it easier to understand.
The developers who designed Angular 2 took all of the feedback regarding Angular JS and applied it allowing them to produce a development product that was simpler to understand.
Angular 2 is a more streamlined framework. It allows developers to focus on building JavaScript classes.
It also provides a much richer development ecosystem. There you can also notice a sophisticated improvements with text editors or IDE’s auto-completion. With Angular 2 it is easier for developers to write more generic JavaScript, and plug it into Angular.
</li>
<li>
Mobile Orientation and Performance. Mobile optimization trends allowed developers to create a ground-up redesign of Angular and make the framework more suitable for mobile optimized websites and applications development.

smartinsights.com
Angular 2 is designed for development of mobile applications. It is optimized for memory efficiency. It has first-class support for touch events and gestures that work across all devices.
The goal of this framework is to consolidate development. It allows developers to take one framework and use it for the development of various applications.This makes development with NativeScript, for example, easier. As you can use the same framework to build native applications.
All the benchmarks that the Angular team is exercising are public and part of the <a href="https://github.com/angular/angular/tree/master/modules/benchmarks">GitHub repo</a>, so anyone can look at them and even run them locally.
</li>
<li>
Project Architecture and Maintenance. A GitHub contributor writes that the removal of minification workarounds and rigid prescriptions make maintaining existing applications at Angular 2 simpler.
The new module system also makes it easier to develop effective tooling that can better reason on larger projects.
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Examples of Angular 2 Applications</h2>
You can see some examples of using Angular 2 on <a href="http://angularexpo.com">angularexpo.com</a>.

lbd-pro-angular2.creative-tim.com

A Rhythm Sequencer Made with Angular 2 and TypeScript.
http://www.joeyfarina.com
<h2>Where Can Angular 2 be Used with Drupal?</h2>
In different types of live weather widgets, live update widgets, and various real-time tracking systems.
For example, <a href="https://www.wunderground.com/">wunderground.com</a> has such a weather widget:

In web shops and web carts, where you can get the price in real-time after setting product parameters and automatic calculations.
In various types of listings, e.g. news listings, person databases, and ticket systems.
Within smart forms that calculate some values and update in real-time without having to reload the page.
<h2>Wrapping Up</h2>
Angular is a JavaScript framework that helps developers build applications. Angular 2 is a complete rewrite of Angular. It is a new progressive framework which gives many opportunities to create a miscellaneous applications on a Drupal platform.
With Angular 2 you may create smart forms, different types of listings, online updating widgets and many other things.
The major benefits of Angular are its simplicity, mobile orientation, performance, and its architecture and maintenance.
Angular 2 can be easily integrated into your Drupal platform. This integration will provide you with the high speed of websites operation and the perfect user experience.

When Angular 2 Meets Drupal: Building Web Applications with Progressive Frameworks

mike-johnston

As I'm sure you already know, given the amount of coverage in the media about this story, Yahoo has purchased the extremely popular microblogging platform, Tumblr for $1.1 Billion dollars.
Given Yahoo's rather checkered past, what do you make of this purchase? How do you think it's going to affect Tumblr as a platform? What do you think it will do to Tumblr's “cool factor”?
Yahoo hasn't had the best luck with acquisitions. It picked up Delicious and basically destroyed the popular bookmarking platform. Sure, it still exists and is used but it's a shell of its former self. The same applies to the former web darling, Flickr.
Adding fuel to the fire, WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg has <a href="http://ma.tt/2013/05/yahooblr/" target="_blank">pointed out</a> on his personal blog that they've seen a huge number of people jumping ship from Tumblr to WordPress.com
<blockquote>
Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000
</blockquote>
Now, having said that, this is really a drop in the bucket to Tumblr who boasts a huge 109.5 million blogs on the platform but if the migration keeps up (and I'm sure we'll find out soon enough if it does) then this could be a sign of bad things coming.
Personally, I'd like to see Yahoo! pull this one off correctly. As long as they keep their horrible Yahoo! sign in away from Tumblr and don't try messing with the serving of ads on the platform, Tumblr could very well benefit from this arrangement.
I think, however, that the reason people are jumping ship is because normally when acquisitions like this occur, it's only a matter of time before the services fades away (take Posterous for example)
That's my opinion on the matter. What's yours?

What do you make of Yahoo's purchase of Tumblr?

<a href="https://umbraco.com/">Umbraco</a> today launched Umbraco 8,  the most advanced and easiest to use version of the flexible and full-featured open-source content management system (CMS) running more than 500,000 live websites. Building on its reputation as the “friendly CMS,”  Umbraco 8 makes it even easier for companies of any size to create and deliver relevant, compelling and personalized content—in any language—to engage and convert customers across websites, mobile apps, and other digital initiatives.
Umbraco 8, built on the Microsoft .Net platform, now includes several industry-first features and functionalities focused on simplicity, stability, and usability:
<ul>
<li>Language Variants—allows variants of the same content in one project, greatly reducing the complexity of managing multilingual content, without needing development to get similar capabilities.</li>
<li>Infinite Editing—enables editors to seamlessly move back and forth between different parts of the website, supporting modern content creation without compromising workflow</li>
<li>Content Apps—offers easy access to “best of breed” third-party applications for additional functionality as well as new content-aware features that gives end-users an entirely new way to extend, learn, evaluate, and as a result, improve their content.</li>
</ul>
“Content is still king, and these new features in Umbraco 8 help support the creation of compelling and highly effective content that will reach all key audiences without the technology getting in the way,”
said Niels Hartvig, Umbraco’s founder and chief unicorn. “With Umbraco 8, creating multilingual sites is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons. Editors can seamlessly move through a jungle of content. And content creators can get valuable insights into which content is having the most impact, and why, so they can produce what will more effectively generate what we all want from a website—more sales.”
The “Next Level” of Umbraco Arrives
According to Scandia CEO and founder Nik Wahlberg, a long-time gold partner and Umbraco user, “Umbraco has always been more than just a CMS, but this release takes the powerful application development platform to the next level entirely.”
“With Umbraco 8, our clients now gain a slew of modern and much-anticipated features, from content variations for multilingualization and personalization to best of breed apps and a streamlined user experience,” Wahlberg added. “With Umbraco Headless following shortly to serve both our Web and mobile initiatives, both Umbraco and our clients in financial services and identity protection look forward to Umbraco's steady growth.”
<a href="https://www.marceldigital.com/">Marcel Digital</a>, a Chicago-based digital agency and Umbraco gold partner, expects Umbraco 8 to give his clients, and the visitors to their websites, an even greater overall experience. “With Umbraco 8, site owners can give their website visitors a more relevant and personalized browsing experience that generates more website engagement, along with increased sales,” said Patrick Delehanty, marketing manager, Marcel Digital. “In addition, with Infinite Editing, our clients can now edit a page of their website by simply clicking on the content or media and making the changes right there in the window, with the changes immediately effective. It’s a huge time saver.”
Umbraco Awards Nominations Due by March 22
Nominations are open for the 2019 Umbraco Awards, an annual program honoring the best Umbraco projects in 10 categories, including Best Cloud Solution, Best Custom Solution, Best Editing Experience, Best Gold Partner Solution, Best Certified Partner Solution, Best Designed Site, Best New Tech, Package Award, Best Content app (Umbraco 8) and the Jury’s Choice Award. Nominate at<a href="https://codegarden19.com/umbraco-awards-2019/">https://codegarden19.com/umbraco-awards-2019/</a>
Winners will be announced at <a href="https://codegarden19.com/">Codegarden 2019</a> on May 22-24 in Odense, Denmark.
About <a href="http://www.mobile-industrial-robots.com/">Umbraco</a>
Umbraco is an open source CMS built on the Microsoft .NET platform. Often referred to as the “Friendly CMS,” Umbraco gives developers the flexibility and freedom to build website, apps and other solutions with the look and features they want, while enabling editors and content creators to easily and quickly get content in front of their customers as quickly as possible. Created in 2005 by Danish developer Niels Hartvig, Umbraco also offers the Umbraco Cloud, providing all-in-one Azure hosting and predictability in cost, performance and time. More than 500,000 websites run live on UmbracoCMS and the Umbraco Cloud, supported by more than 220,000 very active Umbraco community members.  For more information, visit <a href="http://www.umbraco.com/">www.umbraco.com</a>

Umbraco Launches Version 8 of Open-Source “Friendly CMS”

<a href="http://typo3.org/" target="_blank">TYPO3</a>, the free and open source CMS with a commercial offering, and <a href="https://platform.sh/" target="_blank">Platform.sh</a>, the continuous delivery cloud hosting company, have announced that TYPO3 is available to test on Platform.sh from October 26 2016 onwards. This will give all TYPO3 users full access to Platform.sh’s revolutionary cloud-hosting capabilities.
That means it'll be ready just in time for TYPO3's next conference, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/t3con16-typo3-conference/" target="_blank">T3CON in Munich, 26-27 October</a>. All details of the Tech Preview will be provided in sessions hosted at that event – so attendance is highly encouraged for those who are serious about enhancing their TYPO3 deployments.
<h2>An Integration With Platform.sh: What It Means For TYPO3 Users</h2>
Platform.sh has established itself as the modern, preferred solution for other Composer-based open source systems such as Drupal, Magento, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/ez-systems-partners-with-platform.sh-to-accelerate-development-of-content-rich-websites-and-applications/" target="_blank">eZ Platform</a>, Sulu, and Symfony.
Platform.sh brings a range of benefits to TYPO3 users. For example:
<ul>
<li>Complete build and deployment management for Composer-based applications</li>
<li>Full management of key services such as MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Solr, ElasticSearch</li>
<li>Eliminates DevOps overhead by providing a complete copy of the application for every Git branch</li>
<li>Flexible deployment targets around the world including the Azure sovereign German cloud</li>
<li>Strong partners with Symfony and Blackfire.io</li>
<li>Application can scale from minimally resourced development environments to deployments with hundreds of CPUs and GB of RAM.</li>
</ul>
According to the official press release, this collaboration between TYPO3 and Platform.sh is a further move towards standardization in best practices around modern orchestration and deployment.
As the news broke, TYPO3 GmbH's CEO, Mathias Schreiber, made the following comment:
<blockquote>
“We’ve followed developments in Cloud hosting and PaaS solutions closely, and Platform.sh immediately impressed us with its simplicity, flexibility and dedication to the developer’s needs.”
</blockquote>
Olivier Dobberkau, President of the TYPO3 Association added:
<blockquote>
“Aside from its intrinsic technical advantages, Platform.sh also fits the bill in delivering the mission critical cloud hosting that TYPO3’s Enterprise user base is looking for. By partnering with Microsoft for hosting in international Azure datacenters and Microsoft Cloud Germany, Platform.sh can offer sovereign, compliant and secure production hosting to TYPO3 users worldwide”.
</blockquote>
Platform.sh also chimed in via their Regional Manager DACH, Andrew Melck:
<blockquote>
“TYPO3 is the dominant Open Source CMS in Germany and much of central Europe, so we’re very excited to be working together with the team to accelerate cloud adoption among TYPO3’s massive user base.”
</blockquote>
<h2>An Early Look at TYPO3 8 LTS (April 2017)</h2>
On its way to the release of the next full version of TYPO3, the core team has examined current best practices and identified key cloud functionalities. The tech preview offers an early view of the new features, ahead of the release of TYPO3 8 LTS in April 2017.
To try out the new features for yourself, simply visit https://typo3.org/platform or visit <a href="https://platform.sh/" target="_blank">https://platform.sh</a> from October 26th 2016.

TYPO3 and Platform.sh Announce 'Strategic Integration' Ahead of T3CON in Munich

If blogging is your profession, you need to build yourself a personal blog. A blog which you update on topics which are important to you, or perhaps on topics which you wish to write about for clients. However, not only does your blog need to look good, but it also needs to work well for you when you’re typing up content and it needs to work well for your visitors when they eventually read through it.
This then begs the following question, “Which content management system (CMS) is best for blogging?”
Here are my top picks.
<h2><a href="https://wordpress.org/" target="_blank">WordPress (Self Hosted)</a></h2>
Most bloggers do so from a WordPress-powered website.. There’s a good reason for that.
WordPress is quick to set up (especially when using <a href="http://bit.ly/cc-godaddy" target="_blank">GoDaddy</a>), allows you to manage content and digital assets easily, and has a pretty simple admin panel to boot. The learning curve is there, but it’s relatively minimal.
However, the main benefits of WordPress lie in its flexibility. Because it is the most popular CMS in the world, you will find thousands upon thousands of templates and plugins to make your blog look and feel unique. Many WordPress plugins can also be used to extend WordPress' functionality, allowing you to create online stores, communities, and so forth. There's almost nothing it can't do.
Does this mean it's the best blogging platform? Not at all. Some blogs end up overloaded with plugins, bloat and unnecessary addons that are unnecessary and one thing WordPress has started doing is trying too hard to be a full scale CMS. As such, it's virtually impossible to use it without any plugins (none of which are vetted by WordPress themselves) therefore, for those wanting a simple blogging platform that works well and doesn't require tons of plugins to get things done, it's not the best choice. (<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wordpress-joomla-and-drupal-are-not-the-best-cms/">learn more about these issues here</a>)
<h2><a href="https://ghost.org/" target="_blank">Ghost</a></h2>
Launched in in late 2013, Ghost is designed with one purpose in mind; to be the best blogging platform out there and it does this well. So well in fact, that I've switch this very website over to it entirely this year so now CMS Critic is entirely powered by Ghost.
Dedicated to being a platform for bloggers specifically, Ghost has been built around the needs of a wordsmith. The admin panel is nothing less than beautiful. Ghost maintains a deep focus on content creation above anything else. It really is built for blogging.
There are already a fair number of sleek (and free) <a href="http://bit.ly/ghost-templates">Ghost templates</a> on offer and new platform features are released regularly. With time, I can see Ghost becoming a serious player in the blogging world – if it isn't so already. You can opt to either self host Ghost, or make use of their cloud-hosted solution, Ghost Pro.
<h2><a href="http://www.medium.com/">Medium</a></h2>
Medium is a very interesting and unique alternative. What's nice about it is that it is designed to help you find an audience and to help you write better content. With a very simple and easy to use interface, Medium is a pleasure to use and gets rid of distractions such as sidebars, widgets and plugins while focusing on allowing you to share your stories and quips with the world.
Rather than overwhelm you with formatting, Medium offers you just enough to do what you need to do and nothing more. This makes the writing process painless and so distraction free that you'll likely want to write more just so you can use the editor. It truly is a beautiful setup. Furthermore, you don't need to worry about whether your website on Medium is responsive. Everything scales to all devices so you will never need to worry about how it's going to look on your phone or tablet again.
It's also a collaborative tool that lets you share your drafts with others and collaborate with them to produce better content. You can even thank those who helped you proof read or add ideas to your content.
<h2>Weebly</h2>
For those looking for a simple and easy way to launch a blog quickly, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly">Weebly</a> is a great choice given how easy it is to choose a theme and get something up with little to no technical knowledge.
<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/weebly">Weebly</a> offers the ability to expand your blog in the future and incorporates a lot of necessary elements such as analytics, stock photography and a whole lot more. If you need a quick website, Weebly is definitely something to consider.
<h2><a href="https://withknown.com/" target="_blank">Known</a></h2>
Known is a relative newcomer to the blogging sphere. It allows any number of users to post to a shared site with blog posts, status updates, photographs, and more.
Its robust open source framework can be used to build fully-fledged community sites, or a blog for a single user. It's up to you. It's fully responsive and works on any device with ease and is generally quite nice to work with. If you haven't given it a shot, you should (at least to try it out).
<h2><a href="https://write.as/" target="_blank">Write.as</a></h2>
Write.as is an interesting beast. The intent here is not to help you build some elaborate blog but rather to give you a way to quickly get your thoughts down and share them with the world. It offers a very minimalistic writing interface thats sole purpose is to get your content online fast and easily.
Your writing automatically saves as you type. It'll always be waiting, even if you don't “save” before leaving. You can choose to write without a blog or put all of your thoughts together in one place. It's rather cool and worth a look.
<h2><a href="https://postach.io/">Postach.io</a></h2>
Postach.io lets you store your content in either Dropbox or Evernote or both. This lets you choose whichever interface suits you the most (Dropbox files obviously needing to be edited in a text editor and uploaded whereas Evernote has a built in text editor) and work on your content within.
Publishing a post with Evernote is as simple as connecting your account to Postach.io, telling it which notebook in Evernote will contain your posts and then simply writing in that notebook and using the tag “published” when you are done. This tells Postach.io to put the post up on your blog and that's all there is to it. To add images, simply attach them to the note and it will be inserted in your blog post instantly.
The nice part to using the Evernote connection for Postach.io is you can take advantage of the many awesome Evernote apps for mobile devices and tablets that already exist which makes blogging with it a true pleasure.
<h2><a href="http://www.typepad.com/" target="_blank">TypePad</a></h2>
Typepad has been around for a while, and it's a reliable option more than anything else. It's known to be a very secure platform, one that hackers tend to avoid.
It is a hosted solution, comes with integrated analytics, easy design customization features and a relatively small but highly dedicated community. Joining Typepad kind of feels like you joined a writers club, especially since all Typepad blogs have the chance to be featured on the Typepad website. It feels very inclusive and homely.
The downside here is that for its limited functionality, it comes with some fairly heaving pricing. TypePad isn't exactly much of a looker compared to other platforms either
<h2>“But What About MY Favourite CMS?”</h2>
Many of you will now be wondering why I didn’t include the likes of Blogger, Tumblr, Joomla and Drupal somewhere on this list. I can already hear the screeches of, “How are they not even honourably mentioned?!”
The fact is, Blogger and Tumblr aren’t considered robust enough to be worthy of competing with WordPress, Ghost and the rest on a professional scale. If you want to blog about how much you love your kittens, they may be viable options. But I’d never recommend them to serious bloggers.
As for Joomla and Drupal, The former is clunky and not exactly optimized for blogging, whilst the latter is far better suited to large-scale websites. Neither belong on this list, despite having their own uses and strengths.
So, with that being said, I’d recommend sticking to the names listed above. Each one is respected, easy to use, feature rich and optimized for being your blogging playground.

Top 10 CRM Systems

grainne-logue

Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware has been awarded a 2010 Bossie award (Best of Open Source Software) by InfoWorld, in the Applications category. InfoWorld's Best of Open Source Software Awards (aka the Bossies) is chosen annually by Test Center editors and reviewers, and recognize the best open source software for business users.
The editors called Tiki “a powerful, integrated, Web-based application” that can “build and maintain websites, wikis, groupware, CMSes, forums, blogs, and bug trackers, as well as make them multilingual.”
The review continues, citing Tiki's “fine-grained role-based privilege system” as a differentiating factor against classic wiki models, such as MediaWiki. Read the full article on InfoWorld.com (<a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/bossie-awards-2010-the-best-open-source-software-the-year-115" target="_blank">http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/bossie-awards-2010-the-best-open-source-software-the-year-115</a>)
And don't forget to nominate Tiki for the Packt 2010 Open Source Awards! (http://info.tikiwiki.org/article105-Nominate-Tiki-for-the-Packt-2010-Open-Source-Awards)

Tiki Receives Best of Open Source Software Applications Award

Last month, Adobe announced its decision to discontinue the popular website building app Muse. This decision has upset thousands of creatives all over the world and an onset of social media outcry has ensued, with a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/adobe-systems-adobe-do-not-discontinue-muse">petition</a> to reverse the decision.
Adobe is trying to migrate Muse users over to Dreamweaver in the short to medium term, but this move won’t be appreciated by its core users for a number of reasons. For many long-standing Muse users, Dreamweaver just doesn’t stand up to the task of replacing their favorite app and they’re pretty cheesed off at the implication. Well, they’re cheesed off in general. So let’s examine why.
While the news of Adobe’s decision was an unpleasant notification, it came as no surprise to veteran Adobe product users. The impending discontinuation of Muse is the latest in a line of web app obsoletion following the demise of the incredibly popular Macromedia acquisition GoLive in <a href="https://www.macworld.com/article/1133181/golivedead.html">2008</a>. The Muse discontinuation seems to be a hard turn away from WYSIWYG web development, which mirrors what happened with Adobe GoLive when it went the same way.
Muse had initially attracted a lot of users on the back of its simplicity of use as an “InDesign for web development”. When it was initially launched in 2012, Muse was marketed as a program that would allow users to create bespoke, adaptive websites (it added responsive elements in 2015), without having to write a single line of code. Muse later allowed third party plugins to add blogging and eCommerce functionality. The WYSIWYG functionality of Muse allowed designers and other visual creatives to make a step into web development that would have previously required pretty extensive coding knowledge at the very least. This was Adobe’s in-house answer to the DIY website market that demanded ease of use, ease of design, and seamless transition from construction to page. In this regard, it was incredibly successful.
Muse allowed design specialists to bring their designs to life online without the need for specific web development skills and the interface. This was much more intuitive to Muse users than learning how to code in the traditional way. When third party plugins brought blog functionality, eCommerce, animation, social media integration, and other items into Muse’s healthy array of templates and multi-platform functionality, it became a vital part of design-focused agencies and SMBs. This discontinuation hurts these businesses immensely as many of them have built their businesses around Muse’s ease of use.
Is this a move by Adobe to consolidate Dreamweaver as the one stop shop for all aspects of design? It’s hard to say. It could be that Adobe is looking down the track at future web standards and deciding that a WYSIWYG heavy app will be too difficult to maintain. Or it could be that they don’t want to isolate the web development part of their business. It wasn’t too long ago that Muse was being <a href="http://www.developerdrive.com/2011/09/will-muse-kill-the-web-development-industry/">touted as a possible industry killer</a> for back-end web development.
Either way, the fallout from Muse’s discontinuation promises to have a profound effect on the front-end, WYSIWYG, website building market.
<h2>The Great Migration</h2>
Adobe’s discontinuation of Muse isn’t a hard deletion of the app and the company has been very vocal about this. Muse will still be accessible to everyone who currently has it in the CC package but it won’t be updated for bug fixes or to stay in line with new web standards from May 20th, 2019. Any sites built using Muse won’t be deleted if they’re hosted on third party servers but any sites hosted on Business Catalyst (which Adobe allowed for free for short periods of time) will have to be re-published to another hosting platform to remain live after March 26, 2020, when Business Catalyst hosting is no longer available.
In reality, this discontinuation will force a lot of people to migrate their sites and businesses away from Muse. It’s much easier to move a site to a platform that offers similar functionality to Muse than it is to learn CSS or HTML to the level required to sell your services professionally.
The first step here will be platform migration. <a href="https://www.devhub.com/platform-migration">DevHub</a> offers a comprehensive package and this is a vital service if you have multiple sites to migrate to a new server or CMS. The end of Muse will see a large volume of potential users leaving the platform to find sites and programs that mirror what Muse used to do. <a href="https://rallymind.com/">RallyMind</a> is a good option due to our WYSIWYG roots and the “centralized control” function which allows you to manage overall design layout and personalize each of your migrated sites landing page using a Google Sheet.
Adobe’s decision-making in the discontinuation of Muse has certainly <a href="https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2470082">provoked anger amongst users</a> and it will be interesting to see what effect this will have on the company’s position at the top of the food chain in the design world.

The End Of Adobe Muse And What It Means For Users

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The easiest way to translate a website

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<a href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softwareag.com%2Fcorporate%2Fdefault.asp&amp;esheet=51874631&amp;newsitemid=20180928005064&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Software+AG&amp;index=1&amp;md5=d7ab1aa2879952b56fb926f99ec57059" target="_blank">Software AG</a> today announced the acquisition of Built.io, a San Francisco-based market-leading iPaaS company. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Nishant Patel, Neha Sampat and Matthew Baier, software vendor Built.io introduced its iPaaS offering, Built.io Flow™ in 2015. It has subsequently been named a Challenger in Gartner’s 2018 “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service” and was named a Cool Vendor in the report “Cool Vendors in Pervasive Integration, 2016.”<a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180928005064/en/Software-AG-Acquires-Built.io-Accelerate-Leadership-Hybrid#"></a>
Built.io’s Flow and Embed products will come together as a single integrated offering with Software AG’s globally recognized webMethods Integration Platform.
Customers will benefit from easy-to-use and robust integration solutions leading to significantly accelerated time-to-value, critical to the success of IoT and digital transformation solutions.
“The unified vision guiding Built.io Flow was to make it faster and easier to connect any software, system or device,” said Nishant Patel, Chief Executive Officer of Built.io. “Built.io Flow uses a modern architecture to democratize integration and embed it into any product or SaaS service. I am thrilled that Software AG recognized the potential of combining the agility of our cloud-native integration platform with its proven webMethods platform to enable powerful enterprise integration and digital transformation. With our leadership in cloud integration and Software AG’s leadership in digital transformation through enterprise integration, we are jointly able to offer customers the world's most advanced hybrid integration platform.”
The acquisition opens Software AG’s webMethods integration capabilities to any Node.js developer and allows for enterprise-wide participation in integration projects. It also opens Software AG’s application and B2B integration and API portfolios to fast-growing developer communities and a near limitless innovation pool – as seen by participation in the upcoming <a href="http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fevents.linuxfoundation.org%2Fevents%2Fnode-js-interactive-2018%2F&amp;esheet=51874631&amp;newsitemid=20180928005064&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Node%2BJS+Interactive&amp;index=2&amp;md5=54fc77c4f8d2991572b9cbf4f434e067" target="_blank">Node+JS Interactive</a>, the world’s largest gathering of Node.js developers, taking place in Vancouver from October 10-12.
“This is an extremely significant acquisition for Software AG to expand its position in the growing iPaaS market and we are delighted to welcome Built.io to the Software AG Group,” said Dr. Wolfram Jost, Chief Technology Officer at Software AG. “Cloud integration is at the heart of digital transformation with 80 percent of the work in IoT projects related to integration. In a world of decentralized IT architectures based on microservices, APIs and events, integration is the core capability enabling end-to-end processes and improving customer experiences. Speed and flexibility in implementing integration projects are playing an increasingly important role in business success. Broadening developer participation within the enterprise, within departments and within open source communities demonstrates our commitment to fully addressing today’s customer needs.”
Built.io also extends Software AG’s iPaaS offering to the small- and medium-sized business market. Software AG’s webMethods integration Cloud’s focus on enterprise customers is complemented by Built.io’s extensive experience in addressing the SMB market and in empowering line of business users within the modern enterprise.
With Built.io Flow, Software AG can now also deliver industry-leading integration via a completely embedded offering: An elegant, cloud-based integration solution that can be easily incorporated into any SaaS application. This enables end users to quickly integrate third party data from over 300 sources directly into their application, providing meaningful context and powerful insights.

Software AG Acquires Built.io to Accelerate Leadership in Hybrid and Cloud Integration

Soario Inc., developers of Symphony CMS, the popular XSLT-powered open source content management system, today announced the launch of Symphony Cloud Hosting, a new cloud-based offering that makes hosting and evaluating Symphony CMS fast, simple and affordable in the cloud.
Symphony Cloud Hosting, built on technology from Standing Cloud, a leading provider of cloud marketplace and management solutions for cloud providers and ISVs, brings choice, flexibility and easy point-and-click deployment and management to Symphony CMS, delivering single-click managed hosting, provisioning, deployment and management at a simple monthly bundled price.
With Symphony Cloud Hosting, customers can choose the hosting provider, data center and geography of their choice from a wide range of 15+ leading public cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, HP Cloud, Rackspace, VPS.net and more. Symphony CMS deployments hosted through Symphony Cloud Hosting on Standing Cloud are completely portable from cloud-to-cloud, meaning users are never locked in to a single platform or cloud provider. They can quickly add capacity or move to another cloud, and are protected against downtime and service outages.
In addition, Standing Cloud’s built-in automated application lifecycle management features provide easy point-and-click access to a range of automated management services, including 24×7 server monitoring, free back-ups, auto-restore, single-click version and resource upgrades and more.
<blockquote>
“We developed Symphony CMS on the principles of flexibility, openness and simplicity, and Symphony Cloud extends that even further,” said Allen Chang, co-founder and chief architect of Symphony CMS and Soario Inc. “Agencies and developers now have the option of instant hosting and management for their sites on a wide range of reliable clouds, while still ensuring that they'll always have complete control over all aspects of their project.”
“We’re excited to help Soario enable their customers to launch and run fully configured instances of Symphony CMS and the underlying application stack, and manage them directly in the cloud,” said Joni Klippert, Director of Customer Development for Standing Cloud. “By reducing the hassles of downloading software and configuring servers, and adding the choice, flexibility and reliability of multiple clouds, we can help them grow the Symphony CMS customer base among agencies, designers and developers.”
</blockquote>
Symphony Cloud Hosting is available today at http://www.soario.com/hosting/. Users interested in evaluating the solution can get started immediately with a no-cost 24-hour “Test Drive” in the cloud, including a fully configured version of Symphony 2.3.1. Following the free trial, users can seamlessly upgrade to a fully hosted account on any one of Standing Cloud’s 15+ supported cloud providers through Symphony Cloud Hosting.
Standing Cloud is a leading provider of cloud application marketplace and management services. We deliver a seamless application layer for cloud service providers, ISVs and technology solutions providers, making application deployment and management fast, simple and hassle-free for their customers.
Our standard application catalog includes 100 open-source and commercial applications; our platform supports multiple programming languages, including Rails, PHP, Java and Python, and a wide range of cloud service providers and orchestration software systems.
Founded in 2009, Standing Cloud is based in Boulder, Colorado. Investors include Foundry Group and Avalon Ventures. Visit us online at: <a href="http://www.standingcloud.com">www.standingcloud.com</a>
About Symphony CMS
Symphony is a leading open-source, XSLT-based web content management system for agencies, designers and developers. Learn more online at: <a href="http://www.getsymphony.com">www.getsymphony.com</a>.
About Soario
Founded by Allen Chang, chief architect of Symphony CMS, Soario offers CMS products and solutions for small to enterprise websites. The Soario team includes diverse individuals from around the world, each with a unique set of skills. Soario leadership team members have all worked with Symphony in various capacities from agency management to design, development, architecture and project management. Learn more online at: www.soario.com

Soario Launches Hosted Symphony CMS Cloud Offering Powered by Standing Cloud

It would appear that the cows have come home: in a surprising move, Sitecore yesterday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire <a href="https://moosend.com/">Moosend</a>, an e-mail marketing automation and campaign management platform used by a diverse set of customers. This includes leading brands such as Domino’s, Interpublic Group, and Sephora, among others. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of May. 
“Moosend perfectly complements Sitecore’s industry-leading core offering to create a personalization powerhouse for modern enterprises," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzikakis/" target="_blank">Steve Tzikakis</a>, the CEO of Sitecore. "Moosend’s state-of-the-art marketing automation and AI-powered customer engagement features will streamline Sitecore’s ability to engage, nurture, and convert customer relationships to deliver personalized experiences across every channel. The combined offering will make it easier for marketers to deploy and measure campaigns and automate workflows across the entire customer journey – a game-changer for <a href="https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/responsible-marketing-with-first-party-data" target="_blank">the majority</a> of brands not yet set up for lifecycle marketing.” 
Acquisitions have become almost commonplace among the leaders in the CMS and DXP categories, particularly with solutions that expand a platform's capabilities around data. According to Sitecore, this move was driven by the ongoing shifts in data-driven personalization – and the risks and challenges posed by privacy. While data is essential to personalization, there are mounting concerns around privacy due to breaches caused by problematic data collection methods. This, along with other factors, have businesses questioning the value of personalization at scale. 
In fact, back in 2019, Gartner <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-12-02-gartner-predicts-80--of-marketers-will-abandon-person" target="_blank">predicted</a> that 80% of marketers would abandon personalization efforts by 2025 due to the increased complexity and a lack of consumer trust. It was a gloomy outlook for both marketers and technology vendors, but clearly on point in a world of scaling data privacy governance. 
Consumers are often unaware of how and when their data is being collected and where it is used. They’re also experiencing overload from increasingly cluttered inboxes and mobile notifications, causing them to ignore even the most carefully customized message. The resulting conundrum has left CMS and DXP platforms struggling with how to serve personalized experiences while meeting the consumer expectation of privacy and trust across multiple dimensions. 
“It’s a paradox of modern times," said Tzikakis. "Consumers expect brands to cater to them as unique individuals, providing a consistent experience everywhere and rewarding loyalty in deeper ways; at the same time, they want privacy first – more control over data, less confusion on how it’s used, and an end to creepy targeting and algorithmically garbled messaging that only a bot would love.” 
Recognizing the depth of the privacy problem, Sitecore aims to facilitate both the modern art and science of earning customer relationships through experiences – to make consenting to data-sharing an afterthought. If they can deliver on this vision, they may have a significant advantage in shaping the future of the industry.
The acquisition of Moosend is just the latest move in Sitecore’s ambitious $1.2 billion growth plan. In a highly publicized purchase less than two months ago, the DXP leader <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sitecore-acquires-boxever-and-four51/" target="_blank">acquired</a> two companies on the same day: Boxever, a SaaS-based Customer Data Platform (CDP) providing decisioning and experimentation, and Four51 – a digital commerce pioneer that powers custom, highly scalable e-commerce B2B marketplace solutions. With the addition of Moosend, it appears that Sitecore has amassed everything it needs to deliver a complete, end-to-end SaaS-based digital experience platform – and elevate their competitive posture. 
<h3>About Sitecore</h3>
Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform that empowers the world’s smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers. A highly decorated industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Carnival Cruise Lines, Kimberly-Clark, L’Oréal, and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalized experiences for their customers. Learn more at <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore.com</a>.

Sitecore Acquires Moosend, Adds AI-Powered Email Marketing Automation

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Apps are the new black. Everyone wants their own. From Mom &amp; Pop shops to blue chip corporations, companies are scrambling to get their brand, product, or service in the app store. If you don't have an app, you might feel kind of lonely. Many developers, who spend their days managing a CMS or developing sites may consider the app market as the new gold country. Is this where you should be digging for gold? Is it time to pack up and move to mobile country?

<h2>The App Question</h2>
Before you rush into the app frenzy, stop and think. Do you need an app? Should you build one? What is the ROI from building an app?
Apps cost money to create. Plus, they have a subtle impact upon your brand. They can either erode your brand integrity or they can build a stronger brand presence and more loyal customer base. An app can frustrate users, or it can be a huge crowd-pleaser. An app can either drive conversions or it can slow conversions. Before you decide to build an app, you need to have an overall mobile strategy.
<h2>The Mobile Imperative</h2>
You probably already know that mobile is huge. You might even be reading this article on a mobile device. Every company with an online presence — which is basically every company by now — needs to have a mobile strategy. That mobile strategy is going to look different for every single company.
Here's the thing to remember about a mobile strategy. As Google's Mobile Playbook explains, having a mobile strategy does not mean having an app. You can have a robust presence on mobile without investing the time and resources into creating an app. Using a website with responsive design, for example, is often a more cost-effective and reasonable solution for many companies.
<h2>What is an app for?</h2>
What's the whole purpose behind an app? There are two broad potential purposes:
1.  Entertainment:  E.g., Pandora, Angry Birds, Kindle, Words With Friends, Instagram, Zombie Apocalypse
Game apps are great. As I write, I have two Words with Friends games going on. (I'm losing both games.) Are you a mobile game maker? Is your company name Zynga? If so, then entertainment apps are perfect for you. If, on the other hand, your company is not in the mobile gaming industry, this is probably not a great option. Some companies, however, have chosen such a strategy.
F'or example, Capri Sun created an iPad game. I downloaded it for my toddler daughter to play. The game consisted of trying to score points by throwing a beach ball into a goal defended by a dolphin. You can also make the dolphin do tricks. It was cute. My daughter played it a few times.
I don't think we've drunk Capri Sun since downloading the app three years ago.
2.  Utility or Information:  Docs to Go, Evernote, CNN, Dropbox, Flashlight, Maps, Weather
If you see someone busy on their mobile device, chances are, they're playing a game or surfing Facebook. If they aren't, they might actually be working, catching up on the news. or emailing a colleague. Useful tools comprise a vast number of apps. Many companies who create traditional software tools have also created useful mobile versions of their software. For example, Evernote users may use the robust desktop version, an equally powerful online version, or a scaled down Evernote for their Android or iPad mini. Most companies, however, are not in position to profit from a new utility app.
<h2>An App that Promotes Your Brand</h2>
One website with an obviously older article discusses apps for “promotional purposes.” The article seems to indicate that promotional apps are a great idea. It can “enhance your status and stand out of other competitors [sic].”
Are brand promoting apps a good idea? It all depends.
Obviously, the Capri Sun app, mentioned above, is promoting its brand. It's probably not trying to become another Zynga. What about Coca-Cola? They have an app, several actually. One of their apps allows you to play games. Another Coca-Cola app allows users to view the history of the Coca-Cola product and brand. Starbucks has created an app that allows users to make purchases, earn stars, create custom drinks, and even get free music. It's like a loyalty card, only it's an interactive app.
Perhaps the overarching reason why a company would create an app — be it an app for utility or entertainment — is to promote their brand. Is this a good idea for your company? Are people going to download an app you made in order to play with a dolphin or read about your brand's history? Do you have an international chain of coffee shops where people can use your app to make purchases? Maybe, but probably not.
<h2>Making a Decision</h2>
Though the siren call of apps is strong, the numbers tell a different story:*
<ul>
<li>73% of mobile users would rather use a mobile website to do shopping, rather than an app. </li>
<li>60% of mobile users prefer entertainment via their browser rather than an app.</li>
</ul>
(Stats taken from http://mashable.com/2012/06/06/mobile-site-mobile-app-infographic/)
There are plenty of good reasons to build an app. App users are generally more engaged with your brand. Besides, apps provide a greater level of interactivity and functionality. As the mobile browsing experience matures, however, there is less and less driving motivation to build an app.
You're out to make an impact, not waste money on a dud. Before you move forward with your awesome app idea, stop and think for a moment. Apps have had their heyday.  Your answer to the app question may be instead to focus your development on responsive design and mobile customization rather than app building.

Should You Build an App?

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SDL,  the leading provider of Global Information Management solutions, today announced the launch of SDL BeGlobal™. SDL BeGlobal delivers a central cloud platform to easily manage and deliver real-time automated translation for multilingual interactions across all forms of corporate communications. Combined with SDL TrustScore™, which enables content owners to publish content in any language with confidence, SDL BeGlobal allows monolingual content managers and business users to easily communicate with their global customers.
With 82 percent of customers severing ties with a company due to a negative experience, today’s customers have higher expectations than ever before (study conducted by Harris Interactive, 2010). In addition to receiving great customer service, customers expect more online and social interactions in their native language.  When it comes to online engagement, only 10 percent of web users that do not speak English will make purchases or engage with sites that are primarily in English (Common Sense Advisory, “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy”). These two key dynamics require companies to be able to communicate with their customers across languages and channels in a trusted, cost-effective way.
“Historically, content translation has been limited by budget and access to professional translation staff,” said Mark Tapling, CEO of SDL Language Technologies. “With constantly growing customer demands, businesses dd flexible alternatives to enable them to translate new types of content. SDL BeGlobal, coupled with new features such as Touchpoints, SDL TrustScore and brand and terminology management, empowers business users to have unprecedented control over multilingual assets in order to meet these well qualified customer needs.”

Through an easy-to-use web-based portal, SDL BeGlobal instantly enables users to manage global, trusted communications with customers in real-time, through one central interface for multiple types of content, communication and social media. SDL BeGlobal is an intuitive cloud platform that can turn any business user into a multilingual publisher, delivering content faster than ever before.
“Global enterprises face tremendous pressure to address the language challenges at the intersection of customer experience and the need for immediacy ,” said Mary Laplante, Vice President and Senior Analyst at Gilbane Group, a Division of Outsell, Inc. “Customers expect real-time content seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, in their language. SDL BeGlobal is a timely market response to the growing demand for solutions that address these challenges. It offers game-changing capabilities for companies that want to bring user-generated content into broader strategies and practices for managing multilingual content.”
“For the first time, here is a product on the market that business users can access to allow them to communicate across languages.  SDL BeGlobal brings powerful, proven automated translation into a secure, easy-to-use cloud platform, with nothing to install,” said Swamy Viswanathan, vice president of products and marketing for SDL Language Weaver. “Through the innovative TouchPoint feature, a single user can determine what they want to translate, the languages and quality required, and the destination of the translated content.  All of this can now be done at a cost not previously attainable.”
“This new platform is pre-integrated with existing Global Information Management solutions from SDL, so current customers can leverage work done in other SDL applications to extend their brand communication across more types of content,” said Mark Lancaster, CEO of the SDL Group. “SDL BeGlobal represents a key part of the Global Information Management solution offered by SDL.”
For more information on SDL BeGlobal, please join one of our upcoming webinars
<a href="http://www.sdl.com/en/language-technology/news-and-events/sdl-events/emea/2010q4/2010-11-10-introducing-sdl-beglobal.asp">Click here</a> to register for the event taking place on Wednesday, November 10 at 16:00 CET. 
<a href="http://www.sdl.com/en/language-technology/news-and-events/sdl-events/nasa/2010/2010-11-18-introducing-sdl-beglobal.asp">Click here</a> to register for the event taking place on Thursday, November 18 at 09:00 PST.
<h4>About SDL</h4>
SDL is the leader in Global Information Management solutions. SDL’s solutions increase business agility to enterprises by accelerating the delivery of high-quality multilingual content to global markets. The company’s integrated Web Content Management, eCommerce, Structured Content and Language Technologies, combined with its Language Services drive down the cost of content creation, management, translation and publishing. SDL solutions increase conversion ratios and customer satisfaction through targeted information that reaches multiple audiences around the world through different channels.
Global industry leaders who rely on SDL include ABN-Amro, Bosch, Canon, CNH, FICO, Hewlett-Packard, KLM, Microsoft, NetApp, Philips, SAP, Sony and Virgin Atlantic. SDL has over 1500 enterprise customers, has deployed over 170,000 software licenses and provides access to on-demand portals for 10 million customers per month. It has a global infrastructure of more than 60 offices in 35 countries. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.sdl.com/" target="_BLANK">www.sdl.com</a>.

SDL Unveils Cloud Platform For Real-Time Automated Translation

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Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

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