Articles - Page 161

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

In keeping with <a href="/kentico-8-2-release-date-set/">Kentico's announcement last year</a> pointing to an early 2015 release, Kentico 8.2 has now officially arrived.With its headquarters in the Czech Republic, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.kentico.com/">Kentico</a> is a respected Enterprise Web Content Management System and Customer Experience Management solution, available on-premise or via the cloud. Founded in 2004, Kentico offers solutions for website building, intranets, community sites, and e-commerce websites.<a href="/kentico-8-1-release-date-revealed/">Kentico 8.1 was recently released</a> back in August 2014, and that version brought about its own set of features, including SharePoint integration and social marketing improvements. Kentico 8.2 has built upon those marketing features somewhat.<h2>Kentico 8.2 Enhances eCommerce, Marketing &amp; Collaboration</h2>Kentico 8.2 allows marketers to quickly deliver the right marketing message, at the right time, via the right digital channel. Here's an overview of what's new.Bi-Directional SharePoint Synchronization: Kentico’s new SharePoint Integration module streamlines collaboration while facilitating better file sharing. Kentico’s new bi-directional SharePoint synchronization feature means that all changes made in Kentico will be made automatically on the SharePoint server. So, your files are always up to date, and everyone has the latest versions.Easy Shipping Calculations: With shipping costs affected by order value, size, weight, geography, shipping provider, and customer, providing shipping discounts and free delivery to certain customers can be difficult to calculate. One-size-fits-all solutions are not for everybody, so Kentico has made it easy to create a shipping module that presents all the tools you need to calculate shipping costs in your own custom user interface.Enhanced Contact Management: The newly introduced Kentico Contact Management module provides a 360-degree view of all your website visitors and customers as well as their behavior across all channels and devices. If you are using multiple tools to manage your leads, contacts and recipients, it can be a headache to sync them, import them and reuse them across all the platforms in use. With Kentico 8.2, you can easily import Contacts from a CSV file, segment them, and leverage them in the system.Upon the release of version 8.2, Kentico's CEO and Founder Petr Palas made the following comments.<blockquote>“With the new features contained in Kentico 8.2, we continue to show we not only listen to our customers, we respond to their needs.We are constantly working to enhance our product to bring our customers the easy-to-use and affordable set of tools they need to launch and manage integrated digital marketing activities that are highly personalized, dynamic, and effective.”</blockquote>To find out more about Kentico, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.kentico.com/">visit their website</a>, or check out their <a target="_blank" href="http://www.kentico.com/Company/Press-Center/2014/Kentico-8-2-Features-New-Collaboration-and-Ecommer">Kentico 8.2 announcement</a>.Plus, you can explore more of <a href="/products/kentico/">Kentico via our CMS Directory</a>.

Kentico 8.2 Released With eCommerce & Marketing Improvements

mike-johnston

If you aren't used to using an open source CMS, then you may have fallen victim to several popular myths. Even those who are familiar with the open source environment believe some of these myths. For both avid open source users and proprietary CMS users, we offer fair warning regarding the four worst myths about open source CMSs. 1.  Open source CMS are much easier to use than proprietary systems.This is sheer myth. The person who declares that open source X is easier than proprietary Y in has a lot of explaining to do. We need a more detailed explanation in order to make “easier” or “harder” comparisons. There are tons of open source CMSs, untold numbers of proprietaries, a million or so hybrids, and an infinite number of “easy” or “hard” things that you can do with them. This sweeping “easier” declaration is firmly founded upon the speaker's lack of knowledge regarding his or her subject matter.Perhaps the real downer to a statement like this is its ramifications. Believing that one CMS is “easier” than another may contribute to further mistakes.<ul><li>It may cause a business to choose said open source CMS without being prepared for the learning curve.</li><li>It may lead to a business being shorthanded on developers or IT, once they discover that it takes more than just someone handy with Microsoft Word to run the thing.</li><li>It mistakenly leads some to conclude that “easier” means “cheaper” in terms of talent acquisition and/or training.</li></ul>On the flip side, it's dangerous to think that proprietary systems are easier. Before we talk about easy or hard, let's just make sure we're making it really clear what we're talking about.2.  Open source is free. The fact is, WordPress, Joomla, TYPO3, or Drupal won't ask you to pay for their system. Yes, the system itself is free. But what about everything else? Hosting, design, plugins, themes, extensions, tools, implementation, support, maintenance, adoption costs, programs, designers, developers and whatever else is involved in a CMS are usually not free. The buzzword “free” leads many astray with the assumption that they're getting something for nothing. That's just not how life works, not even in the promised land of open source CMSs. In the end, the total cost of ownership does not necessarily land lower than the TCO of a proprietary system. You're going to pay for something, even if it's not the CMS itself.3.  Open source costs more than proprietary.Some have reversed the above myth (#2) to postulate another myth that is equally untrue. They say, with a glint of disdain in their eye, that open source CMSs actually have more hidden costs than proprietary systems. The furtive word “hidden” likely denotes such things as development, maintenance, etc.Here's the grain of truth in the myth:  Somewhere, in the distant passages of past time, a company did a cost-survey analysis and discovered a proprietary system might actually cost less overall than some open source alternative. Fair enough; end of story.My chief carp against this myth is its lack of legitimate comparison. It is never appropriate to say one type of CMS is superior to/cheaper than/ easier than/ more powerful than another type of CMS. (See myth #1.) There are a bajillion more factors to consider. A better approach is to survey your TCO, and to make no decisions based on that one lonely datapoint — the cost of the CMS itself.4.  There is no training or support if you choose open source. Um, no. Any developer who has spent time honing his open source craft can tell you that this is untrue. Just because some well-funded proprietary CMS hosts an annual conference doesn't mean that the open source users lacks support. Open source users can find online help, forums, paid classes, local meet ups, YouTube how-tos, expensive manuals, more expensive consultants, and whizz-bang contract developers. The support and training are there; they just don't get packaged into some monthly fee along with the CMS itself.A white paper published by a proprietary CMS developer discussed the downside of open source with a teary-eyed tale of someone who had been there, done that with open source:  “As a service provider looking for support for critical applications, I don't want to depend on the equivalent of begging in the street for answers — that is what support is like with open source content management system [CMS]. I want to know that I'll get a real person, whose job is on the line, to help me.”The slant of this statement is evident. We don't know what this gentleman was doing, cryptically referred to as “begging in the street for answers,” but we know that online support manuals, sophisticated training programs, up-to-the-minute forums, and easy Google searches are not begging in the streets. The answers are there; the support for your critical applications is there. You can stay off the streets.Choosing a CMS is an <a href="/contact">important decision</a> — too important to fall prey to these myths. As long as you're doing your homework, comparing CMSs in the right way, and getting a broad survey of CMSs, you'll be fine.

The Four Worst Myths about Open Source CMS

daniel-threlfall

An interesting idea came to fruition from the comments on my popular, <a href="/wordpress-joomla-and-drupal-are-not-the-best-cms/">WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are NOT the Best CMS</a> post.The idea was to pit a number of solutions against one another for a specific use case. I think this is a great idea and I'd like to ask all of you which CMS you'd like me to start the series with?Pitting different content management systems against one another in specific scenarios is a great way to identify the strengths of the various products on the market. Please do not feel restricted to popular products either, the point of the post will be to help identify alternatives.I'd ask that you please leave a comment below with the CMS' you'd like to see pitted against one another and the scenario and I'll choose one to kick off the series with.Thanks for your input!

CMS Wars - Which CMS' Should be First?

It's been a great day for Linux geeks (and those of us with <a href="/the-trials-and-tribulations-of-a-distro-hopper/">distro hopping issues</a>) because Canonical has released Ubuntu 16.10 to the public. This version, dubbed Yakkety Yak, is now available for all to download from the <a target="_blank" href="http://ubuntu.com">Ubuntu website</a>.Ubuntu 16.10 will be supported for 9 months until <a target="_blank" href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases">July 2017</a> therefore if you are looking for an OS with long term support, stick with 16.04 for now. Ubuntu 16.10 brings with it the following improvements / changes:<ul><li>MAAS 2.0 delivers robust, highly-available IPAM and bare-metal provisioning</li><li>Hybrid cloud operations with Juju 2.0</li><li>Developer preview of Unity 8 includes desktop, tablet and phone UX convergence</li><li>OpenStack Newton with secure bare metal performance and containers</li><li>Snapd 2.16 delivers apps to a wide range of Linux servers, devices, and desktops</li><li>More than 500 snaps published, with updates directly to end-users from ISVs</li><li>Performance improvements in network and virtualisation for throughput, latency</li></ul>One of the things that Canonical is touting with this release is a sneak preview session of Unity 8 (available if you log out of the desktop and select it before logging in). I'll be honest though, I personally don't like the way it looks or feels but since it's in the early stages, I'm hoping that changes.Here's a quick video showing off the Unity 8 preview: What do you think? Are you impressed / upset / excited for Unity 8? I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments below.

Ubuntu 16.10 now available to download

This is just a quick thank you post to all of our Movember sponsors for their generous donations. Combined, we were able to raise over $500 for cancer research!We truly appreciate your donations.In addition to our <a href="/movember-update-cms-critic-does-movember/">previous donors </a>, we also have the following to thank:<ul><li><a target="_blank" href="http://www.thexyz.com/">Thexyz</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://revaluate.com/">Revaluate</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://crayon.co">Crayon</a></li></ul>Thanks for supporting us. For those interested in getting in a donation before the period ends, please use this link to do so: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.movember.com/ca/donate/payment/member_id/10406853/">https://www.movember.com/ca/donate/payment/member_id/10406853/</a>

Thank you to our Movember Sponsors!

JahiaOne kicks off tomorrow and to give you some insight into the men behind the vision at Jahia, we've taken the opportunity to sit down with two major players in the executive team.This second interview is with Jahia's Chief Operating Officer, Emmanuel Garcin.With a <a href="/growth-expansion-jahia-receives-22-5-million-round-of-funding/">massive cash injection</a> earlier this year, it seems like Jahia is destined for some pretty substantial growth over the next few years.Tune in to find out how they are making use of this opportunity to steadily and intelligently improve their user experience platform for existing and future customers. To learn more about Jahia, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.jahia.com">visit their website</a> or tune into our <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic">Twitter profile</a> starting tomorrow to see live tweets from the event under the hashtag <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jahiaone&amp;src=typd">#jahiaone</a>.

CMS Critic Interviews Emmanuel Garcin of Jahia ahead of JahiaOne

Jahia has officially announced the release of Jahia Digital Factory 7.1 today. This new release brings with it a host of improvements focused on scalability, stability and performance.According to Jahia CEO, Elie Auvray:<blockquote>“After the introduction of Digital Factory 7.0 last year, our customers and partners showed a huge enthusiasm for the new realm of possibilities it allowed for. As our flagship product becomes everyday the foundations of more and more highly-critical online initiatives – underlining how critical infrastructure UXP now is – this year, we concentrated on further strengthening it. Hence this new version, that will really help our customers expand their online projects safely and with virtually no limit.” says Elie Auvray, CEO of Jahia Solutions Group SA.</blockquote>Digital Factory 7.1 focuses on stability through additional performance enhancements in all areas:<ul><li>The fastest and most reliable “User eXperience Platform”<ul><li>​Performance, stability and scalability now reach new heights with Digital Factory 7.1: browsing and editing operations are faster than ever. The new platform handles twice the load as the previous one with the same configuration, making it Jahia’s fastest and most powerful Digital Factory yet.</li><li>In addition, a new Frontal search engine based on Elasticsearch provides higher scalability without compromising access control or sacrificing publication capabilities.</li></ul></li><li>​Enhanced authoring productivity<ul><li>​Digital Factory authors now leverage a new “Work In Progress” feature that prevents publication mistakes in a far more flexible way than simple content locks but still fully integrated with Digital Factory core capabilities.</li><li>In addition, authors now can publish content in all languages at once with a simple click at a site, page, section or content item level.</li></ul></li><li>​Even more developer agility:<ul><li>​Powerful improvements to Digital Factory’s Rest API allow developers to perform very sophisticated operations and query using the JCR-SQL2 language, thus accelerating, for instance, IoT implementations.</li><li>The new Jahia Studio accelerates development even more: solutions builders can now, for instance, save time by duplicating modules or control dependencies and downloaded sources more tightly.</li></ul></li><li>​Peace of mind for architects and administrators:<ul><li>​Digital Factory now supports Java 8, IBM Websphere 8.5 and JBoss Application Server 7.x and provides the additional flexibility to externalize data and configurations.</li><li>User and Groups service redesign : administrators will now seamlessly manage their preferred authentication providers through a dedicated administration panel, further unifying the Jahia user experience across all products and services and for all audiences.</li><li>Additional enhancements for architects and administrators include new multi-tenancy administration capabilities as well as Jahia instances chaining capabilities, allowing administrators of large Jahia deployments to orchestrate any type of instances (Digital Factory, Workspace Factory, …).</li></ul></li></ul>For more information on Digital Factory, check out the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.jahia.com">Jahia website</a> or watch my recent interviews with Jahia executives, <a href="/cms-critic-interviews-emmanuel-garcin-of-jahia-ahead-of-jahiaone/">Emmanuel Garcin</a> and Christopher Justice.

Jahia Digital Factory 7.1 Release offers more Scalability, Stability and Performance Improvements

Hotjar - Spot what confuses

Spot what confuses your users with Hotjar & AI

#ffffff

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.sitecore.net/">Sitecore</a>, last years winners of the Critics' Choice and People's Choice Awards for <a href="/2013-critics-choice-winner-for-best-enterprise-cms/">Best Enterprise CMS</a>, today announced that MongoDB, the database for modern applications, will power the Sitecore® Experience DatabaseTM, an infinitely scalable experience repository that collects and connects customer data in real-time to provide marketers with a single view of every individual customer that can be actioned in real-time to deliver highly personalized experiences.It’s no secret that marketers are dealing with a deluge of customer information coming from diverse online and offline sources, creating an unwieldy patchwork of customer data for IT to unravel. Sitecore  helps marketers and technologists meet this challenge, providing a “no limits” solution with MongoDB to access, store and analyze customer experience data in real-time that also scales out as customer data grows.Built on MongoDB, and available on premise or in the cloud via Microsoft® Azure®,  the Sitecore Experience Database integrates seamlessly with the Sitecore® Experience PlatformTM, collecting all data from every customer interaction in the moment, and connecting that data to a single-person profile summary, viewable through the Sitecore® Experience ProfileTM. Now, marketers can access a complete view their customer’s entire brand engagement history to understand the experiences that matter most and action these insights in real-time to continually drive highly engaging and relevant experiences.Thousands of organizations use MongoDB for its agile and scalable approach to data management. Common use cases include operational and analytical big data, content management and delivery, mobile and social infrastructure, user data management and data hub.“Marketer’s need to be able to manage a wide variety of ever changing data sources and types as they interact with prospects on their preferred platforms,” said Max Schireson, CEO at MongoDB. “MongoDB enables Sitecore to stand out from the competition, using flexible modern data infrastructure that easily adapts to its customer’s requirements.”“Marketers are eager for an elegant solution that enables a complete picture of each individual customer from deep customer data,” said Gianugo Rabellino, Senior Director of Open Source Communities at Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. “Using MongoDB combined with Sitecore products and Microsoft Azure provides a new level of scalability for real-time customer insights from NoSQL data.  We are excited to build upon a strong partnership with MongoDB and see Sitecore help marketers know every customer and shape experiences in the moment, really improving on customer experience management.”“For the first time, marketers no longer need to limit the volume of data gathered and managed from each channel,” said Michael Seifert, CEO at Sitecore. “With MongoDB’s market-leading technology, the Sitecore Experience Database can scale to store all data from any channel and any touchpoint in real-time. This ‘no-limits’ approach means marketers are now unconstrained in data collection and analysis. And with a real-time view of their individual customers available on-demand through the Sitecore Experience Profile, marketers can deliver the personalized brand experiences that win customers for life,” added Seifert.Today, global brands are increasingly handling terabytes of customer information, so having an experience database that can readily and cost-effectively scale is vital. Non-relational databases are a proven technology architecture designed to support exactly this kind of big data capability. In cloud deployments, Microsoft Azure’s elastic scaling architecture complements MongoDB’s high-performance data management capabilities. Azure’s global data centers enable customers to put their data close to their users for speed, reliability and redundancy.    Key benefits include:Scalability and Agility: MongoDB is uniquely suited to support high volumes of data and flexible record structures, enabling the Sitecore Experience Database to scale as the volume of data grows, and to run in real-time at the pace of real-world conversations. By being able to easily and cost effectively scale out, customers can grow smoothly and economically with no limits on data capacity.Real-time Performance: The best customer experiences respond in real-time to the data received in the moment to tailor and fine-tune each next step. Sitecore delivers true real-time experience management.Flexibility and Fast Deployment: With a flexible data model, the Sitecore Experience Database can run either on premise or in the cloud via Microsoft Azure.Native Integration: The Sitecore Experience Database integrates seamlessly with the Sitecore Experience Platform, providing a single source of customer intelligence that powers every interaction across every channel.About MongoDB, Inc.MongoDB makes development simple and beautiful. For tens of thousands of organizations, MongoDB provides agility and the freedom to scale. Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, hospitals, governments and organizations of all kinds use MongoDB because it is the best database for modern applications. Through simplicity, MongoDB changes what it means to build. Through openness, MongoDB elevates what it means to work with a software company. Please visit<a target="_blank" href="http://www.mongodb.com/"> www.MongoDB.com</a> to learn more.About Sitecore<a target="_blank" href="http://www.sitecore.net/">Sitecore</a> is the global leader in customer experience management software. The company delivers highly relevant content and personalized digital experiences that delight audiences, build loyalty and drive revenue. With Sitecore’s experience platform, marketers can own the experience of every customer that engages with their brand, across every channel. More than 3,500 of the world’s leading brands – including American Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, Heineken and L'Oréal SA– trust Sitecore to help them deliver the meaningful interactions that win customers for life.

Sitecore and MongoDB Partner to Solve Big Data Challenges for Marketers

The latest release of phpFox is upon us with the announcement of phpFox Neutron 4.4. This new release focuses heavily on speed optimizations, security optimizations, new features and layout improvements.Some of the improvements and optimizations available in this release include:<ul><li>Security<ul><li>Security checks to today’s standards. This is done periodically as a normal practice for our script. This is an in-depth review of all systems for any issues.</li></ul></li><li>Optimizations<ul><li><a target="_blank" href="https://docs.phpfox.com/display/FOX4MAN/Redis">Redis support</a> (Optional) for the feeds, friends, sessions, forum, profile and more!</li><li>Major SQL improvements!</li><li>Removal of unused code, settings, etc.</li><li>More Cache options directly in AdminCP!</li><li>Bundle <a target="_blank" href="https://docs.phpfox.com/display/FOX4MAN/Bundle+JS+and+CSS">JS &amp; CSS</a>!</li></ul></li><li>Full NGINX support.</li><li>Theme system improvements and tweaks.</li><li>Layout improvements and tweaks.</li></ul>Additional changes include:<ul><li>Groups Groups are separate in this version as customers asked for Pages and Groups to be separate. This makes them more private for those that needed better privacy options. Users can make Secret groups, closed and public groups.</li><li>Default Cover Images As requested, you can set your site’s default cover photos for User, Pages and Groups! No more blank, empty cover images now!</li><li>CDN Increased CDN options are now available within the AdminCP.</li></ul>Get <a target="_blank" href="https://www.phpfox.com/">more information about phpFox</a>.

phpFox Neutron 4.4 Stable Released

For many good reasons, ThemeForest is the go-to website for WordPress themes (as well as for a whole bunch of other platforms), but if you're struggling to find a worthwhile template, it may be time to broaden your horizons.Over the years, I have worked with WordPress enough to have sampled a wide range of WordPress theme vendors – and although ThemeForest is excellent – I have discovered gems elsewhere.Our Theme Vendor Directory is a great place to start looking, but below, I've selected my personal top five places to find epic WordPress themes.<h2>1. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.studiopress.com/">StudioPress</a></h2>If you're looking for pure professionalism, look no further.StudioPress craft their themes themselves, building each one upon their world-famous Genesis Theme Framework. So, not only will you get a sharp looking theme from StudioPress, but you can rest assured that the back-end is solid, too.Prices from: $59.95<h2>2. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.elegantthemes.com/">ElegantThemes</a></h2>The WordPress templates at ElegantTheme are, well, elegant.They only have 87 themes (at the time of writing), but each one is beautifully put together. I also really like the back-end of their themes, as well as the shortcodes that their themes come bundled with.The only issue that you may have with ElegantThemes; is their fee structure. You can't purchase one theme individually. Instead, you have to sign up to a $69 or $89 per year subscription plan, or pay a one-time fee of $249 for full access to their themes and plugins.Prices from: $69 per year<h2>3. <a target="_blank" href="http://themefuse.com/">ThemeFuse</a></h2>Like ElegantThemes, ThemeFuse doesn't exactly have a gigantic library (in fact, they have less than 40), but it's quality over quantity as far as I'm concerned.I find their themes (which they build themselves) to be very bold and eye-catching, so their offerings are worth checking out if that's what you're looking for.Prices from: $45<h2>4. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.templatemonster.com/">Template Monster</a></h2>Template Monster has a strong reputation, and that's mainly down to the excellence of their themes.They commission web designers to build templates, and this system seems to do a good job of keeping the quality level high. Their prices aren't bad, either.Prices from: $45<h2>5. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mojo-themes.com/">Mojo Themes</a></h2>Mojo Theme can be a little hit and miss at times, but it's home to some very snazzy WordPress themes.Furthermore, it boasts a wide range of very cheap themes that don't actually look too bad at all, for their price. A good place to look for a bargain.Prices from: $6<h2>Where Do You Shop for WordPress Themes?</h2>The list of WordPress template vendors above should tide you over, but be sure to check out our Theme Directory for more quality vendors.Or, you could always try coding your own themes.Got another source of classy WordPress Themes? Let me know your favourite vendors in the comments section below!

5 Places to Find Epic WordPress Themes (Other Than ThemeForest)

Nowadays, if you aren't opting for a cloud-hosted CMS or website builder, there are a few key names that (should) spring to mind when it comes to website hosting.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.inmotionhosting.com/">Inmotion</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.godaddy.com/">Godaddy</a> for example are three capable companies. 123-Reg.co.uk? Not so much.And yet, I've come across more than one web design client in my time who, to my frustration, relies on 123-Reg for their website hosting needs.In my personal experience with the company, I have been left disappointed. And it's safe to say that I'm not alone.<h2>Who are 123-Reg?</h2>123-Reg is a web hosting company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2000, it's technically the largest domain provider in the UK. Which is some feat.But sometimes the numbers can tell a misleading story, because on top of a relatively dated user dashboard, 123-Reg has a few issues.Here's three reasons to steer clear.<h2>Reason #1: The Horror Stories</h2>Most website hosting companies have their fair share of disgruntled ex-customers ranting about their services, but 123-Reg's share is beyond what one might call fair.Some of the stories online are enough to make you run for the hills. I can't testify that the following claims are true, but what I do know, is that they're common:<ol><li><a target="_blank" href="https://webdesignfromscratch.com/blog/how-123reg-almost-crippled-my-business/">How 123-Reg Nearly Crippled My Business</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://paulnrogers.com/review-123-reg-hosting-services/">[Stay] as far away from 123-Reg as possible!</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://0lly.uk/2013/11/01/123-reg-lost-my-domain/">123-Reg lost my domain</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://0lly.uk/2008/05/07/123-reg-stole-my-money-auto-renewal-nightmare/">123-Reg stole my money</a></li></ol>Now those are some grisly tales, to say the least.<h2>Reason #2: Iffy Marketing Packages</h2>If you've had a look through 123-Reg's website and decided that it's geared towards those who aren't so tech-savvy, you would be correct. And their marketing packages give it away big time.They have something called, “Instant Traffic” which is supposed to bring your website traffic from Google, simply by 123-Reg submitting your site to the search engine. Anybody who knows anything about SEO knows this is utter garbage.It's worth noting that, upon investigation, there doesn't seem to be a way to sign up to InstantTraffic anymore, but it is still present in customer's dashboards<h2>Reason #3: Poor Customer Service</h2>123-Reg boasts a notoriously poor customer service.Firstly, they have a phone line for sales, but not for support. Live chat is available, but only during UK working hours.That lack of 24/7 support is a huge issue, and one which I discuss in my article, “Why You Shouldn't Use Your Friend's Website Hosting Company“.Imagine your website goes down at 9pm London-time. You'd have a 12-hour wait before you can actually chat to your website host. That's a long time to wait if your website is anywhere near successful.<h2>Avoid, Or Jump Ship</h2>Quite frankly, you can pay the same money (or even less in some cases) for a web host that doesn't have an awful reputation, doesn't promote bogus SEO schemes, and has a decent level of round-the-clock customer service.Based on all of the above, I'd strongly recommend that you avoid 123-Reg for hosting your website. Try either one of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.inmotionhosting.com/">Inmotion, </a>or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.godaddy.com/">Godaddy</a> instead, all of which have far better track records.And if you're already using 123-Reg, I'd think about moving to one of those names above, even if its only for the 24-hour support – which is an industry-standard when it comes to web hosting.Update by Mike J: On April 16th, 2016 a major issue occurred at 123-reg, the details of which are outlined in this email that was sent out to their customers:<blockquote>Dear Customer.I am writing to you to explain what happened to some VPS services on 16.04.16. This email is to detail what our steps have been. I am committed to open communication with all customers and would like to take this opportunity to explain in detail.So what happened to some services? As part of a clean-up process on the 123-reg VPS platform, a script was run at 7am on 16.04.16. This script is run to show us the number of machines active against the master database. An error on the script showed ‘zero-records' response from the database for some live VPS. For those customers, this created a ‘failure' scenario – showing no VM's and effectively deleting what was on the host. As a result of our team's investigations, we can conclude that the issues faced having resulted in some data loss for some customers. Our teams have been and continue to work to restore. What have we done? We have been working with an extended team of experts and have left no stone unturned. Our teams have been working long into the night to restore as much as we possibly can. We have also invested in external consultants to recover, in the best way possible.We have recovery running on the VPS servers and some are restoring to new disks. We have also begun copying recovered VPS images to new hosts and we expect some VPS to be back up and running throughout the night and into tomorrow.Our teams have worked for more than 24 hours and will continue to do so. No stone is being left unturned.As the technical teams come back with updates for individual VPS we will communicate updates to customers.For those customers with their own backup of their settings and data, if you wish to restore services yourself you can do this by issuing a reimage command through your 123 Reg control panel, this will give you a freshly installed VPS on a new cluster, where you can restore your service.I understand that some customers may have lost some confidence in the service that we offer. So, I want to explain what we have done to prevent this happening again. We have started an audit on all cron-jobs and scripts controlling the platform, and associated architecture, so that no script will have ability to delete images, only suspend. For image deletion for those suspended over 28 days we will have a human eye to double check. A new platform will be available by the end of the year for customers which we will provide self-managed and automated snapshot backups, in addition to architecture technology to backup the whole platform, something that is not available on the current platform. I hope this goes some way to win back your confidence.Richard Winslow, 123 Reg Brand Director</blockquote>Following this email, Twitter has gone absolutely nuts with furious customers who have not only lost their websites but, in some cases, their businesses as well. This type of experience is the nightmare of every business owner that relies on their website and our hearts go out to the poor people who have been affected by this horrible hosting nightmare.I don't know about you, but I can't imagine how 123-Reg is going to win back anyone's confidence after this debacle. If I was a customer, I'd be insulted by the suggestion that they could. We will be staying on top of this story and updating this post with any developments. In the meantime, however, please let us know about your experiences in the comments below.

Why You Should Avoid 123-Reg At All Costs

During our LightCMS featured week, we’ve focused heavily on what makes the platform such an <a href="/a-closer-look-at-the-lightcms-developer-program/">asset for web design agencies and solo web developers through its Developer Program</a>.The LightCMS Developer Program facilitates white labelling and re-selling of the website builder, in a way that allows developers to build a business without having to venture outside of the LightCMS platform at all.With unlimited websites, pages, hosting and all of LightCMS’ core features including blogging and eCommerce, a web design agency can set up shop with LightCMS – literally.But I think we’ve seen enough talk. It’s time to see LightCMS powering a web design agency for real.<h2>Evolve Creative</h2><a target="_blank" href="http://www.evolve-creative.com/">Evolve Creative</a> is a digital design agency that relies heavily on LightCMS.The design and branding agency white labels LightCMS as EvolveCMS, boasts its own custom templates, and builds upon LightCMS for each project that demands it.The company originally used Joomla to build client websites, but they wanted a hosted solution which was more manageable when it came to updates and security.The change took place in 2007, when Evolve Creative Founder Sarah Hokuf found LightCMS, and never really looked back.With regards to using LightCMS, Sarah Hokuf had plenty of praise to dish out:<blockquote>“LightCMS has been a big part of our growth. More than 90 percent of our sites are on LightCMS, so it’s a key player in the services we offer.Clients can have a great presence online and know that their site is always going to be up.They don’t have to worry about technical maintenance and can focus on their business, not monitoring downtime or uptime. It’s also great to be able to offer LightCMS with no limitations in pages and storage.”</blockquote>So, Evolve Creative make use of all the benefits I mentioned in my previous coverage of LightCMS’ Developer Program, including white labelling, re-selling at a higher monthly price, drag-and-drop page building, FTPS and full code access, and more.For me, it’s always interesting to see how a program like this handles in reality. Discussing feature sets on paper is one thing, but watching LightCMS give life to a successful web design agency seriously drives home the usefulness of their Developer Program.To wrap up this featured week, we’ll soon be releasing a video interview with a LightCMS executive. Stay tuned!To find out more about LightCMS, check out their website, and also their CMS Critic directory listing.

Evolve Creative: A Web Design Agency Powered by LightCMS

So far during this featured week, I’ve discussed the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/building-an-ecommerce-business-with-lightcms/">eCommerce capabilities of LightCMS</a>, as well as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/how-lightcms-aims-to-help-the-growth-of-web-design-agencies/">the platform’s aim to help web design agencies through its Developer Program</a>.And while it’s true that I’ve already explored the broad features of LightCMS’ Developer Program once already, there are two areas in particular that stand out which I didn’t touch on nearly enough.Those areas are; customer billing and white labelling.<h2>Customer Billing</h2>Billing a customer each month or year can be a chore within itself. Making up invoices, sending them off, and then chasing them when they’re late. It’s a potential nightmare that has become a reality far too often for most web developers.However, LightCMS’ Developer Program cuts that problem off at the root.Customer card details can be added to LightCMS in order for them to be automatically billed each month. Plus, any price can be set, meaning that the amount of profit made per website is totally up to the developer.Notably, over $3,000,000 has been billed through the LightCMS Developer Program thus far. So, it works.<h2>White Labelling</h2>Another dimension of the Developer Program that empowers the web designer, is white labelling.White Labelling, or private labelling, allows a company (in this case, the LightCMS Developer Platform customer) to rebrand a product (in this case, LightCMS) in order to make it appear to be their own.In other words, a web design agency can rebrand LightCMS in order to re-sell it to their customers.The end customer will only see the logo and branding of the web design agency they signed up to work with, whilst all the functionality and flexibility is provided by LightCMS. The third, silent party. White Labelling a CMS isn’t exactly a new practice, and there are indeed a few other platforms out there offering similar options.However, I must say that LightCMS’ entire Developer Program is one of the most well packaged re-seller programs from among the user friendly website builders out there on the market.It’s designed to be re-sold to customers and clients who aren’t tech savvy, and I genuinely believe that it’s one of the select few content management systems that is simple enough for anybody to use, yet complex enough for a developer to churn out professional websites.Our LightCMS featured week wraps up tomorrow, so be sure to stick around for it.And as always, be sure to check out LightCMS via our CMS Directory.

A Closer Look at the LightCMS Developer Program

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