Articles - Page 174

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

The winners for the 2018 CMS Critic Awards have been announced and are posted on the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/awards/">awards page</a>.
Congratulations to those who won. We'll be doing some heavy revamping of the awards next year. If you have input on how we can improve, suggestions for categories, etc, please drop us a line <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contact/">here</a>.
Thanks to all who participated in this years' awards. We had thousands of nominations and votes and it was a great success!

2018 Winners Announced

mike-johnston

The latest beta for the upcoming WordPress 5.0 release is now available for testing. Note that this is a DEVELOPMENT release and not something to install on a production site unless you want to invoke the power of chaos.
“There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.0 Beta: try the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”), or you can <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-5.0-beta3.zip">download the beta here</a> (zip).”
The actual production release of WordPress 5.0 is expected around November 19th, pending of course any major issues.
Here are some of the changes in beta 3:
<ul>
<li>The block editor has been updated to include all of the features and bug fixes from the upcoming <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-31st-october-2/">Gutenberg 4.2 release</a>.</li>
<li>The Twenty Nineteen theme has been updated from GitHub</li>
</ul>
For more info on the upcoming WordPress 5.0 release which brings the dreaded Gutenberg editor into the mix, check out https://wordpress.org/news/

WordPress 5.0 Beta 3 Available

Recently, the founder of the popular Solus distribution of Linux, decided to take some time away from the project for personal reasons. Sadly, it appears as though he has also stopped replying to the members of the development team he helped form and has basically disappeared.
As a result, the <a href="https://www.patreon.com/solus">Patreon account</a> which numerous people have contributed to and that was, at one point, over $2000 monthly in contributions, has been unusable and inaccessible to the development team. The issue in question here is where has the money been going then?
The team recently <a href="https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail/">posted a call</a> to have those who are donating on Patreon revoke their donations in order to prevent the funds from being locked into an account they have no access to.
<blockquote>
Which brings me to <a href="https://www.patreon.com/solus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Patreon</a>, arguably the most difficult for me to talk about. After multiple support tickets, they have repeatedly refused to provide access to the Solus account. At this moment, we have no way of accessing the funds many of you have graciously donated, nor are we fully aware of what funds are available via Patreon. I absolutely understand if you are frustrated with having financially contributed to the Patreon, with no way for us to utilize these funds for hardware purchases and paying for services, it’s frustrating for us too. Unfortunately, with Patreon’s refusal to assist us, our only option is to kindly request that you immediately cease your donations to it. My personal advice would be to additionally contact Patreon for refunds and express your frustration to them for their unwillingness to assist us. We can only hope that they decide to grant us access to the funds or account.
</blockquote>
Following this, we have several questions:
What happened to Ikey? Why have funds been locked into an inaccessible account and where has the money been going if not to the project that it's intended for?
We strongly recommend reaching out and revoking your contributions for now until these answers become clear. You can learn more about the team's struggle here: <a href="https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail/">https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail/</a>

Solus Founder Disappears - Team Loses Access to Patreon Funds

IBM announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.
“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “IBM will become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.
“Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs,” she said. “The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales.”
“Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience – all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation.”
This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. Companies today are already using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 percent of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today’s cloud market. This prevents portability of data and applications across multiple clouds, data security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management.
IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation.
IBM’s and Red Hat’s partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM’s $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.
“Today’s announcement is the evolution of our long-standing partnership,” said Rometty. “This includes our joint Hybrid Cloud collaboration announcement in May, a key precursor in our journey to this day.”
With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat’s open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network.
IBM and Red Hat also will continue to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud. At the same time, Red Hat will benefit from IBM’s hybrid cloud and enterprise IT scale in helping expand their open source technology portfolio to businesses globally.
“IBM is committed to being an authentic multi-cloud provider, and we will prioritize the use of Red Hat technology across multiple clouds” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Hybrid Cloud. “In doing so, IBM will support open source technology wherever it runs, allowing it to scale significantly within commercial settings around the world.”
Upon closing of the acquisition, Red Hat will join IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team as a distinct unit, preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat’s open source development heritage and commitment, current product portfolio and go-to-market strategy, and unique development culture. Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and Red Hat’s current management team. Jim Whitehurst also will join IBM’s senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty. IBM intends to maintain Red Hat’s headquarters, facilities, brands and practices.
“IBM’s commitment to keeping the things that have made Red Hat successful – always thinking about the customer and the open source community first – make this a tremendous opportunity for not only Red Hat but also open source more broadly,” said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. “Since the day we decided to bring open source to the enterprise, our mission has remained unchanged. And now, one of the biggest enterprise technology companies on the planet has agreed to partner with us to scale and accelerate our efforts, bringing open source innovation to an even greater swath of the enterprise.”
Financial Details
The acquisition of Red Hat reinforces IBM’s high-value model. It will accelerate IBM’s revenue growth, gross margin and free cash flow within 12 months of closing. It also will support a solid and growing dividend.
The company will continue with a disciplined financial policy and is committed to maintaining strong investment grade credit ratings. The company will target a leverage profile consistent with a mid to high single A credit rating. The company intends to suspend its share repurchase program in 2020 and 2021.
At signing, the company has ample cash, credit and bridge lines to secure the transaction financing. The company intends to close the transaction through a combination of cash and debt.
The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both IBM and Red Hat. It is subject to Red Hat shareholder approval. It also is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the latter half of 2019.

IBM Acquiring Red Hat

<div>Enterprise leaders need cutting edge digital products and experiences faster than ever. Contentful is supplementing its best-in-class technology offerings with a new program of complimentary agency and implementation partners. These partners can help customers navigate their digital transformation journey and deliver projects faster than ever.</div>
<div></div>
<div>The new Solutions Partner Program focuses on agencies and consultancies that can enhance how modern organizations transform and deliver digital experiences. Contentful's content infrastructure is a core component of modular-based architectures, which not only help customers push products and experiences out faster, but also give them a leg up in an omni-channel world.</div>
<div></div>
<div>The purpose of Contentful's partner program is to empower a network of agencies and consultancies to deliver tailored services to our growing customer ecosystem, recognize partners that are doing the best work with Contentful, champion them to our customers, and grow the content infrastructure market.</div>
<div></div>
<div>The ultimate goal: Give all Contentful customers access to trusted experts to help them build and deliver projects on Contentful.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Responding to demand</div>
<div></div>
<div>We’re making this shift because it’s what the market demands. In recent years, our customer base has steadily expanded from smaller, innovative projects to large-scale, digital transformation initiatives in some of the largest enterprises in the world.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Contentful is recognized as a core piece of infrastructure that supports every customer or employee product and experience. This evolution has been driven by the massive market shift in the way digital products and websites are created — away from legacy CMS solutions and toward infrastructure stacks.</div>
<div></div>
<div>With our new partner program, enterprises will get all of the help they need to fulfill their digital objectives. Today, ten of the 11 leading agencies in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Global Digital Marketing Agencies are Contentful partners or customers, including <a href="https://www.rga.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">R/GA</a>, <a href="http://www.akqa.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AKQA</a> and <a href="https://www.sapientrazorfish.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SapientRazorfish</a>.</div>
<div></div>
<div>We solve our customers’ biggest concerns by combining partners who are industry experts with Contentful’s solutions. For example:</div>
<ul>
<li>
<div>Technology solution consulting: “How should I think about incorporating Contentful into the rest of my technology stack across my organization?”</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Content model consulting: “How should I set up and maintain my content model to take advantage of Contentful's ability to make content reusable?”</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Implementation: “How do I migrate from my old solution to Contentful in the least painful way, while avoiding the pitfalls of complex migrations and still focusing on our end customers?”</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Change management: “How do I enable my organization to adopt and utilize Contentful easily?”</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Ongoing or adhoc content and front-end services: “I just need more developers to get through this cycle, and they need to know Contentful: Do you have any partners that can help me staff up?”</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div>Speeding up digital transformation</div>
<div></div>
<div>Enterprises are adopting Contentful for one of two primary reasons. Customers just getting started with Contentful want to build amazing digital products. Others have already built projects and are looking for organizational transformation where every experience is powered by Contentful.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Legacy CMS solutions are no longer optimal. Their one-size-fits-all approach leaves enterprises struggling with bloated solutions that, while they do everything, don’t do most things very well. Instead, enterprises that need to ship products fast and meet customers where they are want an all-star stack of technology providers and partners that deliver exactly what they need.</div>
<div></div>
<div>With our top-flight partners, enterprises can access trusted advisors to help them realize their digital potential with less risk and at greater speed.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Enterprises won’t have to acquire new and hard-to-find talent, because the best talent is within our partner ecosystem. Whether enterprises are looking for a partner to help with a single project, a complete transformation or even a partner by region, we’ll have one to recommend.</div>
<div></div>
<div>By relying on Contentful and partners, enterprises can concentrate on what they do best, and leave content management to the experts.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Partners also benefit</div>
<div>Our partners, meanwhile, get streamlined partner sandbox accounts with the ability to start developing immediately. This is a huge step beyond legacy CMSes, where there is no such thing as rapid prototyping.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Partners will also be eligible to co-market with Contentful, get assistance with business planning and internal navigation, and potential access to client introductions.</div>
<div>To help customers get the most out of Contentful as quickly as possible, we typically advise customers to get started with Contentful in one of three ways: via a customer driven implementation, a customer and partner-driven implementation, or a partner-driven implementation. In any of these scenarios, Contentful’s customer success organization will be part of the team. We’re already hard at work on a certification program, and partners will be divided into five classes:</div>
<ul>
<li>
<div>Power: The highest level of Contentful's partner program, Power Partners have the most experience building and launching large digital projects with Contentful. They can be trusted with any Contentful project, no matter how large and complex.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Premier: Premier partners have done three or more full-feature implementations with Contentful and are on their way to becoming a Power Partner.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Professional: Have executed at least one full-feature implementation of Contentful.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Strategic Industry: Leaders in a specialized field, such as content modeling or custom web apps.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Community: Partners that are just getting started with Contentful and may specialize in smaller Contentful-related projects.</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div>Driving change</div>
<div>Contentful is modernizing the web by powering the transition from legacy CMS to content infrastructure. With our new partner program, this transition will occur faster than ever.</div>
<div>Our global network of partners is dedicated to making customers successful, accelerating speed to value and empowering customer teams through content services. We look forward to helping our customers find the right solutions and partners that enable them to unlock their organization’s full value—today and in the future.</div>

Contentful responds to market shift with new partner program

JotForm announced today a way for users to automatically generate designed, professional-looking PDFs whenever someone submits a response to an online form.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qLIXeKxWhag?start=3&amp;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The product, <a href="https://www.jotform.com/products/pdf-editor/">JotForm PDF Editor</a>, addresses a major pain point. Many JotForm users wanted the information they collected turned into a presentable, document format. But doing so typically required them to copy and paste the information into a new document manually.
JotForm PDF Editor, on the other hand, automates the process. It allows users to start by designing how they’d like the final PDF to look, with the ability to add sections, customize colors, drop in images and logos, and choose fonts.
Then, when the submissions roll in through their online form, the PDFs generated in JotForm PDF Editor are quickly sortable, with options to download, print, or share the new documents  instantly.
“Our users told us about wanting a better way to present and distribute their form data,” said Aytekin Tank, JotForm founder and CEO. “Our new PDF Editor makes the entire process significantly easier. The best part — anyone can use it, even without any technical skills.”
Another big benefit to using PDF Editor is the seamless integration into Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox. Newly-created PDFs send automatically to any of these storage services so teams can quickly view and sort through the files.
PDF Editor also simplifies e-signature collection. Any signature sent through an online JotForm form can be designed neatly on a new document automatically. And because JotForm forms are simple to fill out using any device, that means agreements, waivers, and contracts can be signed on the go.
Other features include:
<ul>
<li>Option to create fillable PDFs</li>
<li>PDF password protection</li>
<li>Over a hundred pre-made PDF templates</li>
</ul>
JotForm and its new PDF Editor are free to use. JotForm has provided a quick way for users to create and publish online forms since 2006, but PDF Editor takes a leap toward making the data collected by users more actionable and presentable.
The new product is expected to be used by a wide range of users, including medical professionals for intake, HR departments for employee evaluations, teachers for acquiring parental permission, and much more.
Learn more about JotForm PDF Editor at <a href="http://www.jotform.com/products/pdf-editor">www.jotform.com/products/pdf-editor</a>.

New JotForm PDF Editor Automates PDF Creation

From product managers and marketers to UX designers and researchers to CX professionals and executives, everyone has a business need to connect with their customers and end-users. The ability to do this face-to-face, whether it is virtually — through a webcam or smartphone — or in person, there is an added benefit to seeing the user and being able to read non-verbals and observe facial expressions for sentiment. The lack of gating features in face-to-face interviews provides critical insights that enable one to better decipher reaction, emotion and empathy from the customer. 
Enter UserTesting’s <a href="https://www.usertesting.com/platform/live-conversation">Live Conversation</a>, today’s solution for companies looking to connect in real-time with their customers to gather qualitative feedback and insights on projects, designs, campaigns and more. With Live Conversation, users simply choose the demographics of the participants they are seeking insights from, enter their calendar availability, and UserTesting does the rest to connect them with their target audience. 
What’s new?
UserTesting recently released enhancements to Live Conversation to give its users greater flexibility in coordinating and conducting moderated, live interviews — with 24/7 scheduling and same-day interviews to offer faster time to insights in the moment they need it, and support for multiple time zones to make it more accessible for international companies. 
As schedules frequently change, new enhancements to Live Conversation also make it easy to add, adjust and edit availability, even after a study is created. Expanded capabilities also include deleting times previously marked as available and adding more availability if sessions do not fill. 
Companies such as Alaska Airlines, Autotrader, Constant Contact, and CoverMyMeds all use Live Conversation to make smarter business decisions based on deeper customer empathy and real-time human insights — resulting in time, cost and resources savings over traditional moderated mechanisms. 
Bradley Miller, Senior User Experience Researcher at Autotrader, said he “turned to Live Conversation to connect with recent car buyers to better understand the customer journey, and to ultimately drive empathy and customer-centric design.” With Live Conversation, Autotrader saw cost savings and an 80 percent decrease in time investment. What would normally take weeks now just takes him a few days to schedule and conduct live customer interviews.
Frank Rosile, User Experience Designer at CoverMyMeds, said that “talking to patients [via Live Conversation] builds empathy for them, and helps CoverMyMeds understand the ‘why’ behind what to build.” Using Live Conversation, CoverMyMeds has seen significant time and cost savings as they gained important information about patients to inform future product development.
When to use it? Live (or moderated) vs. unmoderated customer research
One question that we often hear from customers is which is better: live (moderated) or unmoderated customer research? The answer, as you might’ve guessed, is that it depends. Like any research strategy, there are differing benefits for each approach making them more or less suitable depending on what you’re studying and your ultimate business goals.
With live moderated studies, a real person will be there to help facilitate the test. The moderator will work directly with the participants, guiding them through the study and will be there to help facilitate and answer questions if the participant encounters any challenges while completing their tasks.
Unmoderated studies are just as they sound. It’s not monitored or guided, so there’s no one else present during the study except the participant. The participant completes any tasks and answers questions at their own pace, on their own time, at a time and location of their choosing. 
Now that we’ve established the basic differences between the two, let’s dive in to how and when to best apply each strategy based on your research needs.
Live customer research: pros and cons
It helps to think of moderated testing as an interview or a real-time conversation that you’re having with a customer. Everything that you’d do to prepare for that type of interaction is what you’ll need to consider for a moderated study.
Pros
Live moderated testing works best when you need a high level of interaction between you and your customer. For example, if you want to study a prototype with limited functionality, or a complicated process or concept, moderated testing provides you with the interaction you’d need to guide a customer through the study. They’re also an excellent way to conduct interviews, understand the customer journey, and discover pain points.
Live moderated testing is also a great way to observe body language and pick up on subtle behaviors and responses and probe participants for more information if they seem stuck or confused.
They allow you to develop a rapport and have a natural conversation with your customers which helps establish trust, and can lead to candid feedback that might not be possible with other qualitative research methods.
Cons
Because of the additional time and resources, live moderated testing does cost more than unmoderated testing; however, you can reduce some of that cost by conducting remote moderated studies, rather than in-person with Live Conversation. This will give you the opportunity to connect with participants all around the world and reduce the need to block out a dedicated time and space for onsite interviews. Who doesn’t love getting some hours back in their day? 
Unmoderated customer research: Pros and cons
This type of testing is best for validating concepts and designs quickly with a diverse group of customers. Unmoderated testing works great if you have specific questions that you need answered, you need a large sample size, you need feedback quickly, or if you want to observe a customer interacting in their natural environment. 
Pros
The beauty of remote unmoderated testing is that it can be done anytime, anywhere, and you typically have actionable feedback within a day if not sooner. Because a moderator isn’t needed, the cost is typically much lower than moderated tests, which can enable you to run more tests with a wider variety of customers.
Cons
Since unmoderated tests are completely unsupervised, it requires a fixed set of questions and tasks for customers to complete, and doesn’t allow for follow-up questions or clarification. If customers run into issues, have technical difficulties, or don’t understand the tasks or questions, you won’t have the ability to step in and guide them.
At the end of the day, the choice is up to you, but now you can choose the best qualitative test for your customer research needs.
Paige Musto is VP, Corporate Marketing at <a href="http://www.usertesting.com/">UserTesting</a>, a human insights platform company that helps businesses create better customer experiences.

Meet Live Conversation — The Solution for Virtual, On-Demand 1:1 Live Customer Interviews

Cendyn, the leading provider of hotel CRM and hotel sales platforms in the hospitality industry, announced a new partnership with Hedgehog, a digital consultancy, to integrate Cendyn's eInsight customer relationship management (CRM) solution with the Sitecore® Experience Platform™ (CXP) to deliver powerful personalized digital experiences.
The agreement will enable Hedgehog to tap Cendyn's guest intelligence engine to fuel live personalization and dynamic pricing based on marketing segmentation and guest profiles in eInsight across Sitecore's digital platforms.
The CRM + CXP integration between Cendyn and Sitecore, facilitated by Hedgehog, will allow hotels to ensure their guests receive targeted messaging based on their personal preferences and behaviors stored in Cendyn's central data warehouse across all digital channels. Tackling this at scale, and delivering such personalized messaging in real-time, is huge for the hospitality industry.
The arrangement also includes a re-seller agreement with Hedgehog that promotes the sale of Cendyn eInsight as the preferred CRM of choice for hoteliers to Hedgehog customers.
“Our partnership with Hedgehog for Sitecore CXP integration is a big step forward in helping hotels deliver personalization at scale based on business impact,” says Charles Deyo, President &amp; CEO at Cendyn. “By adding this integration to our portfolio, we are continuing to expand our reach as the most connected CRM provider in the industry. This provides a cohesive, clear path to personalization.” 
“The partnership between Hedgehog and Cendyn really spotlights our focus on personalization in the travel and hospitality industry,” says Dan Galvez, Founder and CEO at Hedgehog. “By working with Cendyn on this connector, we are helping hotel properties present their guests with individualized experiences tailored to their unique needs.”   
About Hedgehog Hedgehog is a full-service digital consultancy transforming the way brands interact with their customers by designing and engineering high performance, multi-channel digital marketing solutions positioning clients for growth and success. A multidisciplinary web solutions firm partnering with Microsoft, Sitecore, Magento, Acquia, Drupal, and WordPress; Hedgehog offers strategy, design, consulting, technology, and managed services. Hedgehog is headquartered in Holbrook, NY with additional offices in Portland, OR, Charlotte, NC, Sofia, Bulgaria and Netherlands, Amsterdam. The company is consistently recognized for being one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.
For more information, visit <a href="http://www.hhog.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.HHOG.com</a>.
About Cendyn <a href="http://www.cendyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Cendyn</a> is a cloud-based software and services provider that develops integrated technology platforms for driving marketing, sales and event performance in the travel and hospitality industry. The Cendyn Hospitality Cloud offers the most complete set of innovative software and services in the industry, covering hotel marketing, guest engagement, group sales and event management. With offices in Boca Raton, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, Toronto, Whistler, London and Singapore, Cendyn proudly serves more than 30,000 hotel clients in 143 countries with enterprise spend levels in excess of $1 billion.

Cendyn integrates with Sitecore via Hedgehog to elevate real-time marketing personalization

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

#ffffff

BloomReach, Inc., the Digital Experience Platform company, has now begun arming enterprises with a superior weapon in their battle against the Amazons of the e-commerce world. Today at the DMEXCO trade show in Cologne, BloomReach launched their DXP for Commerce that gives retailers, brands, distributors and manufacturers the ability to quickly offer a highly relevant and personalized digital experience. They can enhance their commerce environment with AI-powered search, intelligent merchandising, and highly agile content management. The DXP for Commerce keeps customers engaged, increases revenue per visit, and drives customer loyalty. It also integrates with leading commerce platforms to form a complete e-commerce solution.
“These are scary times for both B2B and B2C enterprises,” said Raj De Datta, co founder and CEO of BloomReach. “Amazon, Alibaba and other disruptors pose an existential threat to their business. Historically, executives have looked to a commerce-led architecture to compete. These architectures, however, don’t provide the velocity needed to beat the Amazons of the world. The answer is a move from monolithic e-commerce platforms to microservices-based architectures that empower not just the web, but all digital touchpoints. This provides a twofold benefit: more control over the customer experience, now highly personalized, and the ability to innovate quickly. Our new DXP for Commerce is designed to offer all this and more as well as on top of existing platforms and integrating with legacy systems.”
“Traditional commerce platforms don’t handle content management well, nor do they meet 2018 expectations for site search and digital merchandising,” said Patrick Finn, Head of Global Channels at BloomReach. “Surmounting these challenges requires an experience-led platform with the trifecta of a super CMS, AI-driven search, and an open architecture to build quickly and get to business outcomes. At BloomReach, we’re delivering that with DXP for Commerce and bringing it to market with a world-class set of partners.”
“We are seeing major demand for a new approach to commerce-enabled digital experiences globally across industries,” said Dirk Hoerig, founder and CEO of commercetools, a leading cloud-based commerce platform provider. “Brands want to experiment with new channels and business models, but all-in-one content and commerce platforms stifle agility and innovation. Our headless, API-based approach makes it easy for brands to create powerful digital experiences that can also deliver optimum shopping experiences with platforms like BloomReach’s DXP for Commerce.”
Besides commercetools, who are exhibiting alongside BloomReach at the DMEXCO trade show in Cologne, the DXP for Commerce integrates with commerce platforms from Elastic Path, SAP Commerce Cloud, Skava, Symphony and others.
BloomReach has lined up a global ecosystem of first class digital agency and system integration partners to help businesses implement the integrated offering. These include Accenture Interactive, Authentic, Avionos, Dept, diva-e, Gorilla, Incentro, Object Edge, Osudio, SapientRazorfish, Shift7 Digital, Valtech, XumaK, and Zaelab.
“Delivering engaging digital experiences is essential”, said Brian Grady, CEO of Gorilla. “The Bloomreach DXP for Commerce enables us to create differentiated solutions for our clients that can be fully integrated with the leading digital commerce platforms.”
Victor Terpstra, CCO at Osudio: ”BloomReach DXP for Commerce adds true value to existing commerce solutions: by applying AI in on-site search and online merchandising tools, online retailers can create a significant revenue uplift whereas brands can add stories to their products by combining BloomReach CMS capabilities with existing commerce implementations.”
<h2>About BloomReach</h2>
BloomReach software enables highly personalized digital experiences for retailers, banks, distributors, manufacturers, public service agencies and other enterprises.  BloomReach has combined a super CMS, AI-powered digital merchandising, site search and SEO into the world's first open and intelligent Digital Experience Platform. The BloomReach DXP stimulates customer engagement and loyalty, even as it boosts conversion and increases revenue.
With a global network of certified partners, BloomReach serves hundreds of enterprise customers such as Neiman Marcus, Staples, REI, Mailchimp, FC Bayern München, and the UK’s NHS. Founded in 2009 and backed by NEA, Battery Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, BloomReach is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices worldwide.
Learn more: <a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.bloomreach.com</a>

BloomReach launches DXP for Commerce so enterprises can beat Amazon

Joomla 3.8.12 is now available. This is a security release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses 3 security vulnerabilities and contains over 20 bug fixes and improvements.
<h2>What's in 3.8.12?</h2>
Joomla 3.8.12 includes three security vulnerability fixes, several bug fixes and improvements:
<h3>Security Issues Fixed</h3>
<ul>
<li>Low Priority – Core –  Hardening the InputFilter for phar stubs (affecting Joomla 1.5.0 through 3.8.11) <a href="https://developer.joomla.org/security-centre/743-20180801-core-hardening-the-inputfilter-for-phar-stubs.html">More information »</a></li>
<li>Low Priority – Core – Stored XSS vulnerability in the frontend profile (affecting Joomla 1.5.0 through 3.8.11) <a href="https://developer.joomla.org/security-centre/744-20180802-core-stored-xss-vulnerability-in-the-frontend-profile.html">More information »</a></li>
<li>Low Priority – Core – ACL Violation in custom fields (affecting Joomla 3.7.0 through 3.8.11) <a href="https://developer.joomla.org/security-centre/745-20180803-core-acl-violation-in-custom-fields.html">More information »</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Bug fixes and Improvements</h3>
<ul>
<li>mod_articles_latest and mod_articles_news: fix to show featured articles <a href="https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/21336">#21336</a></li>
<li>Tags in com_content: fix to display tags when other item info are set to hidden <a href="https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/21275">#21275</a></li>
<li>com_tags: All Tags default layout <a href="https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/21031">#21031</a></li>
<li>Allows filtering by the archived state in the redirect component <a href="https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/21673">#21673</a></li>
</ul>
Visit GitHub for the full list of<a href="https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/milestone/38?closed=1"> bug fixes</a>.

Joomla 3.8.12 Released

Choosing the right e-commerce platform is essential for your business. In order to thrive online, your business will need an exceptional website, one that seamlessly melds the digital and physical shopping experiences.
Magento and Shopify are two of the most <a href="https://www.inc.com/bill-carmody/top-seven-ecommerce-platforms-in-2018.html">popular e-commerce platforms</a>. Both are great choices for businesses of all sizes. However, it’s good to take an in-depth look at both to see which platform is the best fit for you.
<h2>Magento: an in-depth look</h2>
Magento is a popular <a href="https://www.cminds.com/the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-magento/">open-source e-commerce platform</a>. It’s used by small business and large brands alike as it’s easy to customize and scale for both B2B and B2C businesses.
Some key features of Magento:
<ul>
<li>Ability to create and deploy custom e-shops</li>
<li>Massive marketplace stocked with website themes and useful applications</li>
<li>Search engine optimization</li>
<li>An easy-to-integrate shopping cart system</li>
<li>Intuitive inventory system</li>
<li>Multi-store support</li>
<li>Integration of software tools such as a CRM, an ERP, etc</li>
</ul>
Magento is one of the fastest growing cloud-based e-commerce platforms as well, in part because of its customer support, user-friendliness, and flexible shopping cart system. Magento comes with some essential digital marketing features including search engine optimization and customizable user interface design.
The enterprise e-shopping platform is used by over <a href="https://www.thepixel.com/magento-ecommerce/">200,000 online stores</a>. Magento continues to garner more stores as its services and marketing campaigns expand. Its massive community, replete with application designers, theme makers, and Magento experts, attract e-commerce newcomers.
Magento was recently acquired by Adobe, the American software giant, for <a href="https://news.adobe.com/press-release/corporate/adobe-acquire-magento-commerce">$1.68 billion</a>. Adobe has a rather large developer base, active creative community, and a strong cloud infrastructure. Adobe’s resources will undoubtedly shape Magento. At present, it’s unclear how the partnership between the two companies will change e-commerce as a whole. All we know now is that Magento is bound to benefit.
As attractive as Magento sounds, it’s important to note an important technical detail. Magento is self-hosted so you’ll need to have a bit of web development skill in order to get your e-shop up and running. In fact, you may even need the assistance of a <a href="https://www.developersforhire.com/magento">Magento developer</a>.
It’s also important to note, however, that Magento is open-source (and therefore free to use). You’ll have to pay for hosting, apps, and premium themes, but the use of the platform itself is completely free.
<h2>Shopify: an in-depth look</h2>
Shopify is a Canadian e-shopping platform that allows for multiple sales channels, unlimited inventory, and single-step order fulfillment.
Shopify is an increasingly popular e-commerce platform and a major contender to Magento. According to Shopify, over <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/shopify-beats-on-big-revenue-jump-as-it-crosses-500k-merchants/">500,000 merchants</a> are using Shopify in some way, shape, or form and over $65 billion worth of goods have been sold through the platform.
Shopify allows shop owners to:
<ul>
<li>Set up an online store with a custom domain</li>
<li>Customize your online storefront with pre-made, tweakable themes</li>
<li>Accept credit card transactions</li>
<li>Add social media sales channels (like Pinterest)</li>
<li>Track orders</li>
<li>Respond to orders</li>
</ul>
In contrast to Magento, Shopify is hosted. This means they take care of hosting for you. For small business owners without any real web development experience, Shopify could be the best option. This means you’ll have to pay to use the Shopify platform itself, but that most of the technical details are taken care of for you.
Like Magento, Shopify allows users to customize their e-shops with over 100 ready-made themes. Shopify setup is extremely clean and simple to get the hang of for beginners. The e-commerce platform comes with a 14-day free trial so you’ll be able to test out the e-shop solution before committing.
Customer support is provided 24/7 for e-shop owners. So, if you do encounter any problems with the platform, from dysfunctional themes to errors processing payments through the Shopify credit card processing system, you’ll be able to receive help from experts.
Shopify, like Magento, has a dedicated community. So, if you’re looking for tips, tricks, or some help with initial setup, the Shopify community will be able to assist you.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
Making an eye-catching website with superb ease-of-use, beautiful digital design, and optimized content is no easy feat.
Building your own e-shop, complete with a dazzling frontend and a dependable backend that takes care of orders and shipments, is nearly impossible on your own. Instead of building from scratch, you can leverage enterprise-grade e-commerce platforms.

Magento vs Shopify: Which Is Right for You

josh-althuser

<a href="https://www.dreamhost.com">DreamHost® </a>has launched a WordPress Export Feature built into its proprietary website builder, <a href="https://www.dreamhost.com/website-builder/">Remixer</a>.
Effective immediately, DreamHost Remixer users who are also DreamHost customers have the power to export their sites to WordPress, carrying across all styles, theming and content created within Remixer into a freshly created WordPress website. The new WordPress export tool does away with Remixer’s “walled garden” approach to website content and brings true data portability to Remixer users, aligning with DreamHost’s stance to fight for the Open Web. 
“We’re committed to supporting the Open Web,” said DreamHost’s vice president of product, Remixer, Ralph Castro. “From free speech to free software, to giving our users complete control and ownership of their data, this launch builds on the web’s early promise to help users share their content online on their platform of choice.”
Remixer has embraced WordPress’ new, in-development “Gutenberg” design paradigm, exporting block-based designs and content designed to work with the WordPress of today and tomorrow.
To date, Remixer is the only standalone website builder with the ability to export websites and their content directly to WordPress, making this a noteworthy industry first. More than that, once a DreamHost customer’s site of choice is moved to WordPress with Remixer, they will have the freedom to take their site to any hosting service of their choice. 
“DreamHost customers can use WordPress' own built-in Export tool to take their data anywhere,” explains VP of Corporate Communications for DreamHost, Brett Dunst. “That's one of the great benefits of the Open Web and open technology like WordPress — true data portability.”
Other notable features of the newly updated Remixer website builder include:
<ul>
<li>Unlimited websites: With Remixer, feel free to build as many websites as you’d like all under one plan.</li>
<li>No page limits: Build an unlimited number of pages on your website.</li>
<li>Custom domain name: Assign your own domain name to your Remixer website.</li>
<li>Free stock photos: You’ll have access to gorgeous professional photos via Pixabay.</li>
<li>SEO made easy: Update your SEO-friendly titles and meta descriptions. </li>
<li>Your own media library: Publish photos, videos and audio directly to your site.</li>
</ul>
Like its new WordPress Export feature, Remixer’s unique ability to guide the average internet user through the intimidating process of website building is built on the foundation of the Open Web. The website builder caters to the majority of internet users who don’t know code and whose web experience is limited to sending emails. Whether you need a site for your small business, you professional portfolio, or your creative ventures, Remixer allows you to easily build your foundation and export your creation to WordPress, the home of 75 million other websites.
DreamHost Remixer’s WordPress export tool is in beta and is available at no charge to all new and existing Remixer All Access users and DreamHost Shared Hosting customers. User feedback during this period will be used, as always, to shape the future of Remixer and other new offerings from DreamHost.
<h2>About DreamHost</h2>
DreamHost is a premier Managed WordPress hosting provider, giving over 400,000 businesses, developers and content creators worldwide the tools they need to own their digital presence. Powered by a strong team of industry experts with nearly two decades of advanced web experience, DreamHost is a leader in Managed WordPress hosting. Supporting the open source community with dedicated resources and top-tier talent, DreamHost believes in the power of the Open Web and the people that make it happen. Founded in 1997, DreamHost has offices in Los Angeles and Orange County, California and in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at <a href="https://www.dreamhost.com">DreamHost.com</a>.

DreamHost Remixer gets WordPress Export Feature

Nuxeo, the leading cloud-native Content Services Platform, today announced Fast Track 10.2, which includes several updates and adds new features to the core Nuxeo Platform.
Nuxeo 10.2 adds enhanced capabilities for annotations, including the ability for users to annotate office documents, images, videos, PDFs, and AutoCAD documents for review/validation processes or for media enrichment. The latest release of the Nuxeo Platform also features a new Adobe Creative Cloud connector, which has been rebuilt from the ground up to improve the user experience and leverage the full capabilities of Adobe CC 2018.
“The latest release of the Nuxeo Platform further strengthens our foundation for building intelligent solutions that connect information across the enterprise, improving business performance and delivering competitive advantage,” said Chris McLaughlin, chief product and marketing officer at Nuxeo. “Nuxeo 10.2 is an intelligent information management platform that enables enterprises to build personalized business solutions to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time on any device.”
Other updates and enhancements featured in<a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/about/what-is-new/?utm_source=Press%20release&amp;utm_campaign=Nuxeo%2010.2%20announcement"> Nuxeo 10.2 </a>include:
<ul>
<li>Federation Blob Provider: The Nuxeo Platform can now manage binary content “in place” (i.e. content that remains stored in external ECM or EFSS systems). In addition to extending the Nuxeo content federation strategy, this enables customers to get all the benefits of a modern Content Services Platform (scale, search, workflows, automation, and permissions) without the cost and pain of forced migrations.</li>
<li>Metadata Comparison: Nuxeo’s Web UI now offers functionality for comparing metadata values across multiple documents. Accuracy and speed are critical when users must clearly identify granular differences across a lot of data linked to different documents or versions of the same document (e.g. product or catalog use cases). Users can now easily review an entire document or just compare the differing metadata values.</li>
<li>Identifying Similar Content: The Nuxeo Platform now supports “More Like This” type queries, which enables intelligent searchesacross a repository for content that’s close to the content of a given image, document, case or other business object. This is particularly useful in case management projects where finding similar cases can reduce resolution time.</li>
<li>Bulk Actions Framework: When dealing with large volumes of data, even a simple action like updating metadata across the entire repository can take a long time and impact overall platform performance. Nuxeo has streamlined these bulk operations with a Bulk Action Framework built on a Kafka-based streaming infrastructure. This framework allows customers to execute custom actions on millions or even billions of content items easily, and in a highly-scalable and robust manner. This can be particularly useful for enterprises that have high-availability solution requirements, or that have specific needs around bulk or volume processing of content or data.</li>
<li>Avro: Nuxeo Stream now sends Asynchronous Processing Messages in Kafka using Avro. Avro is a standardized way of enabling modern systems to communicate with each other. This allows any service to consume Nuxeo messages in a standardized manner, and its programmatic capabilities enhance the openness of the Nuxeo Platform.</li>
</ul>
About Nuxeo
Nuxeo, developer of the leading Content Services Platform, is reinventing<a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/products/digital-asset-management/?utm_source=Press%20release&amp;utm_campaign=Nuxeo%2010.2%20announcement"> </a>digital asset management (DAM) and<a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/products/document-management/?utm_source=Press%20release&amp;utm_campaign=Nuxeo%2010.2%20announcement"> </a>enterprise content management (ECM). Nuxeo is fundamentally changing how people work with data and content to realize new value from digital information. Its cloud-native platform has been deployed by large enterprises, mid-sized businesses and government agencies worldwide. Customers like Verizon, Electronic Arts, ABN Amro, and the Department of Defense have used Nuxeo's technology to transform the way they do business. Founded in 2008, the company is based in New York with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Learn more at<a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/?utm_source=Press%20release&amp;utm_campaign=Nuxeo%2010.2%20announcement"> </a><a href="https://www.nuxeo.com/?utm_source=Press%20release&amp;utm_campaign=Nuxeo%2010.2%20announcement">www.nuxeo.com</a>

Nuxeo Announces Updates to its Content Services Platform

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