Articles - Page 209

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

matt-garrepy

I'm always working hard to find ways to improve the site and with that in mind, I've added two new lists to our product directories / software lists page.
First off is our list of social networking software. I get a lot of emails from users who are in the market for these types of products and this led me to create this list. Within, you will find a curated list of what I consider to be the best options in this area. I hope you'll find it useful.
The second list is for those looking for a <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/key-website-builders/">website builder</a>. There are plenty of them to be found online but I've chosen to curate a list of the ones I've tested and deemed to be good offerings. As always, I am striving to bring you reviews of as many pieces of software as possible and I've identified within the lists which ones I've reviewed. I will continue to update the lists with new products as the testing progresses.
I hope you find these lists useful. If there's a list you know of that would be of value, please <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contact/">let us know</a>.

Two New Lists added to our Product Directories

mike-johnston

SEOTOASTER by SEO Samba has been released and is available for all of you to dig into. It's been quite some time since our last <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/seotoaster-review/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SEOTOASTER review </a>and we're looking forward to seeing what fixes and changes have been applied in this release.
Some of the new features for V2 of this CMS include:
<ul>
<li>Optimized core – the system has been completely optimized for speed and stability.</li>
<li>New, 1-click 5X Speed Media Server technology ( leverages browser parallel download capabilities to speed website serving up to 5 times faster than other CMS).</li>
<li>10 free premium website themes.</li>
<li>40 plug-ins. Some free, some for sale in the marketplace, including an ingenious theme-based liquid mobile plug-in that keeps your web and mobile versions of your website in sync.</li>
<li>A new WYSIWYG form builder to ease the form building process.</li>
<li>A new email facility that allows you to create great looking, content-filled emails and trigger them automatically based on user data.</li>
<li>much more.</li>
</ul>
Website: <a href="http://www.seotoaster.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SEOToaster</a>

SEOTOASTER v2 Hits the Web

Today, I have a new acquisition to tell you about. <a href="http://epublishing.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ePublishing Inc.</a> has decided to acquire <a href="http://ellingtoncms.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ellington CMS</a> and Ellington Marketplace. Ellington CMS is a powerful CMS with a significant portion of its customers being in the publishing &amp; news sectors. It runs such site as Yale News and Golf Week, for example.
With strong user generated content and social tools, it's a solid contender for any business. ePublishing Inc. focuses on providing what they call an Enterprise Publishing System, which is a blend of CMS, eCommerce, CRM and more. With the acquisition of Ellington CMS, they are in a good position to expand their offerings by integrating its strengths and technologies into their own system.
The publishing market is a hot one and I'm seeing more and more contenders ramping up their products to attempt to stay on top of the latest industry requirements and this move is one of many to come, I suspect.
The acquisition should be complete by the end of this month. Unfortunately, financial terms were not released.

Ellington CMS to be Acquired by ePublishing, Inc.

Finding the best WordPress hosting can be a daunting task. There are millions of hosts out there that do a “good” job of hosting all types of sites but what if your site starts to take off and you want performance, price and support for a reasonable price?
That's when shared hosting stops being a good idea. Since 2008, this site (<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com">CMS Critic</a>) had run on HostGator's business shared hosting plan. It did the job reasonably well with minimal downtime but lately, I started to see that their support guys were deactivating my site if my traffic got too high or the load on their shared hosting CPU became too much.  That's when I decided it was about time I moved this site to a proper host and search out some truly solid WordPress hosting.
I started the search by reading through the various forums out there and, unfortunately, 90% of the sites I encountered appeared to be fake review sites that provided no meaningful or honest suggestions as to what service might actually be the best out there. I took it upon myself to use some of the more popular webmaster forums instead of simply trying to Google for the term ‘best WordPress hosting' as this was turning up nothing of value.
In my research for the best WordPress hosting solution, I discovered an option that intrigued my quite a bit, a company called WP Engine. What caught my attention specifically, was the fact that Automattic, the company behind WordPress, actually invested $1.2 million in their WordPress hosting business. I don't think I've ever seen them invest in a WordPress hosting provider before and that was pretty much close to what sealed the deal for me that I should give these guys a try. So I did.
Today, I am running 100% of this site on WP Engine's WordPress hosting.. and I love it.
WP Engine is staffed by WordPress geeks who know their stuff and getting support when I needed it was quick and easy. I opened a ticket and was able to explain the issue without having to explain WordPress or how it works.
Add to this the fact that their system automatically set up caching on my site and migration was done from Hostgator to WPEngine in less than 6 hours (including file transfer time!). That's pretty darn good considering this site has almost 1,000 articles and pages on it plus tons of media.
Another awesome feature that I fell in love with is their plugin that ties the hosting into my WordPress dashboard. From here, I can create an entire staging site with a single click. This makes a complete copy of my site that I can work on without having any impact on my production site. This, for me, was a huge bonus that I actually didn't know about until after I signed up for their plan.
WP Engine also curates plugins and lets you know the ones that work best with their system and which ones not to use to get the maximum output from you site. You just can't get this kind of expertise anywhere else. During the migration of my hosting from Hostgator, I didn't even need to use their support staff at all, I just used their extensive articles on migrating and followed them with ease.
What did I get with my WordPress hosting package through WP Engine?
<ul>
<li>A crazy fast site.</li>
<li>Unlimited data transfer.</li>
<li>Automatic daily backups.</li>
<li>The ability to back up my site by creating a restore point with a single click.</li>
<li>Managed upgrades.</li>
<li>A Firewall.</li>
<li>Malware scanning.</li>
<li>CDN services (although I have found I don't need them).</li>
<li>WordPress experts available to answer my questions.</li>
<li>The ability to create a staging site to develop on without impacting production.</li>
<li>Amazing support from people who know WordPress really, really well.</li>
</ul>
I seriously can't rave about these guys enough. If you are in the market for the absolute best WordPress hosting available, then you need to take a look at these guys. I did and I couldn't be happier. Did I mention that you get a 60 day money back guarantee? Good luck getting that from another WordPress hosting provider.
Check them out here: <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wpengine">WP Engine</a> – They simply offer the best WordPress hosting I know of.

WP Engine Review - Simply the Best WordPress Hosting

As companies grow the need for great interdepartmental communication becomes even more important. Telephone and email are great tools but do not completely fill that need. The introduction of social intranet solutions is a big step towards a unifying employee communication.
Elcom CMS is stepping in and providing such a solution with their upcoming release. A leading provider of enterprise web content management, Elcom's release of version 8 will decidedly focus on social intranets. As companies evaluate the purchase of a CMS this feature will no doubt be on the “wish list.” Elcom is very excited about this new release:
<blockquote>
Anthony Milner, Elcom’s Product Director, commented “elcomCMS 8 is a major release and is literally bursting with great new features. It has a strong focus on social collaboration, calendaring and team workspaces, so if you’re evaluating Yammer or other similar solutions, we suggest that you down your tools and take a look at what we’ve delivered. We’ve also been working hard on delivering a fresh user interface which is targeted at ensuring the elcomCMS experience will delight our users and help you get the job done quicker.”
Elcom’s General Manager, Ryan Bloch followed on with “It’s an exciting way to start the new financial year. For over 15 years we’ve been working with organizations to deliver outstanding intranets. We can proudly say that this next release will take our intranet offering to the next level. We understand corporate intranets, we understand the best-practices and challenges, we have the experience and now we have great social tools to help organizations shine a light on hidden pockets of talent and bright ideas.”
</blockquote>
Elcom 8 has an official release date of Tuesday July 10 2012. CMScritic will covering this release in more detail as it becomes available. For more information visit <a href="http://www.elcomcms.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.elcomcms.com</a>.

Elcom 8 will focus on Social Intranets

A new version of the wildly popular open source content management system, Joomla, has been made available. Version 2.5.5 was released today and brings with it the introduction of 11 new features and 2 security fixes for the CMS.
<h3>New features:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Add ability to copy a template</li>
<li>Implementation of Terms of Service</li>
<li>Option to disable the ability to change the Username in Profile</li>
<li>Set the CSS class for JForm field label</li>
<li>Add counter to redirect component</li>
<li>Add feature read more in feed items. Also bug fix for full text in feed items.</li>
<li>Media form field: show preview</li>
<li>Add the ability to limit the number of password resets within a time period</li>
<li>Improve user feedback during automatic version update</li>
<li>Add buttons in each menu selection tab in the module admin manager.</li>
<li>Multi-File Upload</li>
</ul>
Full details on this release can be found on <a href="http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5427-joomla-255-released.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joomla.org</a>

Joomla 2.5.5 brings 11 New Features and 2 Security Fixes

The final stable release of version 3.4 is now publicly available for install via the dashboard updates for those already running it or the WordPress website at <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">http://www.wordpress.org</a>
Some of the most significant changes with this version are the introduction of the theme customizer which allows users the opportunity to play around with various looks and settings for your current theme or one you’re thinking about switching to without publishing those changes to the whole world.
According to the release posting, other changes include:
<ul>
<li>quicker to browse themes without paging in the dashboard.</li>
<li>the ability to use images from your media library to populate custom headers, and for you to choose the height and width of your header images.</li>
<li>improved embed support to include tweets: just put a Twitter permalink on its own line in the post editor and WordPress will turn it into a beautiful embedded Tweet.</li>
<li>image captions have been improved to allow HTML, like links, in them.</li>
</ul>
For more details on this release: <a href="http://wordpress.org/news/2012/06/green/">http://wordpress.org/news/2012/06/green/</a>

WordPress 3.4 now available

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

Pegboard announces the immediate availability of the Pegboard Mobile Content Manager App, enabling owners of Pegboard Websites (version 6.20.2 or higher) to immediately implement content management while mobile.
<blockquote>
“This application is a tool for web owners to utilize in managing their websites but more importantly broadcasting about their brand and what is happening in their market whilst on the run” said Ashton Wynne-Yorke, CEO at Pegboard.
</blockquote>
<h4>Positive Customer Impact</h4>
The Pegboard Mobile Content Manager App will enable Pegboard Web Owners to be more productive and instantly update their website from a Smartphone.
<blockquote>
“Reaction to the App has been extremely positive,” said Daryl Minter, Pegboard Marketing Manager “the Partner network has been abuzz with anticipation since the product was demonstrated on a recent Webinar.”
</blockquote>
<h4>Extends Social Media Module</h4>
The Pegboard Mobile Content Manager App broadcasts content to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn using the Pegboard Social Media Module launched in April.
<h4>Mobile Content Manager App Availability</h4>
Pegboard’s Mobile Content Manager App is an update driven by customer feedback and is part of Pegboard’s commitment to continue to invest in the future of the product for the benefit of partners and clients. The Pegboard Mobile Content Manager App is available for immediately download from the App Store in the Business category.
Find out more at <a href="http://www.pegboardcms.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PegBoardcms.com</a>

Pegboard introduces Mobile Content Manager

Solution diversity. If you make your product work with what your clients are already using, the decision to use your product will be an easy one. Hippo demonstrates this ideal with the announcement of the addition of Amazon Web Services to its “Certified Stack.”
The addition of the Amazon Web Services to Hippo’s Certified Stack add a number of benefits to the already powerful Hippo CMS architecture. As more and more organizations turn to Amazon Web Services to improve scalability and cost efficiency across cloud-based services – Hippo CMS can play an important part of that equation for Web Content Management solutions.
<blockquote>
“Amazon Web Services offer incredible opportunities for our clients to improve the speed, efficiency and manageability of their Web content platform,” said Arje Cahn CTO of Hippo.  “We’ve already deployed Hippo CMS for a number of customers across Amazon’s cloud services – and we’re excited to be able to add it to out Certified Stack as a completely supported solution.”
</blockquote>
The Hippo Certified Stack already includes technologies that are enterprise-ready including database technology such as MySQL, Oracle, IBM DB2 and MSSQL Server – operating systems such as RedHat/Ubuntu/Suse Linux, Solaris and Windows Server and application servers such as Apache Tomcat, IBM, Websphere, BEA, Weblogic, Sun Glassfish and JBoss.
Adding Amazon cloud services provides customers with multiple options when it comes to deploying Hippo CMS. Customers can deploy it on their own infrastructure – and now this of course includes Amazon as an option for customers.  Or, customers can even deploy Hippo CMS on Hippo’s Cloud Service – which provides Hippo CMS as a service – including an SLA and full support.
Learn more at <a href="http://onehippo.com%20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://onehippo.com </a>

Hippo CMS adds Amazon Web Services

The ability to sell items online has changed the way many people shop. Merchants may not even need a physical store front to be in business anymore. Consumers do not even need to leave the house to do some quality shopping. Want to shop in your Pajamas? Go right ahead. If you want to be a “seller” of online merchandise however, be ready for some setup time. Making your site into a functional online store can be complicated and daunting to the inexperienced. ShopLocket aims to change that.
<h3>ShopLocket, the YouTube of eCommerce</h3>
What do you mean “the YouTube of eCommerce”? Simply this, before YouTube sharing a video online was anything but easy. YouTube lets you upload and share videos with just a few clicks. ShopLocket takes this concept and applies it to eCommerce. Sign up, create your product, and share. Unlike Amazon or Ebay, ShopLocket is not a big central marketplace full of people's stuff to be sold. The real “hook” if you will, is the ability to embed or link to your item anywhere. You want to sell and item right from your blog? Done. How about selling your item over social networks? Done. Anywhere you can share a link or embed some iframe code you can sell something. This comes across as much more professional than simply lumping your item for sale on a huge online marketplace. Using the linking and embedding options you leverage your already existing web and social media audience.
[vimeo 37213703 w=500 h=281]Try it out yourself. There are no upfront fees and you only pay after you sell. For more information visit: <a href="http://www.shoplocket.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shoplocket.com</a>

ShopLocket is embedding eCommerce

Symphony proudly releases version 2.3 of their open source XML/XSLT content management system. It has been over a year since the last major release and the team at Symphony is ready to show you new features and improvements they have been fine tuning.
Just as it takes many instruments playing perfectly together to produce a “symphony” of sound, many tweaks and upgrades have come together to produce this release. Here are some of the features of this update:
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Complete UI Overhaul including dedicated pages for Datasources, Events and Utilities, Breadcrumbs to aid usability, the removal of the Footer.</li>
<li>#1321 – Add PagePostDelete delegate</li>
<li>#1302 – A new delegate, DataSourcePostExecute to match DataSourcePreExcecute is now available</li>
<li>#1193 – Update jQuery to 1.7.2</li>
<li>#1054 – The Providers concept is now alive in Symphony. We are initially supporting new Datasource types, starting with the Remote Datasource. More information to come soon</li>
<li>#991 – The Author field can now output parameters (the Author ID)</li>
<li>#989 – A new delegate, EntryPostDelete is now available</li>
<li>#896 – When Select Box fields are required, force users to select an option instead of defaulting to the first option</li>
<li>#879 – Allow Field::processRawFieldData function to return a $message (breaks backwards compatibility)</li>
<li>#868 – Templates' naming conventions</li>
<li>#866 – All templates can now be overridden by placing the template in the /workspace/templates folder</li>
<li>#840, #759 – Two new plugin's, TimeAgo and Notify are available for Javascript developers. These abstract relative time functionality (eg. an hour ago) and allow a easy way to create Symphony Alerts with Javascript</li>
<li>#799 – UI: Headline Markup</li>
<li>#795 – Add extra HTTP verb support to the Gateway class, POST, GET, PUT and DELETE are all supported</li>
<li>#794 – Added DataSourcePreExecute delegate</li>
<li>#776, #616 – Add text-overflow to all &lt;th&gt; elements on the entries table</li>
<li>#774 – A PageManager class now exists to provide an interface to Pages (and their Page Types). All ‘file' based Managers now implement a FileResource interface</li>
<li>#761 – The Checkbox field now is available as an Output Parameter</li>
<li>#759 – A page can now have multiple alerts</li>
<li>#739 – Introduction of two new delegates, PostQueryExecution and QueryExcecutionError which fire when SQL queries have been executed (and when they fail)</li>
<li>#731 – Core fields now have a Publish Label setting. This is a cosmetic label that is only shown in the Publish area to allow a Field's name to change without having to update all datasources and application logic.</li>
<li>#728 – Datasources now output multiple params in a new syntax, $ds-handle.field-name. The old syntax is still supported for the immediate future for backwards compatibility.</li>
<li>#727 – AuthorManager::fetchByID $limit and $start do not work</li>
<li>#722 – The SectionManager and FieldManager fetch method now supports an array of $ids for the first parameter</li>
<li>#711 – Abstract REGEX filtering to a dedicated Field-&gt;buildRegexSQL function</li>
<li>#695 – The Dynamic XML Datasource can now consume JSON sources.</li>
<li>#622 – The Installer and Updater have been streamlined and updated. Extensions are now installed during installation, localisation is improved and the updater logic is cleaner.</li>
<li>XMLElement now two new methods, getChild(pos) and getChildByName(name, pos)</li>
<li>A new page, /ajax/handle/?string=Your String is available to create handles using Symphony from Javascript</li>
<li>Complete user interface update across the entire backend (errors, forms, alerts and more!)</li>
<li>CSS3 prefixes standardized throughout the stylesheets, fallback background colors introduced for better compatibility with IE and Opera</li>
<li>Add not: filtering for the System: ID on Section Datasources.</li>
<li>All Javascript errors that occur on the backend are now logged to the Symphony log using window.onerror</li>
<li>The FrontendPage class now has setEnv which allows the environment to be updated by extensions</li>
<li>Two new Symphony accessors, Symphony::Log() and Symphony::Profiler() are now available. Direct access to these variables is now private</li>
<li>Navigation DS is no more efficient by only querying for columns it uses and checks to see if a page has children</li>
<li>Translations are now organised in a more performant way by only using regular expression where required (breaks backwards compatibility)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Believe it or not this is not an exhaustive list of changes. Download the new version and give it a look over. Read the complete changelog, and discover Symphony at <a href="http://www.symphony-cms.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">symphony-cms.com</a>

Symphony 2.3 release

Solodev has added a mobile delivery solution to its growing suite of tools designed to centrally provide data and engage users across all online channels. Solodev Mobile is a unique data engine that powers mobile websites and native apps for iOS, Android and Blackberry operating systems.
<blockquote>
“Content is at the core of every business and we are continually in search of ways to help our clients deliver that content and engage customers across a growing ecosystem of online channels,” said Solodev founder and CTO, Shawn Moore. “We are in the era of big data, and the seamless mobilization of that data across multiple channels and devices is critical. We have addressed the urgent need for our enterprise clients to easily present synchronized information via websites, smart phones, tablets, social media &amp; native applications.”
</blockquote>
Solodev enables users to increase productivity and eliminate redundancy by managing online data in one location that is seamlessly pushed and presented to multiple channels, devices and platforms. Other components in Solodev’s WCM suite include traditional website content management, social-media integration and a robust e-commerce platform.
The key benefits of Solodev Mobile include:
<ul>
<li>Works seamlessly across a broad range of devices, operating systems and screens</li>
<li>Data is pulled from the same location as your website which eliminates the need for duplicated information and management</li>
<li>Simplifies visitor interactions</li>
<li>Allows for total e-commerce integration</li>
<li>Availability of an enterprise-level SaaS version</li>
<li>Ensures seamless integration with related technologies</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
“Our Channel Optimized WCM system delivers a single user experience across all online channels and allows digital content to be created and managed without the need of programming expertise,” Moore said. “Another key benefit of Solodev Mobile is its integration with our e-commerce platform allowing companies to take advantage of the growing trend of mobile consumerism.”
</blockquote>
Solodev Mobile is the latest product in a robust enterprise content management suite that also includes Solodev Social, which integrates your website with your social channels and Solodev QR, a dynamic quick response code generator to support interactive marketing campaigns.
Learn more at <a href="http://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Solodev.com </a>

Solodev Adds Mobile Publishing Platform to its Channel Optimized Web Content Management System

Users of the social networking CMS, Elgg, should be aware of a new update that has been posted on the main website. Version 1.8.5 has been made available and resolves a number of outstanding issues including:
<ul>
<li>a security fix that prevents a potential XSS attack against users who click a specially crafted URL.</li>
<li>a fix that closes a loophole which allowed users to create a new account without requiring validation.</li>
<li>a third fix that addresses an access bug that could inadvertently reveal private entities to users who wouldn’t otherwise have access.</li>
</ul>
There are also a few minor bug fixes in this release:
<ul>
<li>For those networks that have enabled the Twitter API plugin, new users are forwarded to the correct page after creating an account with Twitter.</li>
<li>PDF files display in the browser instead of downloading directly to users computers.</li>
<li>Fixed some upgrade issues related to the system log.</li>
</ul>
Users of prior version should consider upgrading as soon as possible.
Have you read our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/elgg-review/">Elgg Review</a>? You should check it out if you are in the market for a social networking solution.

Time to upgrade! Elgg posts some new security updates for their social networking CMS.

Weglot - The easiest way to translate a website

The easiest way to translate a website

#18164c

Explore a wide range of informative articles, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry. Page - 209