Articles - Page 74

Brightspot Illuminates the Future of CMS with Human-Controlled, AI-Powered Storytelling 

matt-garrepy

<h2>How A Document Management System Leads to “Big Insight”</h2>
The term “document” has become a ubiquitous, widely applicable term for anything containing information in digital or physical format. However, for the purposes of organizations, it is better described as anything an organization creates that contains information.
As the e-commerce revolution ensued and surged at the beginning of the 21st century, organizational information with each passing year could not be accurately defined as just a document or file.
Instead, the term “data” emerged to explain and categorize the varieties of organizations’ digital information, including the variety of places this information can be stored, duplicated, and lost—making it an equally dangerous medium for unstructured information.
<h3>Leveraging Document Management to Mitigate Skilled Labor Shortage</h3>
The most versatile <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/efilecabinet-online/">benefits of a document management system</a> are time and money savings. In the construction and manufacturing industries in particular—there is a large shortage of skilled laborers.
However, a skilled labor shortage does not have to mean the downfall of an organization, for a document management system solutions can resolve this problem—given that a document management system expedites internal processes, it frees up room for recruitment revenue and the salaries to attract top talent to an organization without breaking the bank, providing a competitive edge on the balance sheet when it is especially needed.
Moreover, new talent is not always needed: cutting costs internally through a document management system alone is enough to free up the profits sought by many executives and administrators—especially those who are beginning with startups.
A <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/what-is-a-document-management-system/">document management system</a> (DMS) is any small to mid-sized organization’s formalized, strategic, and technological means for storing and managing images, web pages, graphics, social content, email content, video, and other rich media assets.
The goal of DMS is to effectively manage all information belonging to and created by organizations—relaying greater insights into the information contained in its content. Document management provides organizations with the means to manage the proliferation of their content, including the data and information it contains.
This signifies a major paradigm shift for the organizational prospectus: moving from big data to big content—focusing less on data-intensive aspects of the organization like data mining (which automation is better equipped to handle today) and more on effectively storing content to effectively harness its information.
This phenomenon is further reified by the <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/mobile-document-management-software/">DMS mobile app</a>, which gives businesses, in addition to other mobile tools, another means of conducting businesses wherever there’s an internet connection.
<h3>Deriving Big Insight through the Document Management System</h3>
Essentially, organizations should not spend money on analytics and big data without the means to effectively do so—DMS being a potent means for accomplishing these objectives.
Additionally, sometimes organizations purchasing a document management system will arrive at sufficient analytics and insight-based conclusions regarding the data in their content without buying big data and other analytics services—further increasing the potential ROI for document management system adoption and use over the long haul.
Analytics, or in other words—deriving insight from data—has dominated organizations’ spending plans for the past two years. For instance, the <a href="https://www.idc.com/">International Data Corporation (IDC)</a> projected that analytics would become a $125 billion market worldwide by 2015.
However, these budget allocations are futile without a document management system or other enterprise-grade document management solutions, for without DMS and similar technologies, including the behavioral means to use them effectively, acquiring crucial insight from data will prove a time-consuming, ineffectual process.
To learn more about what a top-rated document management system, visit <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/">efilecabinet.com.</a>

Document Management and Entrepreneurship: From Big Data to Big Insight

mike-johnston

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<h3>Simplifying Existing DMS Market Research</h3>
As is the case with all research geared toward helping organizations make purchase decisions, the analyses in the Magic Quadrant and Wave will attempt to summarize market and vendor information quickly before summarizing it thoroughly and in its entirety.
Quick summaries are useful, but oftentimes not all-encompassing. It will be up to prospective DMS buyers to decide whether it is in their best interest to use what may be the easiest means of selecting the <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/">best document management system vendor</a> as opposed to relying on several diverse sources, including an internal analysis of their own organization’s needs.
However, both Forrester and Gartner offer more specific research insights for prospective technology buyers than the Wave or Magic Quadrant provide: The Gartner Interactive Magic Quadrant and the Forrester Wave tool each allow prospective document management system buyers to input information specific to their organization, providing more individual assistance in the technology selection than a single report can provide.
However, from this input, not all vendors will be available in the results, so prospective buyers should still explore other options as well.
<h3>Analyzing the Document Management System through Market Research</h3>
Commerce is now driven by content, and without the document management system technology and strategy to transform it into knowledge, information limits organizations. “The Information Age” does not just encompass the proliferation of data creation technologies—it also denotes organizations’ reliance on these technologies in lieu of their ability to derive knowledge from them.
Organizations with <a href="http://blogs.gartner.com/darin-stewart/2013/05/01/big-content-the-unstructured-side-of-big-data/">unstructured content</a> can lose access to this content’s information within a second; as this second transpires, it may become a mistake that takes hours, weeks, months, and perhaps even years to recover from—particularly if this information impacts customer experience or satisfaction. Additionally, losing access to information can also result in opportunity costs, legal costs, and an organizational image that subtracts from the bottom-line.
Document management system delivery models and technologies are changing drastically. Therefore, as DMS vendors spearhead innovation, their contribution to users’ understanding of their solutions is imperative.
Now, going paperless in and of itself is neither a sufficient information management policy nor a means of gaining a competitive advantage for mid- to large-sized organizations: 80% of any given organization’s content is digital—and without DMS’s strategy and technology to automate the structure of this content, your employees will continuously perform the duties of a librarian in one capacity or another—detracting from the revenues to be earned within the scope of their actual roles.
Often, DMS is viewed as an ineffective resolution to the ills of corporate disorganization—one that does not account for the subtleties and nuances of individual roles in the workspace, let alone each organization’s role in its respective industry.
However, no matter what organization you run, the majority of what you do is creating, managing, and processing information through human capital to make informed decisions, and given <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/filing-cabinet-software-deployment-mistakes/">proper training and implementation</a>, a document management system provides the features, benefits, and simplicity to expedite the attainment of these results.
Going paperless alone is not the singular value of DMS. Rather, this involves the management of paperless information, because although there may have been an organizational process and storage guidelines when paper was there, uploading and digitizing it without a storage infrastructure has created content chaos in mass—a phenomenon that impinges the productivity of knowledge workers and the economy as a whole alike.
A document management system offers executive leadership and administrators in the fields of education, business, and government the power to extract actionable insights from content.
DMS is designed to support content throughout all lifecycles in an organization at the levels of its <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/assimilate-a-dms-into-a-modern-it-model/">IT infrastructure and organizational strategy</a>.
Document management is an equalizing technology-leveling the playing field among small to mid-sized organizations striving to compete with larger, paper-dependent ones. In a business climate that is rife with competition and economic uncertainty, organizations must do everything in their power to reduce expenses without sacrificing output, and use of a document management system is one of the foremost ways to effectively achieve this goal.
To learn more about <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/what-is-a-document-management-system/">what a document management system is</a>, visit eFileCabinet’s website today.

Understanding the Document Management System through Market Research

With the holidays approaching, I thought rather than write a million press release style articles, I'd just share with you what has happened over the last couple of weeks in the CMS world.
Here are some of the popular happenings from in an around the world of CMS and business software:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/blogs/antti-hietala/detail~@magnolia-core-5-5-is-our-strongest-release-so-far~.html" target="_blank">Magnolia 5.5 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="https://contao.org/en/news/contao-3_5_20.html" target="_blank">Contao 3.5.20 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="http://documentation.concrete5.org/developers/background/version-history/803-release-notes" target="_blank">Concrete5 8.0.3 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="http://processwire.com/blog/posts/pw-3.0.45/" target="_blank">ProcessWire 3.0.45 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="http://share.ez.no/blogs/community-project-board/the-week-in-review-ez-platform-1.7.0-release-name-changes-php-7-benchmarks-and-more" target="_blank">eZ Platform 1.7.0 was released</a></li>
<li><a href="https://arastta.org/blog/arastta-1-5" target="_blank">Arastta 1.5 released</a></li>
<li>ExpressionEngine 3.4.6 released</li>
</ul>
Check out the websites for more info and have a great holiday!
~Mike

CMS News Round-up - December 19, 2016

DNN announces the general availability of Evoq 9, which delivers omnichannel publishing via a microservices architecture. Evoq 9 includes Liquid Content™, a new Content as a Service platform that’s delivered as a microservice via DNN’s Liquid Content™ Cloud.
Included in Liquid Content™:
<ul>
<li>A headless CMS to manage content </li>
<li>A content analytics application to measure and analyze the impact of content </li>
<li>A stateless API to access and retrieve content </li>
<li>Delivery of services via Liquid Content™ Cloud, powered by Microsoft Azure</li>
<li>The content delivery and presentation features of the Evoq CMS, including a library of 100+ visualizers</li>
</ul>
Liquid Content™ facilitates the intelligent re-use of content beyond websites, to apps, devices and Internet of Things (IoT). 
<blockquote>
According to Navin Nagiah, President and CEO, DNN, “Liquid takes the shape of the objects it’s placed in and flows around barriers and obstacles. Our vision with Evoq 9 is to transform your content into liquid. Your content becomes fluid and adaptable, and can easily be published to any channel.”
</blockquote>
Fred Beer, President of ITX Corporation, a DNN Gold certified partner said, “Liquid Content™ and Liquid Content™ Cloud are exciting developments that help us efficiently deliver digital experiences to our customers. Creating content once, then re-using it across channels, will help our customers gain a higher return on their content.”
Because all Liquid Content™ features are delivered as microservices, DNN can publish weekly or daily updates to individual features. All customers will receive updates instantaneously, which provides enhancements and fixes as quickly as possible.
“We’re bringing multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) to a CMS, which is quite rare in our industry,” said Nagiah.
While most headless CMS platforms require developers to create front-end experiences, DNN leverages the longstanding capabilities of the Evoq CMS to deliver content without writing a single line of code. “Evoq is the head that’s attached to the headless CMS of Liquid Content™. Customers will receive all of the content delivery and presentation features they’ve come to expect, along with visualizers and other new features,” said Nagiah.
Visit them on the web at <a href="http://www.dnnsoftware.com/" target="_blank">http://www.dnnsoftware.com/</a>

DNN Announces the Release of Evoq 9

Your website is your most visible and valuable marketing asset and the decision as to which <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank">content management system (CMS)</a> to use when building your site can have a long-term impact on the success of your organization. Today’s CMS solutions are at the epicenter of your marketing technology stack and are key factors in driving revenue, brand awareness, and engagement with prospects and customers. Finding a solution that can be tailored to support the needs of your business is more important than ever.
And remember, you’re not just choosing technology. The vendor of that technology is an essential part of your decision. Do they see the needs of your market the way you do and are they working on a product roadmap that will support your organization going forward? Or are they focused on features you don’t really need and will just serve to clutter the product you’re using. Is there even a vendor? Open source solutions may seem great — but if you require any support, you may not have an obvious place to turn to when you need it.
Choose the right CMS platform and you can avoid several issues:
<ul>
<li>outgrowing the platform sooner than is reasonable</li>
<li>allocating more budget than you really need to</li>
<li>always relying on someone else to update your site</li>
<li>greater vulnerability to security breaches</li>
<li>not keeping pace with the needs of your customers</li>
</ul>
To help you in your selection effort, we offer this overview of 7 critical factors we feel are important to address when choosing a Content Management System for your organization.
1. Ease of Use
When choosing a CMS Platform ‘ease of use’ is paramount. However, there is a fine line between ease of use and robust functionality. Many CMS platforms compromise on functionality to make their platform easier to use. When searching for different solutions, make sure that not only is the platform easy to use and intuitive, but also has all of the features and functionality your organization will need to meet your business goals.
Updating and Maintaining Content
The days of having to know how to code to make edits to your website content are long gone. Microsoft Word-like interfaces with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editors and inline editing are basic requirements of any modern CMS platform. Additionally, it should be easy to share content and data across several channels without requiring multiple instances of content. Find a CMS solution that enables anyone in your organization, from marketing to sales, to make site-wide edits without requiring IT support, developers, or a third party agency to update your content for you.
Custom Content Applications
CMS platforms typically come with applications, sometimes called modules or plugins, either out of the box or as an add-on and/or upsell to the platform. These applications are used for many purposes, including easy, form-based authoring of structured content for specific content types like news items, events, and management bios. Look for a CMS that offer applications out of the box that do not embrace a one size fits all mentality, but are customizable to suit the needs of your business.
2. Breadth of Features
Any product is only as strong as the features, functionality and ease-of-use they provide out of the box. When evaluating CMS platforms, carefully review what features and functionality come with the product and if they meet the needs of your organization and avoid the expense of required third party plugins and integrations for what should be standard functionality. The ideal CMS has almost everything you need right out of the box, but also provides the option to integrate with third party applications where necessary.
Native Functionality Vs. Third Party Plugins
Third party plugins are required in many CMS platforms. While seemingly convenient, they can be both a pro and con at the same time. Plugins may save hours of development time and even money in the short term. But they can also be developed by a third party who may or may not continue to support the tool consistently or at all, which could leave you in a vulnerable position. Plugins can also be a major security problem — even well established plugins like Yoast, a widely used Google Analytics plugin, can be exploited by hackers. In fact, the more widely a plugin is deployed, the more attractive it may be for hackers to go after it.
Digital Marketing and Ecommerce
Managing a website in today’s marketplace often involves a robust integration of digital marketing technologies — CRM, marketing automation, social media management, etc. At the end of the day your website is a tool to help your organization meet its marketing and sales goals, whether that’s through lead gen tools like landing pages and calls-to-action, or eCommerce features to increase shopping cart conversions. When looking for a CMS platform, you’ll find that more and more platforms have native digital marketing and eCommerce capabilities — or have established integrations with the leading products in those segments — and deliver the metrics you need to understand if you’re achieving digital success. You need to decide if you’re looking for more of an integrated suite offering, where digital marketing and eCommerce are native to the platform, or if you prefer a best of breed solution that is more focused on third-party integration.
Front End User Role Management
In a world driven by big data, personalization that delivers state-of-the-art digital experiences is more and more commonplace. Real-time intelligence on how users navigate your site can help you deliver just the right content at just the right time to visitors based on their credentials, cookies or even just their site actions. CMS platforms with front end user role management can maximize your bottom line by serving up different content based on how often a user has visited a certain page or even offer a buying incentive to a shopper after 60 seconds of being idle in your shopping cart.
3. Deployment Infrastructure
There are many factors to take into consideration when deploying a website and CMS platform. Is it a cloud-based system that lets your organization focus on its business, not investing resources in IT infrastructure. Is the environment Linux or Windows. What type of system resources do you require based on your traffic and bandwidth, or how mission-critical your site is (i.e. uptime and backups). When evaluating these various requirements, it’s important to think beyond cost and focus on the needs of your organization and whether the CMS platform meets the goals and objectives of your infrastructure plan.
Flexibility
How flexible is the CMS platform? Can it operate in various environments or is it OS specific? Some CMS platforms will run in either Linux or Windows, some only run in one. This can limit your hosting options and create issues down the road. If possible, look for a platform neutral CMS.
Speed
When you hear the term speed related to CMS platforms, it can mean a variety of things. One is how easy it is to install, setup and configure to deploy your first website. Are we talking hours, days, weeks, months? Another is page load speed and how quickly the CMS renders content. Not all CMS platforms are the same so it’s important to understand how the system works and how easy it is to get up and running.
SaaS or On Premise
There are different ways to purchase CMS platforms. Some are premise-based which means you have the license rights to setup the software in your own hosting environment. That can mean “on premise” as in an internal server or on your own server within a colocated environment. Another popular way to structure things is what’s referred to as software as a service or SaaS model. This means you pay monthly as part of an overall infrastructure option based on the monthly or annual installments tied to the hosting environment, software license and support. This is a great way to structure things if your organization desires to leave the IT tasks to the software people.
Scalability
Whether premise-based or SaaS, another factor is how scalable is the environment you’re using to host the CMS platform. Can it handle large spikes in traffic and easily scale up so that a great day for visitor traffic does not become a nightmare. In many SaaS environments, like within AWS (<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b" target="_blank">Amazon Web Services</a>) you have the ability to add resources and create multi-server environments that mirror each other. That means you can add servers and resources to balance the load of traffic across multiple servers versus a single server. Cloud-based “clusters” work extremely well for organizations looking for speed, uptime and security.
4. Design Flexibility
So many websites look exactly the same today. Sure, the designs are cleaner and the navigation crisper than ever before — but visiting websites today can be like driving through a planned community where it’s hard to distinguish one house from the other. This is largely the result of theme-driven platforms like WordPress. But in a world of cookie-cutter websites, it’s more important than ever — and somewhat easier — for your brand to stand out from the crowd with amazing web design.
Represent Your Brand Exactly How You Want
Not all CMS platforms can handle the nuances of custom, complex design as well others. It all depends on how much control the CMS allows over the templating system. Control may vary from simply being able to edit the existing templates to being able to work outside of a template structure altogether. CMS platforms that offer a flexible architecture that allows complete development freedom from a template structure are much more able to accommodate the exact design that could differentiate your brand from the competition.
Support for Mobile
Depending on your business, today’s web visitors are more likely to find you on a smartphone than on a desktop. We live in a mobile-first world — that is getting more mobile every single day. Be sure that your CMS supports responsive mobile design directly out of the box so that you can reach customers and prospects seamlessly across all channels and devices.
Ease of Design Refresh
The flexibility of today’s SaaS CMS platforms offer options that make it possible to stay on one CMS for years. SaaS vendors can continuously upgrade the CMS platform without you ever needing to do anything. Upgrades fix bugs, improve performance and add more functionality. In fact, you’re more likely to outgrow your look and feel than you are your CMS platform. Certain CMS architectures make it very easy to port all of your existing content and custom functionality into a new look and feel without the pain of a replatform.
5. Multi-site Management
Many organizations no longer manage just one or two sites. Even mid-size businesses may have multiple sites to manage, while large companies may have dozens or even hundreds of sites. Sometimes it’s due to different lines of business or a network of subsidiaries, but more and more, it’s driven by organizations launching various marketing campaigns, all needing their own websites, content and landing pages. What can frequently happen is that all of these sites end up being managed on different platforms. This can be super inefficient, expensive, and can result in your brand looking vastly different across your different websites.
Manage From a Single Platform
Having all your websites on a single platform and part of the same installation means your entire team can work from a single interface to develop and manage content. This means more efficient training and better user adoption. It also allows for better utilization of hardware resources and ultimately lower hosting fees. Additionally, a single platform can make it extremely easy to spin up new sites by making a clone of an existing site that offers a starting point of existing content and templates. It also makes it possible to share the same piece of content or other assets across all of your sites. This approach can enforce a consistent template governance across sites and ensure your brand is presented the way you want it to be.
Assign Admin Roles by Site
Not all content editors should have access to manage content across all of your sites. If managing multiple sites is important in your selection process, be sure that the CMS can assign roles that control access to your sites, and even sections within sites. Granular permissions gives you total control over who can access what, yet still allow you to work together with common workflows that enable sharing and teamwork.
6. Third-Party Integration
In today’s marketplace, your website isn’t just about pretty pictures and marketing copy. The digital experience should be about streamlining operations, automating workflows, and providing your end users with tremendous value. That’s why third-party integration is important. The ability of a CMS platform to communicate with other third-party applications — whether CRM, commerce or marketing automation — allows for seamless integration and workflow, therefore improving the overall digital experience.
APIs
One key thing to look for in a CMS platform is API connectivity. An API, or Application Programming Interface, allows data to be two-way communicated between the CMS platform and other applications. This is paramount if you have plans to develop mobile applications that connect to the CMS platform data. A native API will make those future app plans much easier to implement.
Developer and Custom Application Support
Third-party integration can be completed in many ways. You can leverage your own internal programming and IT team to write the code. You can contract a system integrator to implement the connectivity. Of you can have the developers of the CMS platform handle the heavy lifting. Not all CMS platforms have development support options. Many are “open source” which means they are being developed with the best of intentions but due to the software being free to use (licensing options vary) there isn’t any developer support to assist you in customizing the overall experience. Depending on your plans for development, launch and future implementations, this may be a very important part of your decision making process.
7. Security and Support
The CMS platform’s security and support options can be an important factor in the decision-making process. In some situations, it’s enough just to download the software, install it on a server and build your own site. In others, the need for security and support factor into the equation because the demands of your business and mission-critical uptime lead the charge.
Security
Hackers love hacking, and that’s not going to stop. When evaluating CMS platforms, you have to consider the security implications, the integrity of your data, and whether you can afford to have your site go down or suffer from a data breach. In theory, all websites can be hacked when targeted, but some platforms are more secure than others. Do your research to be sure that the source code is sound and that security is not a major issue.
Support
Know who will be there for you after you go live. Not all CMS platforms come with support options. For example, many open-source applications do not offer direct access to support teams. Typically they develop security patches and software upgrades that you must download and install to keep your site up to date and secure. Most closed-source or SaaS products offer technical support and periodically “push down” the security and feature upgrades to all sites running their platform. This is a great thing if you do not want to worry about the potential technical issues. Its also a bonus to wake up one day with new features that were added at the request of the user community.
Conclusion
The right CMS for your organization is one that fits with your current and future needs and helps you achieve success. If you need help making the right CMS decision, there are plenty of places to turn. You can speak to local developers in your area or engage CMS experts for larger projects. In any event, make sure you choose wisely and test drive the software first. If possible, download trial installations and evaluate systems using consistent criteria. The decision you make could affect the health of your organization for a long time to come.

7 Critical Factors when choosing a CMS

CMS Kickoff 26

Find out at CMS Kickoff 26, January 13 - 14, St. Pete FL

What's the future of CMS in the AI era?

#ffffff

Content management systems are wide and varied. There are tons of them on the market, some are proprietary but a very large amount are created under an open source license. The reason for this is simple; it allows a small team of developers to become a bigger team by opening up their code to a wider community of users who may wish to contribute or provide enhancements.This is one of the greatest strengths that open source products have; the often large pools of available developers. Of course, like anything, there can be downsides as well but lately, we've seen more and more open source products become viable options for companies in search of stable, regularly updated platforms on which to run their businesses. Today, I'm going to share with you my thoughts on how open source CMS' are taking over the world.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bigstock--123736220.jpg" />It'd be foolish of me not to tip my hat to the current king of open source CMS. WordPress has developed from a small but popular blogging platform to a widely used solution for websites of all sizes. Sadly, this also means it's very often used in situations where it isn't the right fit but there's no denying the incredible growth of WordPress, which <a target="_blank" href="https://trends.builtwith.com/cms">powers almost 50% of the websites worldwide</a>. Whether the stats are accurate or not, WordPress has some impressive staying power.There are several factors that makes WordPress so popular: ease of use, a wide variety of theme selections from seasoned developers such as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.studiopress.com/">StudioPress</a>, tons of third party plugins from successful online marketplaces like <a target="_blank" href="https://codecanyon.net/category/wordpress?ref=cmscritic">CodeCanyon</a> and a large (and growing) network of companies and individuals who can provide support for the platform. Furthering this; should you wish to use the platform for more serious purposes, there's always the option to consider the WordPress.com VIP platform as a potential candidate.The success of products like <a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> hinges on the community of developers worldwide who've found success developing for the platform and making a living from it by offering services such as theme development, plugin development, <a href="/products/wp-engine">managed hosting</a> and more. Companies have literally made millions supporting WordPress and continue to do so thanks to the widespread adoption of the platform.It's not all about WordPress, however, although it's hard to write an article talking about the success of open source CMS without first point out one of the most successful ones. Companies like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.acquia.com/">Acquia</a>; formed by a desire to offer a more commercially supported Drupal; have had great success offering cloud based CMS offerings built on the success of their open source counterparts. Over the last few years, I've seen a number of companies take on this approach and begin offering not only cloud based solutions but other options like emergency support, migration assistance and even webmaster services. An example of this would be <a target="_blank" href="https://modx.com/services/">MODX</a>, which now offers a wide variety of these services to help their user based get the support they need when they need it.The most common means of monetizing open source CMS solutions is to offer support services. Popular platforms like Umbraco do this by offering <a target="_blank" href="https://umbraco.com/products-and-support">monthly support packages</a> that provide companies who choose to use their platform with the peace of mind of knowing someone is available should assistance be needed. Often times, this is a cheaper alternative to hiring in-house support staff for newly implemented open source CMS products.Sadly, there are still several widely used platforms that offer no premium support or cloud solution to their communities. In my personal opinion, those are the products that will begin to fade in usage over time (at least as far as businesses are concerned). An example of one such company that I'd like to see begin to offer these types of services would be <a target="_blank" href="https://www.joomla.org/">Joomla</a>. Currently, Joomla! does not offer any support contract options nor a viable cloud based offering (Yes I'm aware of Joomla.com which is powered by Siteground but this is hardly something I'd recommend to a serious business and it's not the same as a cloud solution offered by the development group). Joomla! has a good opportunity with its already large user base to really expand their reach if they choose to go this route, something I hope they do before long.Open Source CMS have been getting increasingly popular over the last few years with widespread adoption and growth thanks to companies realizing the value of having worldwide developer communities at their fingertips. As such, a lot of open source enterprise vendors have grown leaps and bounds thanks to this renewed interest. As we continue to see open source adoption sky rocket with these new cloud based offerings, the vendors who stay on top will be the ones that are agile enough to make the leap of faith required to get offerings like this in place sooner rather than later.

How Open Source CMS are Taking Over the World

Utilizing Third-party Software Integrations
Although it is also a key step in the paperless office software selection process, many third-party software integrations across the vendor pool go underutilized by their users.
Selecting and using software with third-party integration relevant to the organization’s industry is imperative.
For instance, accounting firms should seek solutions with ample <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/software-integrations/">Salesforce integration</a>. However, a solution’s integration with more deeply embedded software like Microsoft Office is essential regardless of the industry.
Redefining Organizational Workflow
In order to get the most out of a paperless office software’s workflow feature, testing various workflows that either build upon or challenge the workflow utilized prior to the purchasing of the solution is important in using the collaborative features of the tool.
If emulating a preexisting workflow that does not use the scope of the solution’s workflow in its entirety, it is worth creating a new workflow that does.
Erasing Organizational Knowledge Silos through the Solution
When used as the vendor specifies, an organization’s content will eliminate knowledge silos in both behavioral and technological form.
Behaviorally, many workers in paper-and shared drive-dependent organizations usually spend anywhere from 10% to 20% of their time searching for inaccessibly stored information, whether through filing cabinets or shared drives.
This presents enormous costs to output, even without accounting for the fact that many workers spend time remaking or re-creating documents that are already stored somewhere, but cannot be found. <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/office-automation-zonal-update/">This is why Zonal OCR technology</a> in paperless office software provides an immense benefit to knowledge workers struggling to keep their information retrievable.
Extracting Data Driven Insight through Paperless Office Software
Given the present rate of data and information accumulation in organizations, gaining insight about this data and information becomes nearly impossible without technological intervention, and paperless office software is one of the few enterprise technologies that can structure content in a way that imparts, not prevents, insight regarding valuable information.
This provides strategic advantages in relation to competitors, marketing, information governance efficiency, and external auditing.
Relevant Certifications for Paperless Office Software Usage
A Note on Certifications 
Although many content management and information governance authorities issue general certifications, product diversification, including the industry-specific specialization of these vendors, will create a paradigm shift among certifications—with vendors themselves developing certifications specific to their solutions. Until then, the following certifications may give credibility to professionals’ information management skillset across a variety of different paperless office software solutions.
ECM Practitioner, Specialist, and Master Certifications
These certifications, as issued by <a href="http://www.aiim.org/wpfd">AIIM</a>, can be divided into two camps: sales-based certifications and technology-based certifications, with the latter being most beneficial for ECM users and users of similar technologies.
However, both kinds of certifications overlap in developing content needs assessment skills for organizations, and the level of mastery over ECM is indicated by the three certification tiers: ECM Practitioner, ECM Specialist, and ECM Master Course completion.
COMPTIA Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA)
The <a href="https://certification.comptia.org/">CompTIA</a> Certified Document Imaging Architect certification provides IT personnel with the means to fully implement paperless office software into preexisting IT structures, including the knowledge to ensure full utilization of the system’s features.
This certification provides insight and training on the more complex facets of electronic information management, such as workflow and workflow assessment.
ARMA Information Governance Professional (IGP)
<a href="http://www.arma.org/">ARMA</a>, as an information governance entity, offers an excellent, general ECM certification that ensures those certified under this specification understand information governance at the intersection of business auditing, information privacy, information technology, records management, and compliance.

Key Elements of Paperless Office Software

A new release of the popular open source content management system, WordPress, is upon us. Version 4.7 brings with it a new default theme as well as a slew of usability and design enhancements. Let's take a look through some of the changes in this latest release.
<h3>New Theme – Twenty Seventeen</h3>
The new theme, aptly named Twenty Seventeen is a theme designed for business websites that focuses on a creative home page and an easy site setup experience for users.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/twenty-seventeen-top.png" />
Features include:
<ul>
<li>multiple sections on the front page, selected in the Customizer.</li>
<li>a striking asymmetrical grid.</li>
<li>custom color schemes, built on top of a monochromatic foundation, and adjustable via a hue picker.</li>
<li>different headline placement for pages, changeable in the Customizer, via them options.</li>
<li>a great experience in many languages, thanks to language-specific font stacks.</li>
<li>SVG icons (a first for a default theme).</li>
<li>support for custom logo, custom header image and many post formats.</li>
<li>the use of <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/09/09/new-functions-hooks-and-behaviour-for-theme-developers-in-wordpress-4-7">new functions in Core</a> for making child theming easier.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Other updates in this release include:</h3>
Theme Starter Content
Starter Content is the theme-specific selections of content to help showcase a theme to users and serve as a starting point for further setup of new sites. The initial view of a theme with starter content will only happen for “fresh sites” – new installs that have not yet had any posts, pages, widgets, or customizer settings updated (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/11/30/starter-content-for-themes-in-4-7/">read more</a>).
Edit Shortcuts
Visible icons appear to show you which parts can be customized right there while live previewing. Click on a shortcut and get straight to editing, no decoding of widget area names or extra clicks needed. Paired with starter content, getting started with customizing your site is faster than ever (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/11/10/visible-edit-shortcuts-in-the-customizer-preview/">read more</a>).
Video Headers
WordPress 4.7 extends the Custom Header feature to introduce support for video. Video headers play automatically, loop by default, and don't have sound. They work best when paired with an image, so they can progressively enhance the experience when video is supported (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/11/26/video-headers-in-4-7/">read more</a>).
Smoother Nav Menu Building
Many primary navigation menus for sites contain links to the pages of your site. But what happens when you don't have any pages yet? Now you can add new pages while building nav menus instead of leaving the customizer and abandoning your changes. Once you've published your customizations, you'll have new pages ready for you to fill with content (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/06/16/feature-proposal-content-authorship-in-menus-with-live-preview/">read more</a>).
Custom CSS
Sometimes you just need a few more visual tweaks to make your site perfect, or a plugin adds something that doesn't quite look right with your site. WordPress 4.7 allows you to instantly see changes while adding custom CSS to give your site that polish (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/10/11/feature-proposal-better-theme-customizations-via-custom-css-with-live-previews/">read more 1</a> and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/11/26/extending-the-custom-css-editor/">2</a>).
User Admin Languages and Locale Switching
Users can select their preferred locale (language) when editing their profile. The back end will be displayed in the user's individual locale while the locale used on the front end equals the one set for the whole site (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/11/07/user-admin-languages-and-locale-switching-in-4-7/">read more</a>).
PDF Thumbnail Previews
Managing your document collection is easier with WordPress Version 4.7, which now shows preview thumbnails instead of a generic icon for PDFs in the media library (<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2016/11/15/enhanced-pdf-support-4-7/">read more</a>).
For additional details on this release visit <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.7" target="_blank">https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.7</a> or to download visit <a href="https://wordpress.org" target="_blank">https://wordpress.org</a>

WordPress 4.7 Now Available - Features a New Default Theme & Usability Improvements

Last week, the Solodev team attended Amazon Web Services re:Invent, where some 30,000 engineers, startups, executives, consultants, partners, and techies from around the world converged on the Las Vegas Strip to hear the latest and greatest innovations from the brilliant minds at <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amazon Web Services</a>, the world’s #1 provider of cloud computing services.
Immediately after our arrival in Las Vegas we found ourselves at an airport covered in AWS Branding, the most notable of which was their new SaaS Subscriptions Program, which Solodev was selected to participate in among a select number of partners. After a five-hour flight across the country, we were greeted with the Solodev logo at every turn from the airport all the way to the conference. What an arrival.
Our direction was clear at re:Invent, show the power of Solodev, and how AWS strengthens that power, to the world. Being the 5th booth once entering the exhibition hall, it was difficult to avoid our booth and within seconds of the doors opening, our booth was packed. I observed how energetic and excited everyone was and most of all, curious about all of the AWS Partners and what they did that was so special. For Solodev, the answer to “What do you do?” was simple.
<blockquote>“We’re the only web development platform (CMS) fully optimized for the AWS Cloud and its entire product suite, giving you unparalleled levels of security, scalability, and redundancy while you build, launch, manage, and host amazing websites and mobile apps in the cloud with Solodev.”</blockquote>
AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels announced a series of new products and services to add to their already impressive product suite, the most game changing of which are the newly announced <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/codebuild/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AWS CodeBuild</a>, a fully managed build service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy, and <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/xray/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AWS X-Ray</a>, which makes it easy for developers to analyze the behavior of their production, distributed applications with end-to-end tracing capabilities. In addition, AWS made tremendous announcements in the Big Data, Serverless Computing, and Artificial Intelligence spaces with the product launches of AWS Glue, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Athena, Amazon Lex, and Amazon Polly.
On a less technical level, the focus of the conference was on how AWS Partners like Solodev can provide better products and services by leveraging the tremendous power of the AWS Cloud and its entire product suite and the implications this rapidly evolving infrastructure in the cloud can provide both existing, new, and emerging startups and organizations. Several AWS Partners spoke at the conference about how leveraging the AWS Cloud empowered their businesses to scale, streamline their cloud infrastructure, and provide better experiences to customers and expand their businesses faster with the power of Amazon Web Services.
The relationship between AWS and its partners isn’t a one-way street as Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO, stressed the fact that all partner relationships with AWS are mutually beneficial and how important partner feedback is to continuous product innovation at Amazon. “The reality is, we are going to direct business to our partners who are committed and who really understand the platform because our customers want partners who understand the details of our platform.” said AWS CEO Andy Jassy.
With the leading minds of tech at a conference held by the leading provider of the most important piece of the engineering puzzle, cloud infrastructure, in the same place at the same time there was a sense of urgency that agility, artificial intelligence, big data, migration to the cloud, the importance of partnerships, and pushing the cloud to its limits through added layers in cloud infrastructure were at the forefront of the messaging coming from AWS speakers and executives.
Although attending re:Invent was extremely informative we were able to accomplish much more than learning about technology trends, new AWS products, and how our fellow AWS partners had leveraged Amazon’s infrastructure to scale and iterate. Being the only web experience platform for the enterprise built for the AWS Cloud makes us stand out and as a result, we were able to meet with Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services, who kindly tweeted our Amazon Marketplace listings after finding out about Solodev from a co-worker.
AWS re:Invent also gave us a chance to expand existing partnerships (AWS, New Relic, Atlassian, Cloudability, DataDog, Zenefits) and explore new ones. An unexpected amount of web development shops were falling over each other to learn about how they could use Solodev to manage their clients hundreds and even thousands of websites while others were looking for new CMS platforms to migrate to. The end result, Solodev was named one of the most talked about products debuting at AWS re:Invent 2016 in <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/3144911/cloud-computing/cool-tech-at-aws-re-invent.html#slide47" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">“Cool tech at AWS re:Invent” by Network World</a> within 24 hours of landing.
The major takeaway from the event is that the world has embraced cloud computing and much like the space race of the 1960s, it seems like everyone in tech is competing to build the best cloud products and services available and leverage the power the cloud provides to build amazing products. So it can be broken down like this.
<ul>
<li>If you’re still on premises, you’re behind</li>
<li>If you’re considering the cloud, it’s time to pull the trigger</li>
<li>If you’re already in the cloud, make sure you’re in the best cloud environment</li>
<li>If you’ve mastered the cloud, leverage its power to build new amazing products and services on top of cloud infrastructure</li>
</ul>
Solodev is honored to have gained so much recognition in 2016 from winning a series of web design awards to clinching the <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">People’s Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS</a>. 2016 also saw Solodev named among America’s fastest growing private companies by the Inc. 5000 for the second year in a row as well as being among a select number of AWS partners to join their newly announced SaaS Subscriptions Program. Going into 2017, Solodev has 5 listings on the AWS Marketplace, including our latest build of Solodev for Windows on the AWS Marketplace.
About Solodev
<a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Solodev</a> is the world’s first on-demand web experience platform created by developers for developers. It allows organizations to create amazing websites with unparalleled levels of security, scalability and total design freedom.

AWS re:Cap: Solodev goes “all in” at AWS re:Invent  2016

The list building needs of large publications and high-traffic sites — the ones that get hundreds of thousands to millions of pageviews per month — are different from most websites.
Among all the other things, such sites require a <a href="http://digioh.com/">list building solution</a> that is scalable, speedy, and reliable. If you too are looking for a lead generation tool but don't really know what features to look for in it, run the options you’ve shortlisted through the following feature checklist. It lists the must-haves and nice-to-have features in a lead generation tool that actually gets results.
How do I know?
Well, at <a href="http://digioh.com/">Digioh</a>, we serve some of the biggest online publishers including the likes of <a href="http://www.healthline.com/">Healthline</a> and <a href="http://www.nascar.com/">Nascar</a>. We talk to publishers every day and work with them to help them meet their list growth targets with Digioh.
I hope I’ve got you on board now. So, let’s look at the features.
<h2>#1. Doesn’t affect ad revenue</h2>
Lots of publishers show interstitial ads (ads that cover the full screen). These ads generate a large part of their revenue. Publishers almost always reserve such ad slots for ads and don’t even consider showing opt-in forms in them because they view it as REVENUE LOSS. Which it is … but ONLY when there’s an ad to show. But the truth is that it’s not always that a publisher has an ad to feature.
In such cases where a publisher doesn’t have an ad to feature, the publisher doesn’t just not make ad money, but also loses an excellent chance to get subscribers because interstitials are awesome at getting subscribers.
The biggest publisher in the faith marketplace, Salem Web Network, <a href="http://digioh.com/blog/how-salem-web-network-averages-5k-engaged-subscribers-a-day-with-digioh/">lost thousands of subscribers</a> because of reserving the interstitial slot exclusively for ads. But when it switched to Digioh, it was able to use the same interstitial slot for showing both ads and signup forms. This became possible because of Digioh's ad suppression feature. Digioh can understand when an interstitial ad is about to fire, and it suppresses the signup form in all such instances. Likewise, at times when there are no upcoming ads, Digioh shows signup forms.
Samantha Royer, Senior Marketing Manager, Salem Web Network tells:
<blockquote>
“We’ve historically lost out on anywhere from 5-10k subscribers in a month having this suppression feature available to us. Now that we’ve more than doubled our email growth, that could cost us anywhere from 10-20k+ monthly subscribers pending the duration of the ad buy.”
</blockquote>
Feature check:
Ability to use the same interstitial slot to show ads as well as opt-in forms (and making sure no ad revenue is lost)
<h2>#2. Is mobile friendly (and has lead generation tools that are safe to use despite Google’s latest mobile lightbox guidelines)</h2>
Until now, publishers mainly complained about how browser-based ad blockers got in the way of their ads and signup forms (especially interstitials). However, they now have a new challenge to overcome to save their mobile subscriptions. From next year, Google will penalize <a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html">sites that use intrusive lightboxes on mobile devices</a>.
So, your mobile organic traffic could get hit if you use wrong lead generation tactics on mobiles like:
<ol>
<li>
Show a lightbox that covers the full screen
</li>
<li>
Display an interstitial that a user has to dismiss to be able to access content
</li>
<li>
Use welcome mat kind of opt-in forms, where the fold area of your mobile site is nothing but an opt-in form
</li>
</ol>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/capture.png" />
While you’ll have to be cautious, you obviously can’t stop showing opt-in forms on mobiles because a big part of your audience could, in fact, be accessing your site from their mobile devices. The leading publisher in the trucking domain, Overdrive, <a href="http://digioh.com/blog/how-overdrive-collects-100-emails-a-week-on-mobile-alone-with-digiohs-mobile-friendly-lightboxes/">gets as many as 400+ subscribers a month from its mobile popups alone with Digioh</a>.
Digioh doesn't just have mobile friendly popups, but we’ve recently rolled out an entire suite of mobile lead generating tools to keep our users’ mobile list growth potential intact.
Feature check:
SEO-compliant set of mobile lead generation tools
<h2>#3. Can read cookie values to identify subscribers from other visitors</h2>
Publishers often have multiple offers to promote to their visitors. Not only that, they’ve several offers to cross-sell to their existing subscribers too. For example, if a visitor is a subscriber, you’ll try to cross-sell another complimentary subscription to them. Or, you might try to sell tickets to the latest online or local event. In case they aren’t a subscriber, you might want to give them a personalized subscription offer.
But to make the right offer to the right visitor, you need information about the visitor’s subscription status. This information can be found via cookie data.
A tool like Digioh can read cookie data to understand if someone has already subscribed. And you can use this knowledge to decide which offer to show — the cross-sell offer or the subscription offer.
Paul Daniel from the Overdrive team tells how Overdrive uses information about a user’s subscription status to determine the offer to make:
<blockquote>
“Right now, we are primarily segmenting non-subscriber visitors to our website so that we can target them for newsletter and magazine subscriptions. We have also run a limited amount of promotions to current subscribers that cross-sell paid products. The conversion rates have been excellent.”
</blockquote>
Feature check:
Cookie data reading
<h2>#4. Can make targeted offers</h2>
One of the biggest list building challenges that a publisher site faces is to engage a highly diverse audience. Even though the audience is specific to a niche, it still has many segments that have varied interests.
Take the popular gaming niche publisher GameRant, for example. Although the site is about gaming in general, its readers comprise lovers of different games. There are readers who love Pokemon, while there are those who’re fans of Call of Duty. When Gamer Rant showed a generic opt-in lightbox to its visitors, it got just 30 signups/day. Vic, GameRant chief, observed, “A generic sitewide pop up did not work very well.“
But once it started making targeted offers, i.e., personalizing opt-in offers on the content of the pages a user was reading, it saw its <a href="http://digioh.com/blog/how-game-rant-jumped-to-120-signups-a-day-with-digiohs-advanced-targeting-features/">subscriptions jump to almost 120 signups each day</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/capture-1.png" />
Digioh helps you make targeted offers based on:
<ul>
<li>
The posts or pages a reader lands on
</li>
<li>
Their browsing or site visit history 
</li>
<li>
Location
</li>
<li>
Referral source
</li>
</ul>
And many other parameters.
Of all these targeting parameters, the referral detection feature deserves a special mention because every publisher has online partners that send dedicated recurring traffic. Obviously, different referrals send different kinds of traffic that have different interests and content preferences.
Showing a generic opt-in offer to such a diverse referral traffic doesn’t get great results. To maximize the lead generation opportunities in these cases, it’s important to personalize opt-in offers based on the referrals.
Digioh offers referral detection right out of the box.
<h2>#5. Integrates with Google Analytics (or other analytics software)</h2>
Sometimes the biggest challenge that publishers face is not to get emails, but it’s to get quality subscribers. It’s to find subscribers who don’t just sign up for the free version but also upgrade to the premium one, or those who buy the recommended or advertised services and products.
Calculating a subscriber’s quality in terms of the money they spend or their engagement metrics with your site is possible with mapping their journey and tracking their purchases and interactions with your website.
Digioh can gauge such quality because it can fire goals in any analytics software and track them to conversion. These goals could be monetary values or ad clicks too.
Feature check:
Measuring lead quality
<h2>#6. Can create accounts for subscribers</h2>
Creating subscriber accounts helps publishers in monetizing their lists better. Moreover, when these accounts have a subscriber’s information like their city or country, they’re even more helpful in pitching advertisers or for giving them more insights into your lists (so they can pay you higher).
However, you’ll agree that it’s one thing to get an email … but getting someone to signup for an account is a completely different story.
But a well-thought-out lead generation tool like Digioh can dynamically create a user account once a visitor signs up for your list. Also, Digioh fetches the subscriber’s location from their IP address and adds this information to the account. (The account password is generated in real time by Digioh.)
Feature check:
Automatic backend account creation
<h2>#7. Can create thousands of personalized opt-in offers dynamically</h2>
Online publishers have thousands of articles contributed by hundreds of writers. Not only that, there are also tens of categories, and many more tags.
All these are excellent parameters for personalizing opt-in forms. For example, you can personalize an opt-in form based on the name of the columnist whose story a visitor seems to be reading.
But as you can imagine, this could mean creating 100s of opt-in form copies, which is almost impossible. Dynamic personalization is the solution here. In dynamic personalization, all you need to do is create a template opt-in form. You can create something like:
Sign up to get all our &lt;tag&gt; stories in your inbox.
And then the lead generation tool fills out this tag by fetching the relevant values from the content the user is currently browsing.
For example, in Digioh, a user can set Digioh to choose the value of the category a user is reading and fill it into the template. So, ‘Sign up to get all our &lt;tag&gt; stories in your inbox’ becomes ‘Sign up to get all our presidential campaigns stories in your inbox’ if the reader is reading a story from the presidential elections category.
You can use any value to set this rule. Tags, author’s name, anything.
Feature check:
Dynamic opt-in offer personalization
<h2>In addition to these features, you’ll also need a dedicated account manager…</h2>
Just checking a tool for its support options might not be wise. Because although most lead generation solutions of this scale offer good support, it’s not the same as having a dedicated account manager. A dedicated account manager can help you get started immediately and work with you to devise a personalized lead generation plan.
Digioh has been assisting lead generation of several thousands of publishers and is proud to offer a dedicated manager and priority 1-on-1 access to all our customers.
<h2>So are these all the features you need in your list building solution? And is Digioh perfect for your website?</h2>
Well, it turns out that no list of features can actually cover everything you need. At Digioh, we’ve custom coded a lot of features based on the needs of our readers.
In fact, our power users tell other users that “[they shouldn’t] be afraid to ask for help or pitch new ideas, because even if Digioh doesn’t have the capability to fulfill a specific need, they always have suggestions with suitable alternatives or are willing to help brainstorm how to make it possible.”
We understand that different publishers have different KPIs, and so we don’t just help them setup lightboxes according to their needs, but also help them optimize their lead generation efforts.
Now to find out if Digioh is the best list building solution for you, <a href="https://digioh.com/Demo">signup for a free Digioh demo</a>. Once you fill the form, our marketing team will contact you about the next step.

The publisher’s 7-point checklist to choosing a list building tool (and how Digioh scores on it)

ZorinOS is an up and coming Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that has begun to really catch on with users everywhere. With a visually attractive appearance and plenty of personalization options, it is quickly becoming the next best thing since Linux Mint hit the scene. Today, I'm going to take a look at ZorinOS 12 – Ultimate Edition from a user perspective.
Before I get into this review, let me just say that this is not intended to be a review from a system administrator point of view but rather that of a user. I've been using Linux for over 20 years but I am no sysadmin so I won't pretend to be one and I want to make that clear from the get go. If, however, you are looking to see what ZorinOS has to offer from a user perspective, read on.
Installation is identical to that of Ubuntu so I'm not going to bore you by showing a bunch of screenshots of it, rather I'll just tell you that it's identical and worked without a hitch for me. One thing I did find surprising was that during installation I selected the “Install alongside Windows 10” option which, in the past, has never worked successfully for me on this machine. I was pleasantly surprised to see that upon reboot after installation, I had the option to either boot Zorin or Windows 10. Whether that's a fluke or whether the Zorin developers managed to get it to work a bit better, I was pleased to see I can now dual boot successfully. (On a side note, if the developers have indeed improved this functionality, let me know and I'll of course update this review accordingly).
Upon first boot, I was greeted with the screen below:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zorinos_12_review_-_1_1323x0-is.png" />
As you can see, it's a nice, clean desktop with a single bar across the bottom. The menu, when clicked on looks like this:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zorinos_12_review_-_2_1323x0-is.png" />
Zorin is powered by the Gnome Shell and as such has <a href="http://zoringroup.com/blog/2016/11/18/zorin-os-12-core-and-ultimate-are-here-our-biggest-release-ever-2/" target="_blank">similar functionality</a> with regards to window management, hot keys etc. Where it differs, however, is in the variety of customizations that have been integrated. Specifically, items such as desktop extensions to view thumbnails when hovering over minimized windows and music integration within the notifications panel, to name a few.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/familiarity.png" />
From a design aesthetics point of view, it's a beautiful desktop. Integration with one of my personal favorite icon themes, Paper, also helps give Zorin OS a modern, beautiful look.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/icons_1.png" /> 
Some Zorin OS specific apps are also included within the distribution such as Zorin Appearance which lets you customize panel arrangement, color schemes and a ton of other options allowing you to create a truly “uniquely yours” desktop experience.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/zorin_os_review_6-1_bbgnex.png" alt="zorin os 12 review" />
Here's a look at a couple of the other layouts available:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zorin_os_review_7.png" alt="Zorin OS 12 Review" /> 
Or perhaps you prefer a dock style, similar to Mac OS:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zorin_os_review_8.png" alt="Zorin OS 12 Review" /> 
What's also interesting about this release is the offering of both an Ultimate edition and a Core edition, a move that I think is a smart one. The Ultimate edition offers additional business apps, over 20 games, some additional layout options for your panels, video background wallpapers (which are very cool) AND premium support. The total cost of €19 make it a reasonable investment.
Some of the games included in the Ultimate Edition:
<ul>
<li>Airstrike</li>
<li>Armagetron Advanced</li>
<li>Brutal Chess</li>
<li>Extreme Tux Racer</li>
<li>Frets on Fire</li>
<li>Frozen-Bubble</li>
<li>Gweled</li>
<li>Minetest</li>
<li>Neverball</li>
<li>Neverputt</li>
<li>Pingus</li>
<li>Quadrapassel</li>
<li>SuperTux 2</li>
<li>SuperTuxKart and more.</li>
</ul>
All of these, during my testing, have run flawlessly and looked very good on my Alienware box that I use for testing. Of course, if you don't have the cash or don't want to support the developer without testing it first, you can always download the Core edition and try things out for free before upgrading to the Ultimate edition.
Overall in my testing, I've found the system to be very smooth and impressively functional. No major bugs have reared their ugly heads as of yet and in general, it feels like a solid release. I'd encourage anyone on the fence to give this distribution a try and see if it's something that may appeal. Being based on Ubuntu, you've got some helpful inclusions such as the driver manager and excellent hardware support. Leave a comment below with your experiences, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this release as well.
Website: <a href="https://zorinos.com/" target="_blank">https://zorinos.com/ </a>

Zorin OS 12 Review

Open source is the future
In 2016, any person who is well-informed about tech space will no longer engage in open source vs. proprietary arguments. While he or she can still take the side of proprietary software the trend is clearly seen: open source becomes mainstream, such IT giants as Google, Facebook, Apple use open source infrastructure; companies trust their content management to open source systems; at the same time its quality outpaces the one of proprietary code.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/opensourcelogo.png" />As of 2016 the following companies are investing deeply in open source: IBM, Cisco, VMware, Intel, Huawei, NEC, HPE, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Red Hat, Citrix, Oracle, EMC, AT&amp;T, Google, Facebook, China Unicom, China Mobile and Telefonica. (Source networkworld.com) 
Open source software advantages are numerous: the product is being constantly improved by thousands of developers all across the world, a business owner can clearly see “what’s in the trunk” and adapt the product to his or her eCommerce store needs anytime.
Nevertheless, for those who consider eCommerce systems to be just a tool for selling their goods or services, open source products can be still suspicious. Read on to see how we dispel doubts about open source by examining concerns related to it.
Open source doesn't mean free
Open source does not always mean free. There are paid open source solutions and so-called “freemium” products. “Freemium” models are used as a bait: they act as gateways to paid versions.
Some platforms come for free but have growing hidden fees like payment percentage, paid bandwidth, and cancellation fees. Moreover, the chosen plans tend to grow when the number of orders or revenue of your web-store increases, so expect something unexpected in your bills at the end of the month.
But be sure: nopCommerce is both free and open source. The only fee we accept is for removing “powered by nopCommerce” notice from the footer. And even this is a pure aesthetical decision not affecting the performance of the webstore in case of either presence or absence.
What should I look at in open source platforms
The head of CMS Critic, Mike Johnston, wrote a great article <a href="/how-to-select-the-best-open-source-cms/">“How to select best open source CMS</a>”, highlighting five points:
<ul>
<li>Stability: Is the CMS stable? Will it last for the long-term?</li>
<li>Support: Can I get the help I need?</li>
<li>Cost: What’s it going to cost me?</li>
<li>Flexibility: Can I move it, change it, or tweak it?</li>
<li>Security: Will my sensitive material be safe?</li>
</ul>
We think that the same points are equally fair for open source eCommerce platforms, so we will examine how nopCommerce fulfills these requirements.
Stability
nopCommerce is around since 2008 and is not going to leave the eCommerce scene. At the moment the system powers more than 27.000 sites all over the world and aims for more exposure. nopCommerce is being steadily developed and has a new version released every half a year. The system is developed in ASP.NET stack and closely follows Microsoft trends. Yet the nopCommerce team is well-aware that new technologies must be compatible with all old components, as well as secure and mature. That’s why nopCommerce is using latest technologies only when they become well-tested, connected and reliable, always keeping end users in mind.
Support
nopCommerce has two means of support, paid premium support in two languages, and free support from the product team and community on the forum. The premium support can be purchased separately and is also included in a Gold Solution partnership. As for the free support on the forums, it is also quite active with 1,700 new forum posts and 400 new topics per month.
nopCommerce also runs its own developer certification program, so there is a warranty of hiring a qualified person even for small projects. The nopCommerce team hosts an annual conference called nopCommerce Days since 2015 gathering partners and store owners from all over the world in order to exchange new ideas and support each other. The platform is far more than stable, it is rapidly developing and conquering new grounds.
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Security
We believe that an eCommerce platform must be secure both from external attacks as well as guarantee internal confidentiality, i.e. it must not store or collect shop-owners’ data.
Concerning the first point, nopCommerce immediately reacts with a free security patch for the community in case of any threat. Concerning the second one , nopCommerce, being a hosted solution, technically does not have access to platform’s merchants’ sensitive data like revenue and personal information.
Flexibility 
nopCommerce is a very flexible out of the box solution. It suits small businesses, yet store owners can have an access to the whole functionality close to enterprise shopping cart for free. That means they can manage the advanced catalog with no limits on a number of products and their attributes, apply different inventory methods, use a great variety of promotional tools like cross-marketing and tier prices, adjust local tax settings and much more. To switch between the advanced functionality and a simplified mode, it only requires to flick the “basic” and “advanced” switch. So no matter whether you are just a beginner in eCommerce or already managing a million-a-day visitors store, you can adapt all nopCommerce features according to your store needs.
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We also see no limits for custom work that can be done in nopCommerce. Just check out our <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/showcaseliveshops.aspx?utm_source=how-to-stop-worrying&amp;utm_medium=showcase-link&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">showcase</a> to find the deeply-customized corporate sites and sophisticated governmental portals, or watch the videos from nopCommerce Days 2016, where our solution partners present complex cases they solved with nopCommerce.
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nopCommerce supports a lot of country-specific features out of the box, like RTL-support or local EU taxation or specific country requirements like PanGv. If some extras seem to be missing in nopCommerce, they can always be found in our <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/marketplace.aspx?utm_source=how-to-stop-worrying&amp;utm_medium=marketplace-link-1&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">marketplace</a> with more than 1400 plugins and themes being supplemented daily.
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Price
Okay, let us give you a full picture. nopCommerce is free itself, but the price of running a store is also comprised of platform implementation prices and the price of plugins and themes you want to use. Yet, if one checks <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/marketplace.aspx?utm_source=how-to-stop-worrying&amp;utm_medium=marketplace-link-2&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic" target="_blank">nopCommerce marketplace</a> and compares the prices with those of other popular eCommerce platforms, he/she would notice that nopCommerce can boast of generally lower prices on plugins and same prices for graphic themes. And we don’t even take into account enterprise carts with their far higher prices. nopCommerce paid services are also not that costly compared to competitors – premium support price, for instance, varies from $66 to $99 per month.
Conclusion
So, after this short journey into the world of open source software, we hope that it is well-seen that switching to or starting with nopCommerce is a wise choice, a well-made bet on the global open source trend. It is time for all business people to shrug off the prejudice that open source is done by “scruffy guys coding in their basements” and everything that is free is amateur-made. Running a business costs, but we can ease you from the burden of eCommerce platform fees and make you forget about what does “vendor lock-up” mean.
Explore the features of nopCommerce yourself on our <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/?utm_source=how-to-stop-worrying&amp;utm_medium=bottom-link&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic" target="_blank">official website</a>.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Using Open Source Software

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