Articles - Page 83

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

matt-garrepy

<img alt="zoho-crm" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/zoho-crm-e1469709912237.png" />
Zoho, the company behind <a href="https://www.zoho.com/crm/?utm_source=N9518.1911883CMSCRITIC&amp;utm_medium=website-cpm&amp;utm_content=308514601&amp;utm_term=73083917&amp;utm_campaign=132038047">Zoho CRM</a>, has launched <a href="https://www.zoho.com/salesinbox/">Zoho SalesInbox</a>, the first email client designed exclusively for salespeople.
Zoho SalesInbox derives customer data from Zoho CRM or Salesforce to automatically prioritize customer conversations, ensure salespeople never miss an important email, and provide full context for every email conversation.
Zoho SalesInbox works with Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, Zoho Mail and other standard email hosting services.
Here's a video to introduce Zoho's newest product:
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0sCiZIF0MDA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>“Transforming How Salespeople Interact with Email”</h2>
Zoho SalesInbox reinvents the conventional email inbox and organizes emails according to how important those emails are for a salesperson, enabling them to prioritize and focus on important customers and deals.
In addition, Zoho SalesInbox provides easy access to all customer and deal information and lets salespeople easily update their CRM data with a simple drag and drop.
Here's a summary of the key features of Zoho SalesInbox:
<h3>Hands-free Email Prioritization &amp; Organization</h3>
With an innovative multi-column inbox layout, Zoho SalesInbox automatically organizes incoming emails according to the information stored in the user's CRM account — such as the deal status, size and closing date. This way, salespeople can easily spot the emails that require immediate attention.
Zoho SalesInbox allows salespeople to view and sort emails according to a number of criteria – such as lead source or associated customer value. In addition to the two predefined folders — Customers and Deals Closing This Month– salespeople can create their own dynamic folders so they can easily find the emails they are looking for.
<h3>Context in Every Email</h3>
With Zoho SalesInbox, salespeople can view the timeline of previous conversations with a particular contact, the size of their current and past deals, overdue tasks, missed calls, support tickets raised, social media mentions and other relevant information related to the contact – all from their email client.
<h3>CRM Updates Right from the Inbox</h3>
Salespeople can now take actions that previously required logging into their CRM, right from their inbox. When an email comes in from an interested lead, the salesperson can simply drag and drop the email from one column to another. By then adding some essential information, an opportunity is created in their CRM system while keeping their inbox organized.
<h3>Reminders and Response Watch</h3>
Most email clients allow users to set-up reminders for emails they need to get to. Zoho SalesInbox is unique in that it lets salespeople set reminders for emails they need to receive.
Whenever they send an email to a customer or prospect, they can set a time limit during which they can expect to hear back. Zoho SalesInbox, through the Response Watch functionality, constantly monitors the incoming email, and if it doesn't detect a reply during the allotted time, it lets the user know so they can follow-up. This allows salespeople to keep their deals moving.
<h3>Mobile Client Integration</h3>
Zoho CRM users can configure Zoho SalesInbox on their iOS and Android devices and map it to all popular email services, including Zoho Mail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Outlook.
This enables salespeople to receive important information about the person sending the email and their accounts and associated deals, while still using the mobile email client they like. Zoho SalesInbox creates folders for “Closing This Month,” “Customers” and “Deals” to be shown along with the folders the user already has.
<h3>Helps Salespeople Send Better Emails</h3>
Thanks to its integration with Zoho CRM, Zoho SalesInbox users can receive detailed insights into how the emails they send are performing. Users can also see statistics about what email templates are performing best with customers and can receive detailed numbers on how many emails have been opened, read or clicked through.
<h2>Making Peace Between Email and CRM</h2>
Zoho's Chief Evangelist, Raju Vegesna, sees SalesInbox as the ideal solution to an old problem:
<blockquote>
“Email and CRM are the two pieces of software that are the most critical for salespeople. Yet, they usually don't work together very well.
With Zoho SalesInbox, we're solving that problem and creating a new product category that transforms how salespeople use and interact with email.”
</blockquote>
Zoho SalesInbox is currently available by request for all Enterprise customers of Zoho CRM and Salesforce users. SalesInbox is free of charge for Zoho CRM Enterprise subscribers and is $15 per user per month for Salesforce users.
To request access to Zoho SalesInbox, and find additional details, check out <a href="http://zoho.com/salesinbox">zoho.com/salesinbox</a>.

Zoho SalesInbox Launched: World's First Email Client Designed Exclusively for Salespeople

mike-johnston

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/1200x630bf-e1469621849304.jpg" /> Viralwoot is the newly released <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1109697214" target="_blank">iOS app</a> that's helping marketers, bloggers and brands to schedule Instagram and Pinterest posts. The app also allows users to manage and promote Pinterest content, monitor Pinterest growth, increase their following and run influencer campaigns.
Originally released in 2013 as a desktop app, Viralwoot is a product of SLabs Technologies Pvt. Ltd – a globally recognized Pinterest and Instagram marketing solution helping over 70,000 brands including Buzzfeed, Alibaba, Shopify and Trivago.
Thanks to this iOS release, Viralwoot users can do the following directly from any iOS device:
<ul>
<li>Manage and monitor their account on-the-go.</li>
<li>Schedule Instagram and Pinterest posts.</li>
<li>Promote their Pinterest profile, boards, and pins to over 70,000 Pinterest users.</li>
<li>Gain marketing insight through Viralwoot’s Pinterest Analytics.</li>
<li>Create posts directly from within the app.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Catering to the Mobile Generation</h2>
The company's CEO Gaurav Sharma is hoping this move to iOS will resonate with marketers who are on the move more often than not:
<blockquote>
“With this new release we offer a comprehensive Instagram and Pinterest tool targeted towards today's mobile generation.”
</blockquote>
Instagram and Pinterest may not be of utmost importance to many brands, but for those who rely heavily upon visual content marketing, the importance of these two image sharing giants is only ever growing.
Instagram alone has <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/65939-20-instagram-stats-marketers-need-to-know/">over 300 million active monthly users</a>, and has recently rolled out a range of advertising options for brands. Pinterest on the other hand, surpassed <a href="http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pinterest-stats/">100 million active monthly users</a> back in 2015, and has always rung true with marketers pushing things like recipes, DIY tools, antiques, decorative pieces, furniture, and so forth.
Viralwoot is currently available for free, requiring iOS 8.0 or greater. It is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
For more information visit: <a href="https://saaslabs-dot-yamm-track.appspot.com/Redirect?ukey=1QT7hlMWJUtcjx0q5X_nDOQ32K-dQT6Ek2cKE2JCiGIY-0&amp;key=YAMMID-19376642&amp;link=https%3A%2F%2Fviralwoot.com%2F" target="_blank">viralwoot.com</a>.

Viralwoot for iOS Enables Pinterest and Instagram Post Scheduling

<img alt="brandcast" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-9.png" />
<a href="https://brandcast.com/home">Brandcast</a>, the code-free CMS for the enterprise market, is having a good year.
The San Francisco based startup <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160720005404/en">just got a boost in the form of $13.9M in new funding</a> to help fuel the “code-free movement” in the enterprise sector.
The need for large brands to deploy websites quickly (and without coding knowledge) is only growing, and Brandcast is one of the few platforms that is fulfilling that demand.
Here's a video on how it Brandcast can build a custom site, without code, ready for the market in ten minutes:
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/133069172"></iframe>
As news of the funding got out, I managed to grab an interview with the man at the helm of this new operation; Brandcast's CEO and Chairman, Richard Yanowitch.
<h2>Who is Richard Yanowitch?</h2>
<img alt="Brandcast" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/brandcast.jpg" />
Richard Yanowitch has an exceptional track record transforming early stage companies into category leaders, launching new technology platforms that generate tens-of-thousands of customers, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and result in the creation of multi-billion dollar enterprises.
Richard has served on numerous start-up boards and as Vice Chairman of publicly traded NDS Group (CSCO), with $635 million in sales and 3,400 employees, reporting to Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO, News Corporation.
Among Richard’s prior operating roles, he was Executive Vice President &amp; CMO of VeriSign, where he held key operational roles in scaling the company from a startup to $700 million in sales, 2,500 employees and more than 100,000 customers. Richard also served as Vice President of Marketing for Sybase (SAP), as it scaled from early product beta to $900 million in revenue, thousands of employees and enterprise customers. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in the Honors Program for Classical Studies from Swarthmore College.
<h2>An Interview With Richard Yanowitch</h2>
KI: Can you tell us a little bit about how Brandcast came about?
RY: We like to say Brandcast is as much of a design company as it is a technology company. The founders’ unique blend of SaaS, design and technology backgrounds allowed them to see that nobody was really tackling websites from the marketing perspective.
In 2012 when the company was founded, all enterprise software was quickly moving to the cloud, social and mobile content consumption was exploding like never before while all of the popular website platforms were created before the days of iPhone and Twitter. So, Hayes and Dan (Metzger and Lynch — the company founders, currently Chief Strategy and Chief Technology Officers at Brandcast) got a small team to start working on Brandcast.
Their idea was to create a design-driven website platform:
<ul>
<li>For non-technical users who don’t have to know anything about coding,</li>
<li>Built on the most advanced web technologies,</li>
<li>Simple enough for anyone to use,</li>
<li>Yet powerful enough for huge companies to pull enterprise content management into the cloud.</li>
</ul>
I’ve explained it before as “Salesforce for websites,” and, by the way, the founders got Marc Benioff (the founder of Salesforce where Hayes used to work), to back their idea from the very start.
I joined Brandcast over 16 months ago and this is what got me so excited: as an ex-CMO, it’s earthshaking to introduce a design-driven content marketing platform for non-technical users — built on the most advanced web technologies on the planet. The enthusiasm of Marc Benioff was also pretty contagious — this idea of giving all of the control and ownership to marketers and designers just makes perfect sense.
KI: Are there any features of Brandcast that you feel sets it apart from competitors?
RY: Brandcast is very different in a way that it’s a design- and marketing-led and owned platform with capabilities that suit enterprise customers’ needs. All fundamental architectural decisions were made in response to the growing SaaS trend and with new web technologies in place, such as HTML5 and React. So, unlike other platforms that were built on the languages used 15 years ago (like PHP), Brandcast is a cloud-based platform with all the benefits of SaaS: automatic updates and quick security fixes, access from any computer, portability and scalability on-demand.
However, what’s truly disruptive is the workflow that allows collaboration and completely removes the need for development. We speak to designers and marketers daily, and they say their hands are tied when building websites that are dependent on developers. Yesterday’s developer-centric legacy platforms make enterprise websites tedious to design, expensive to deploy, and dependent on developers for execution, and, as we know, nothing kills a good idea faster than an overloaded IT roadmap!
The biggest enterprise platform (Adobe Experience Manager) is powerful, but outdated, expensive and requires a lot of development resources (plus, was built in the times of different demands and technical capabilities). Other aging developer platforms no longer meet the business requirements or cannot offer the needed customization and other functionality that enterprises with high-visibility websites and millions of visitors need.
Brandcast solves these problems allowing creative teams to fulfill pressing marketing commitments in record time counting only on their own resources. We regularly hear from our clients that they find the speed, scale and control they get with Brandcast, groundbreaking.
KI: Marketing automation systems are the next big thing, but Brandcast comes with its own marketing features. Can you tell us a little bit more about them?
RY: Marketing automation systems have been around for many years now, and they are instrumental in helping marketers guide their customers to purchase. However, for marketing automation systems to be successful they need a steady stream of fresh content to bring back the potential customer to learn more. We make it easier and faster for marketers and designers to launch their marketing campaigns, landing pages, microsites, and keep their content uber fresh.
Second, we are in a really unique position with Brandcast as we are architecting a next generation platform from the ground-up for today’s business demands. We offer complimentary integrations with the most popular marketing tools like Salesforce, Marketo, Google Analytics, Optimizely, top social media platforms, SEO features and other tools; and continue to expand these marketing features based on the specific needs of creative teams and the latest trends. We also make sure that marketers and designers can set everything up on their own in minutes and without code, whether linking cloud apps, using SEO tools or setting up access permissions. Together Brandcast and marketing automation systems drive engagement across the entire marketing lifecycle.
KI: Your website talks about speeding up the creation cycle by removing the development stage totally. How exactly does Brandcast do that?
RY: When working on a website, marketing and design teams collaborate live on the Brandcast platform as if, for example, they’d be working on a Google Doc together. Marketing teams get to add their content directly and keep all of the information fresh by managing websites all on their own. Designers execute on their exact vision without going to developers each time for implementation. Deploy what you design — a radical idea! Thus, the whole layer of design translation into technology gets eliminated, and a project can get done weeks faster and for thousands of dollars less (development budget often makes up to 50% of the total project cost). Everyone instantly sees all of the changes and publishing the final version is a click away.
In fact, an initial design of the actual website that will go up later can be created in a matter of minutes, and completed within hours or days rather than weeks and months. The more sites you make, the more benefits you see with the economies of scale, reusable assets, and the radically reduced time you spend on deploying a website.
KI: Why is the “code-free movement” so relevant in 2016? Isn't coding becoming a broadly held skill?
RY: The reality is — creative people like marketers and designers are a different breed. Yes, some of them are certainly curious about coding or can learn how to code (if required). However, most likely, they would much rather spend their time on visualizing ideas and telling stories they’d like to share with their customers. And it’s imperative to do it in their natural workflow which doesn’t involve coding at all. A lot of things have been consumerized in the enterprise, but this area remains one of the last very stubborn ones still driven by yesterday’s developer-centric platforms.
Dependency on developers to execute on creative projects always adds time and complexity, and customers we work with clearly see an opportunity to do something that’s never been done before when they get their hands on the Brandcast platform. We know we are on the right track when we see marketers and designers constantly inventing new use cases of their own for the platform and getting really creative with the content, which a code-free platform enables them to do.
KI: How will the recently acquired funding help Brandcast to further this movement?
RY: It’s really all about scale for us. We have already landed dozens of customers including global brands like Lowe’s, Colliers and New York Fashion Week — these customers have high-visibility websites with millions of page views, and we’ve figured out how to scale the technology to meet their requirements.
We can’t wait to share Brandcast with more customers and help them be successful throughout the whole marketing cycle, and for that we need to continue to build our world-class engineering, design, and customer-facing functions. We said in our recent funding announcement that we see code-free and cloud-based Brandcast becoming a new standard for creative teams in the enterprise.

Discussing The Code-Free Movement with Brandcast CEO Richard Yanowitch

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ipad-820272_1280-2-e1469468616845.jpg" alt="ipad-820272_1280 (2)" />
When it comes to using technology for the purpose of organizational productivity, performing Gap Analysis is the best strategy for rectifying productivity and profits for said technology.
But what is a gap analysis, and why do organizations need to perform one for cloud technologies?
<h2>What is Gap Analysis?</h2>
A gap analysis is a step-by-step process for examining current use of technology, and researching whether the technology is being utilized to its fullest profit and productivity potential.
Organizations need to conduct gap analyses because, unfortunately, adoption of cloud-based technologies has dramatically outpaced organizations’ understanding of how they are best used to optimize profit and productivity levels. This discrepancy is especially true for organizations using enterprise content management (ECM) software, and document management software (DMS).
Although each organization will differ in its gap analysis for a number of reasons such as industry, organization size, and preexisting IT infrastructure, there are 4 core principles every organization using cloud based document management software (or any cloud-based software for that matter) should rely on when performing a gap analysis that can (and should) result in a bridging of the gap between current tech use and optimal tech use for the purpose of increasing productivity and, therefore, profits.
<h2>1. Objective Analysis of the Technology’s Current State</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/point-1.jpg" alt="point 1" />
This is the first and, non-coincidentally, the most difficult step in performing an effective gap analysis for cloud-based technologies. It can be hard to find fault in our own workings, especially if this fault has cost our organizations money. This is why the term “objective” is especially important in this step. However, the right re-correction can make up for and surpass these losses. A few important points for analysis in this step entail:
Examining most recent balance sheets, profit and loss statements, and other financial documentation, then comparing the numbers to those surmised in the months prior to cloud implementation. After accounting for any other changes that may be impacting revenue, such as onboarding or seasonal customer decline, an organization’s use of cloud technology for the purposes of productivity and profitability can be assessed.
Surveying employees to identify whether they’re incentivized to use the cloud to complete their work, or whether they rely on it to complete their projects – as well as examining whether all departments understand how to use the cloud – will also be beneficial.
<h2>2. Identify and Describe An Optimal Future State for Cloud Use</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/point-2.jpg" alt="Point 2" />
An optimal future state for cloud use (or correct state for cloud use) usually involves the following components:
<h3>The cloud is saving money on storage space</h3>
This will continue to be the case as data compression technology keeps pace with the adoption of cloud-based solutions in mass.
<h3>The cloud is saving money on electrical costs</h3>
Unlike on-premise(s) software, the cloud requires less bandwidth and energy to operate, reducing operational costs. So long as employees are buying in to the solution and using it, this step will be achieved.
And, ultimately, the most effective cloud usage requires that nearly all or all of organizations’ information is moved to the cloud: Splitting time and functions between the cloud and other methods of conducting business can prove costly to productivity, organization, collaboration, and interoperability.
<h2>3. Identify and Describe the Gap (If One Exists)</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/point-3-e1469470171158.jpg" alt="point 3" />
One of the easiest places to identify, describe, and ultimately close the performance gap with the cloud involves looking outside the walls of your own organization. You should extend your scope of interest to encompass what other companies are doing in similar industries to utilize the cloud effectively.
If they’re competitors, this information will be difficult to summon directly, but there are plenty of impartial resources to help leverage this information. What’s more, oftentimes the gap exists as a failure of interoperability between existing technologies/servers and the cloud itself.
For instance, it’s worth tracking whether all employees are buying-in to the cloud service you’ve implemented. One of the most frequent gaps is caused by many employees relying on antiquated methods of working despite their organization’s cloud adoption. Not only does this make it difficult to find and share files as a team, it adds confusion to storage methods, making duplicated information and the chaos it brings run rampant throughout all departments affected.
<h3>Do Employees “Get” the Technology You’ve Implemented?</h3>
Although the assumptive, post-implementation “go figure it out on your own” technique is IT departments’ most widely used “training” program, it often results in employees failing to understand both the significance of the technology, and the functionality it provides. Once this is identified, it’s possible to analyze deeper causes for the gap and how this gap can be analyzed and bridged through quarterly training/ensuring all new employees are trained on how to properly use the cloud service.
What’s more, a cloud “security phobia” may be preventing buy-in from the top down. Forbes recently reported that nearly 90% of the global workforce lacks understanding of how security applies to the cloud. It then follows as a sequitur that all the ethos of fear we see arising about cloud security is likely misplaced, unwarranted, and inapplicable to the contemporary business context.
Given that the security questions of the cloud have been refuted by experts in the industry, employees can be educated on this matter to feel safer using the technology as a means of not just collaborating, but entrusting their work to the cloud’s security, too.
However, it’s important to note that identifying and describing the gap in this stage of gap analysis requires the most care, as it’s the trickiest step. The difficulty arises in this stage due to the multitude of confounding variables that may arise. For instance, what may look like an operational failure may in fact be a failure to generate organizational buy in. Of all the stages, this stage requires the most effort and attention-to-detail, so tread carefully.
<h2>4. Canvass Remediation and Gap-Bridging Opportunities</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/point-4.jpg" alt="Point 4" />
Planning is the most crucial aspect of this step. It can be overwhelming trying to implement an organizational-wide plan to eliminate any productivity and profit gaps in cloud-based software.
However, the last step in this process is the easiest as it merely involves creating a plan to eliminate the gap, which involves:
<ol>
<li>Finding a solution to the gap.</li>
<li>Identifying an actionable roadmap to accomplish its closing.</li>
</ol>
Most organizations feel most comfortable visualizing the plan and incentivizing (through one means or another) employees to follow the guidelines.
The results of following this four plan can help organizations actualize the very reasons the cloud is such an effective technology: reduced operating costs, scalability across the organization, greater mobility and access to files/documentation, low cost data and information storage, and better collaboration – all of which lead to greater productivity and profits.
<hr />
This post is <a href="/advertising/">sponsored</a> by eFileCabinet. Find out more at <a href="http://www.efilecabinet.com/">efilecabinet.com</a>.

How to Carry Out Gap Analysis to Improve Cloud Productivity

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/squarespace-2.png" alt="squarespace" />
<a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">Squarespace</a> has rolled out some professionally designed page templates to speed up the time it takes to create common website pages, like the contact and about page.
Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders on the market, offering awesomely designed templates that are typically image-heavy; making it ideal for photographers, architects, food bloggers, and other professionals that rely upon visuals to convey messages.
<h2>Faster Website Building</h2>
By using a starter layout, you can build a page using a structure designed for a specific purpose, without spending too much time rearranging page elements. Starter layouts are independent of your template.
Each Starter Layout is made up of <a href="https://support.squarespace.com/hc/articles/206543757">blocks</a>. You can add your own content to the blocks, delete them, and add more blocks to align the pages with your website's look and feel.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-8.png" alt="sshot-8" />
Squarespace serves up the following range of page layouts for different purposes:
<ul>
<li>About: All-purpose, with a mix of body text, headers, and images</li>
<li>Contact: Different combinations of forms, maps, addresses, phone numbers</li>
<li>Details: All-purpose, with a mix of text and images arranged in different columns and rows</li>
<li>Features: Detailed layouts for features, services, or products</li>
<li>Photo Wall: Different layouts of Images Blocks that create varying gallery styles. These layouts are great for <a href="https://support.squarespace.com/hc/articles/220894547">creating thumbnail navigation</a>.</li>
<li>Team: Common layouts for team pages, featuring different combinations of headshots, names, and bios.</li>
<li>Misc.: Options for displaying a menu or a stocklist/multiple store locations on a page</li>
</ul>
This update plays into the hands of inexperienced website owners (otherwise known as the target market for website builder vendors). Not only does it prompt them to build pages that their visitor will expect to see, but it will give them a design that their visitors will be familiar with, too.
<h2>The Squarespace Engineering Blog</h2>
Squarespace also announced its new <a href="https://engineering.squarespace.com/">Engineering Blog</a>, which will give technical insights to those users who wish to peer behind the platform's elegant outer curtain.
Their <a href="http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/introducing-the-squarespace-engineering-blog">announcement</a> gave more insight into what the new blog will produce:
<blockquote>
“While Squarespace is widely recognized as a leader in the design space, many tend to overlook the incredibly strong engineering culture that supports our sophisticated platform. With more than one million paying customers, Squarespace sites get more than one billion page views every month. Serving such a high amount of traffic comes with unique challenges.
The Engineering Blog will cover everything from the daily life of our engineers to the technical challenges of scaling a Mongo database across multiple data centers.”</blockquote>
Considering Squarespace is a proprietary software designed mainly for newbie webmasters, I can't image too many of their users being interested in the technical goings-on over at Squarespace HQ. But hey, I'm all for transparency – in all its forms.
To find out more about Squarespace Starter Layouts, check out the <a href="https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206543687">Squarespace blog</a>.

Squarespace Unveils Starter Layouts to Speed Up Website Building

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-7-1.png" alt="sshot-7" />
Last year, when I first started development on rewriting <a href="https://mithra62.com/projects/view/backup-pro">Backup Pro</a> to be CMS agnostic, I knew I'd have to write a ton of code to do what I needed.
Not all of it though; as thanks to Composer and Packagist I'd be able stand on the shoulders of quite a few giants, but the CMS agnostic stuff didn't exist. So creating that was a huge part of the job. But I did it, and I was able to release Backup Pro 3 for Craft and EE 2&amp;3 last July (a year ago exactly it turns out).
And then my world exploded.
It quickly became apparent I was onto something interesting with the CMS agnostic library. Nearly every programmer I knew was curious about it and had questions. So I thought I'd put a <a href="https://mithra62.com/blog/view/going-platform-agnostic-or-beer-tastes-yummy">post together</a> and lay it all out; the flow, the logic, a few examples, and then get back to work on the WordPress version. But then I did something really stupid; I started thinking about the possibilities, and, even worse, I started thinking about responsibility.
<h3>The Possibilities</h3>
I'd spent the last 5 years working with ExpressionEngine almost exclusively. I was still doing some custom, framework based, projects but for the most part nearly everything I did was ExpressionEngine based. Oh. And the odd Craft site. And a few WordPress projects actually. And then there were those Magento and Zencart ones… Oh. Shit. And a Drupal site came up once I couldn't get out of too, now that I think about it. So I use quite a few CMSs professionally.
And that's actually not uncommon, at least for a specific subset of programmers (agency and freelancer programmers to be precise). For me though, I was working on all these systems for years, learning all their libraries and peccadilloes, and constantly reinventing the wheel(s) I invented last week. For example, ExpressionEngine 2 is CodeIgniter based, Craft is built on Yii, Magento is coded with evil in its heart, and WordPress is a time warp to a scarier, but oddly more comforting, time, so nothing's organically portable between them. Developers can't take most EE/Wp/Mag/etc code and use it in another CMS without a LOT of pain and overhead. And that's true across the entire CMS spectrum.
But, what if you could? What if there was a way to create CMS agnostic add-ons?
Agnostic development isn't exactly an unheard of idea; the video game industry does it, to mixed results in the past admittedly (but they've gotten better), so it is doable. It's also a job though, certainly, but with a bit of elbow grease, theoretically possible.
Not exactly a universal paradigm though, is it? For tools like Backup Pro, it makes sense, but abstract concepts like data models and front end architecture pretty much preclude even attempting most content based add-ons. As an example, <a href="https://mithra62.com/projects/view/export-it">Export It</a>, my data export module for ExpressionEngine, would be painful to make CMS agnostic since it relies on the individual CMS data model(s).
So I went to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/43go84/any_interest_in_a_cms_agnostic_moduleplugin/">Reddit and asked r/PHP</a> what the PHP developers there thought of the idea. And… got a resounding meh… Some liked the idea, others didn't, but I didn't leave thinking it'd be stupid to do, so chalked that up to a win. In the “ask your mother” sort of way, but still, a win nonetheless.
<h3>Our Responsibility As Programmers (Time to Get Preachy For a Minute)</h3>
Now, up to this point, all the above was a nagging itch on my brain. I had an idea others would find a CMS PHP framework useful, but being so busy with Backup Pro, the product, my time's finite. Do I even have time for something like this? And, seriously now, what benefit is there, to me, for doing it? Taking all the time to not only build a PHP framework, but also release it, document it, maintain it, nurture it, and promote it? And, worse, I have a long standing policy that I get paid for my time spent working. All my time spent working. Dammit.
So, what benefit would there be for me to put this together? Some people may say it's marketing. “You'll sell more copies of Backup Pro through simple association”, is a common refrain. And that's probably true, but only up to a point. I don't have numbers, obviously, but it's tough to imagine <a href="https://www.helpspot.com/">HelpSpot</a> flew off the shelf because of Laravel, or ExpressionEngine's success was due to CodeIgniter (in fact, did you even know HelpSpot was the benefactor of Laravel?). The people who care about such things aren't traditionally known as the same ones who have purchasing authority is my point. So I don't really buy that.
But then I recall, once again, that my career is built on open source. I write code in PHP, to deploy on Apache web servers, that use the MySQL database, rendered using HTML, CSS, &amp; JavaScript, abstracted with jQuery and Less/Sass, and viewed primarily on Webkit, Blink, and Gecko based web browsers (we're still pretending IE doesn't exist, right?).
Put another way, my career is built on open source (and the developers who put their lives into it) so it's selfish as fuck for me NOT to give back.
<h3>Dipping a Toe (Again)</h3>
So… I did it… Jaeger, officially, exists.
I'm not sure how successful I was, but a bare bones 0.1.X version exists up on GitHub now as <a href="https://github.com/jaeger-app/jaeger">jaeger-app</a>. It's also on <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/jaeger-app/bootstrap">Packagist</a> (and Travis and Scrutinizer…) as well, so it's ready for Composer use. And, to make matters worse, and throw a little more skin in the game, starting from Backup Pro 3.4 (which is in developer preview right now), <a href="/backup-pro-cms-agnostic-backups/">Backup Pro</a> will be Jaeger based. So I'm going all in at least insofar as Backup Pro is concerned.
I'll put together some detailed examples later, but for now, I just wanted to put it out there that Jaeger exists and is ready to start poking at. You can get Jaeger from <a href="https://github.com/jaeger-app/jaeger">GitHub</a> and <a href="https://packagist.org/packages/jaeger-app/">Packagist</a>.
<hr />
This post is <a href="/advertising/">sponsored</a> by Backup Pro. Find out more on <a href="https://mithra62.com/projects/view/backup-pro">their website</a>.

A Tale About The Jaeger PHP Framework

<img alt="sshot-5" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-5.png" />
<a href="https://www.acquia.com">Acquia</a>, the Drupal digital experience company trusted by the BBC and Australian government, has announced the launch of <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products-services/acquia-lightning">Acquia Lightning</a>, a free and open source distribution of Drupal that accelerates Drupal 8 development and makes it easy for non-technical users to manage experiences.
The Acquia Lightning distribution is available on <a href="https://www.acquia.com/free">Acquia Cloud Free</a>, where developers can start building with Drupal 8 today. It makes it easy for organizations to get started fast with Drupal 8, shaving weeks or months off development projects.
Jill Moraca, manager of Web Development Services in the Office of Information Technology at <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995573&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.princeton.edu%2f">Princeton University</a>, which participated in the beta trial of Acquia Lightning.
<blockquote>
“Lightning solves problems that would otherwise slow the development of content-rich websites on Drupal.
I like that we can now focus less on overcoming technology hurdles and more on client needs. Using Lightning makes getting started on new web development projects faster and easier. Our developers and content creators are excited about the future of Lightning.”
</blockquote>
<h2>Up to 20% Faster</h2>
Acquia Lightning is built to bring about enterprise-scale delivery of digital experiences.
Lightning helps organizations quickly build and customize four key components of digital experience delivery that all marketing and editorial teams require:
<ul>
<li>Drag-and-drop Layout: Create flexible, responsive layouts so everyone can be a site builder and create pages and experiences without developer intervention</li>
<li>Media Management: Create, upload, embed, and manage social media and digital assets</li>
<li>Content Workflow: Configure content workflows to streamline review and ensure editorial quality and add governance and control for publishing</li>
<li>Experience Preview: Conduct a comprehensive review before publishing content, campaigns, and cross-channel experiences</li>
</ul>
Chris Stone, chief product officer at Acquia, is hopeful that Lightning will help brands to deliver their digital experiences at a faster rate:
<blockquote>
“With Lightning, Acquia has done the work of providing a tightly integrated distribution that conforms to security best practices, enabling organizations to move faster in developing new applications on Drupal 8.
Developers can create powerful, easy-to-use publishing tools for their editorial and content teams, with drag and drop layouts, media management, configurable workflows and preview capabilities that make digital experience delivery come together. Hundreds of sites are already using Acquia Lightning, and we estimate Lightning removes 20 percent of the time required for every new Drupal 8 development project.”
</blockquote>
<h2>Get Started With Acquia Lightning For Free</h2>
Lightning is available on the <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995603&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.acquia.com%2ffree">Acquia Cloud Free</a> plan so you can get started today. Acquia Lightning is also available for download from <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995606&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.drupal.org%2fproject%2flightning">Drupal.org</a>, <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995609&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fgithub.com%2facquia%2flightning">GitHub</a>, or as part of a <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995612&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fgithub.com%2facquia%2flightning-project">Composer-based installer</a>.
There is also a recorded webinar available entitled, “<a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995591&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.acquia.com%2fresources%2fwebinars%2flightning-distribution-drupal-build-advanced-authoring-experiences-drupal-8">Lightning Distribution for Drupal</a>,” co-presented by Acquia's <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995594&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fdev.acquia.com%2fauthor%2fjohn-kennedy">John Kennedy</a> and <a href="http://ctt.marketwire.com/?release=1269213&amp;id=8995597&amp;type=1&amp;url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.drupal.org%2fu%2fbalsama">Adam Balsam</a>.
The press release for this story can be <a href="http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/acquia-releases-lightning-drupal-8-enabling-fast-starts-digital-experience-deployments-2143545.htm">found here</a>.

Up to 20% Faster: Acquia Lightning Speeds Up Drupal 8 Development Cycles

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-6-1.png" alt="sshot-6" /><a target="_blank" href="https://www.agilecrm.com/">Agile CRM</a>‘s free plan now allows for up to ten simultaneous users. The change gives a wider range of small and medium sized businesses a chance to adopt a serious CRM system at zero cost.Created by the team behind popular live chat product ClickDesk, Agile CRM is still a relatively young product, launching back in 2013. As the name suggests, it's a CRM – but it comes with marketing and service automation functionality out of the box.You can read my<a href="/agile-crm-review"> Agile CRM review</a> here for more details.<h2>“Sell &amp; Market Like the Fortune 500”</h2>Agile’s no-cost plan comes with all the sales and marketing essentials including contact level analytics, appointment scheduling, newsletters, web engagement, form builder, emails and basic reports. With the recent plan change, Agile CRM is now free for the first 10 users with the option to add more by way of paid subscription.The Founder and CEO of Agile CRM, Manohar Chapalamadugu, is hoping this move will give SMBs a chance to match the biggest players in their respective industries:<blockquote>“Agile grew by over 300% in just 13 months. We can now offer the service to more small businesses at no cost.By allowing 10 users to access the free plan, we hope companies can bring on multiple departments to use the software simultaneously to sell and market like the Fortune 500,” he adds.“A collaborative approach for decision-making is the future. More freedom to SMBs and more empowerment to their employees to stay attuned to the automation process is the key.”</blockquote>Agile CRM's updated free plan is detailed below – and as you can see, you get quite a lot of bang for absolutely no bucks:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-7.png" alt="agile crm pricing" />I was a fan of Agile's platform before today, but now that Agile CRM can cater for organizations with up to ten employees at no cost, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Agile CRM before any other free CRM.The original story can be <a target="_blank" href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/07/prweb13531623.htm">found here</a>.To get started with Agile CRM for free today, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.agilecrm.com/">visit their website</a>.

Agile CRM is Now Free For Up To 10 Users

Best Video Experience

Give your audience the best video experience

#000000

So you have managed to choose a CMS, perfect your website design, and invest in some banner advertising. But despite your efforts, your traffic remains frustratingly low.By definition, a content management system is built to manage content first and foremost. Some CMS do come bundled with extra functionality, but if you're serious about your marketing efforts, you'll need to find ways to bolster your chosen platform from the outside.Below, I've listed seven simple ways to add marketing features to your CMS which will help to bring in visitors, measure their activity, and convert them into customers.<h2>1. Landing Pages</h2>A landing page is a page that's designed with one specific goal in mind. Marketers often design one or more landing pages for specific types of visitors to use them as entry points for those coming in from banner ads and other specific sources.For example, if you have a banner ad that pushes a certain product, you can link that banner to a landing page on your website that does nothing but describe and sell that same product. Additionally, a website's homepage can also be a type of landing page – if designed correctly.Here's an example of CodeAcademy's landing page, which as you can see, is funnelling visitors towards a sign up form:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-3-1.png" alt="sshot-3" />Many landing page builders exist, but I'd recommend <a target="_blank" href="https://instapage.com/">Instapage</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://wishpond.com/">Wishpond</a> before any others. You can read my <a href="/wishpond-review/">Wishpond Review</a> for my detailed analysis of the platform.<h2>2. Analytics Systems</h2>An analytics system may not directly bring in traffic, but it will help you study the traffic that your website already brings in – and that's absolutely vital.An analytics platform, like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/#?modal_active=none">Google Analytics</a> or <a target="_blank" href="https://clicky.com">Clicky</a>, will tell you things like:<ul><li>How your visitors move through your website,</li><li>Where visitors come from</li><li>Which pages on your website are most popular</li></ul>Once you know all of the above, you can construct a powerful marketing strategy (and content strategy) based on your audience's behaviour.<h2>3. Marketing Automation Software</h2>As the name suggests, marketing automation software automates tasks to help you draw in a crowd.Popular features offered by most marketing automation systems include:<ul><li>Behaviour-based triggers</li><li>Audience tagging, tracking, and segmentation</li><li>Landing pages</li><li>Web forms</li><li>Email marketing</li><li>Lead tracking and reporting</li></ul><a target="_blank" href="http://leadsius.com/">Leadsius</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.marketo.com/">Marketo</a> and solid options, and you can find more on our Marketing Software Directory.<h2>4. CRM Systems</h2>A CRM (customer relationship management) system is designed to house and manage your business contacts, projects, and meetings. However, many CRM systems come with their own marketing features, too.For example, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.agilecrm.com/">Agile CRM</a> includes email marketing, landing page building, and web rules to configure pop-up ads and subscription boxes. You can read my<a target="_blank" href="https://www.agilecrm.com/"> Agile CRM review</a> here for more details, and check out our <a href="/products/">CRM directory</a> for other options.But before you research CRMs, be sure you actually need a system to manage your contacts – because that's what a CRM does before anything else.<h2>5. eCommerce Systems</h2>Selling products will give you something to shout about on social media, as well as within your blog content. But what if your CMS isn't built for eCommerce?Well, there's good news. You don't need to start out with an eCommerce platform in order to sell through your website.There are many eCommerce platforms that are built specifically to be integrated with existing websites, no matter how those existing websites are powered. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ecwid.com/">Ecwid</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://selz.com/">Selz</a> are two reputable options, but you'll find more on our <a href="/products/ecommerce">eCommerce directory</a>.<h2>6. SumoMe</h2>Launched in 2014, <a target="_blank" href="https://sumome.com/">SumoMe</a> is a fairly new marketing and conversion tool – but that hasn't stopped it from being adopted by millions of webmasters.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-4.png" alt="sshot-4" />It unites a range of features under one roof, simplifying them so that even novice marketers can make the most of their website traffic. It provides:<ul><li>More traffic with SumoMe's <a target="_blank" href="https://sumome.com/app/discover">Discover</a> feature</li><li>Pop-up email list builders and ads</li><li>Heatmaps</li><li>Social sharing buttons</li><li>Smart bar</li><li>Image sharer</li><li>Contact forms</li></ul>SumoMe also integrates with popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and AWeber, so you can build your subscriber list easier.<h2>7. Jetpack</h2>This one is for WordPress users only (good thing a quarter of the internet is WordPress-powered!).<a target="_blank" href="https://jetpack.com/">Jetpack</a> is a plugin created by Automattic, the company behind WordPress – which adds tonnes of functionality to any self-hosted WordPress site.As far as marketing goes, that functionality includes:<ul><li>Automated social sharing via the Publicize feature.</li><li>Site stats via the <a target="_blank" href="https://jetpack.com/support/wordpress-com-stats">Stats</a> feature</li><li>Social sharing buttons via the <a target="_blank" href="https://jetpack.com/support/sharing">Sharing</a> feature</li><li>A mobile theme to attract mobile visitors via the Mobile Theme feature.</li></ul><h2>Give Your CMS a Helping Hand</h2>By itself, a CMS will rarely be equipped to handle a full blown marketing strategy. You need to give it a helping hand with some of the options listed above.Do you use any other tools to extend the marketing capabilities of your CMS? Let me know in the comments section below!

7 Simple Ways Turn Your CMS Into a Marketing Powerhouse

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/2e1ax_yoo_master2_entry_marketplace-1.png" alt="2e1ax_yoo_master2_entry_marketplace (1)" />
Most Arastta store owners don’t need to extend Arastta core to sell their products, thanks to the <a href="https://arastta.com">Arastta Cloud</a> platform which boasts features that let anyone create an online store in seconds.
But online stores vary and store owners may need to extend their store’s capability with extra extensions like payment gateways, themes, translation, shipping modules, and so forth.
All of the popular eCommerce platforms support 3rd party extensions, but sometimes it become a complex procedure to install an extension, especially for beginners.
This is because you need to register on their marketplace site, find the extension you need, purchase and download it, and then think about how to install it. Some eCommerce platforms even redirect you to third-party developer sites to download certain extensions, which can be risky in terms of compatibility and security.
<h2>Streamlining the Installation Process</h2>
Even if all goes well, you now need to log in your admin panel and install your new extension via extension(s).
This can often be tricky, and it's also a common time for errors to occur – frustrating you further.
Arastta solves all of these problems with its fully integrated and built-in marketplace feature which we call the Arastta Appstore.
Just like Apple’s Appstore and Google’s Google Play platform, it’s a peace of cake to install an extension in your Arastta admin panel. Yes, that’s right, you don’t need to leave your Arastta admin panel and browse another website to purchase, download, or install an extension.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y-dsiV_-EDI?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> If you are an Arastta Cloud user, it’s even easier (as Arastta download users need to get an API key from within their admin panel first).
Cloud users just have to navigate to the Marketplace menu from the admin panel and find the desired extension. Then, users can simply click on the plus icon – and bingo! – it’s installed on your store.
<div>What if the extension you want to install is a paid extensions? Thanks to built-in Arastta Appstore you can purchase any extension without leaving the admin panel and marketplace area. Simply purchase and install!</div>
<h3>Uninstalling an Extension</h3>
Uninstalling an extension is also very easy. You can uninstall any extension from your Arastta store’s Extensions page but also you can directly uninstall them from your marketplace. Just find the extension you want to remove and click on the minus icon to uninstall it.
<h3>Multiple API Keys</h3>
Let’s say you are a web design agency and have one Arastta marketplace account. You purchased all the extensions you use generally on your customers site. But how to install those extensions for different Arastta installations and marketplace instances? No bother!
Arastta marketplace provides multiple API key management. So you can create unlimited API keys and use each of them for your each customers. Even better, you can assign each API key to any extensions, so one key can download some of the extensions, while another one cannot access those extensions. It’s all up to you and very easy to manage yours and your customers’ extensions via Arastta marketplace.
<h3>Web Version</h3>
<div>
Arastta marketplace is also available as a website. So you can always visit Arastta.pro[<a href="https://www.evernote.com/OutboundRedirect.action?dest=https%3A%2F%2Farastta.pro">https://arastta.pro</a>] website and browse, signup, download and purchase extensions. Also if you are a developer you can even add your own extension to the Arastta marketplace and start earning money.
Visit <a href="https://arastta.pro">Arastta.pro</a> website for more information.
<hr />
This post is <a href="/advertising/">sponsored</a> by Arastta. Find out more at <a href="https://arastta.com">arastta.com</a>.
</div>

A Closer Look at the Arastta Marketplace

<img alt="Joomla-3.6-Imagery-infographic-1280x720-en" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla-3_6-imagery-infographic-1280x720-en.png" /> <a href="https://joomla.org/3">Joomla 3.6</a> has arrived, and it wants to make you a better web designer.
More than 400 commits of improvements and bug fixes were merged to produce this major release – including plenty of user experience (UX) and developer enhancements.
Here are the highlights.
<h3>Improved Joomla! Updates</h3>
This update adds an option for reinstalling Joomla’s core files at the click of a button, overwriting any modified file(s) and reverting them back to the default. The option to update Joomla! by uploading the update file has been restored, as it was requested by feedback that the Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT) received from the Joomla! community.
<a href="https://www.joomla.org/3/180-improved-joomla-updates">Learn more</a>.
<h3>The Revolution In Joomla! UX Improvements</h3>
Joomla! 3.6 contains a lot of UX improvements. Now you can find your modules faster, have tasks done by dropdown, improved user management and so much more.
<a href="https://www.joomla.org/3/161-the-revolution-in-joomla-ux-improvements">Learn more</a>.
<h3>Sub Form Field</h3>
With the new Sub Form Field function in Joomla! 3.6 we added some extra additional functionality next to Repeatable fields. Now you can nest XML forms inside each other or reuse your existing forms inside your current form.
<a href="https://www.joomla.org/3/160-sub-form-field">Learn more</a>.
<h3>Create Categories On The Fly</h3>
It can get frustrating when you create a new item, and you realise that you haven’t created a category yet. Joomla! 3.6 now lets you create a category on the fly for articles, contacts, newsfeeds and banners.
<a href="https://www.joomla.org/3/159-create-categories-on-the-fly">Learn more</a>.
All in all, administrators will benefit from a revamped UX, saving them time when it comes to managing modules, menus and categories.
For developers and designers, the ability to use and re-use of XML forms, complex database queries and improved storage of dynamic JavaScript variables will make life easier.
<h2>“We've Listened”</h2>
George Wilson, from Joomla's Production Leadership Team, stated that Joomla had listened closely to developers prior to this release:
<blockquote>
“Joomla! 3.6 is a release focused on listening to our users. We've listened to our administrators who said that removing uploading Joomla! packages caused issues on intranet sites. We've listened to developers who were having practical issues with repeatable form fields.
We've listened to site administrators who wanted an even simpler article and category creation workflow. Finally we've fixed large numbers of bugs affecting our users and administrators.”
</blockquote>
Of course there are many more features and improvements and more details can be found at <a href="http://joomla.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fc57bf0c5dade4c32b33c845e&amp;id=3b36495524&amp;e=0ca73f4c1d" target="_blank">https://joomla.org/3</a>
Joomla! 3.6 is available as a one-click upgrade to all Joomla! 3 site owners directly from their website’s control panel.
<h2>Kudos Where Kudos Is Due</h2>
I must admit, this looks like a stellar update from the guys over at Joomla. UX improvements are always welcome (especially on Joomla) while the category creation feature is a big step in the right direction.
The ability to “reset” Joomla seems useful too, while the return of updating via update file upload will certainly be well received by the Joomla community.
In short; kudos, Joomla!
To find out more about this release, check out <a href="https://joomla.org/3">Joomla's website</a>.

Joomla 3.6 Wants to Make You a Better Web Designer

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/woman-1191828_1280-e1468331873944.jpg" alt="woman-1191828_1280" />
One of the major factors currently influencing the user experience on a website is eliciting subconscious responses through site interaction.
It is important to understand that as web design is a functional design, beauty is not perceived from the design itself but from its usability.
<h2>The Bauhaus and Gestalt Schools of Thought</h2>
Trends come and go each year, however, it is possible to find their origins in established design principles dating back to the first half of the twentieth century, such as Bauhaus and Gestalt.
Gestalt first appeared in 1910, its main principle being that in a group of items, such as in web content, we perceive the whole rather than the constituent parts. This is based on understanding the principles of perception and human vision and the ability to interpret visual information as an understandable, meaningful and usable form.
Likewise, the Bauhaus school of thought, dating from 1919, also addresses this simplicity in functionality, and is a key factor in contemporary design, such as that of logos, in its use of clean lines, geometric shapes, logic and conciseness.
Using balanced space among all parts of a logo assists in its visibility, and white space is considered an important building block in functional design. Similarly with fonts. This emerged during the modernist and constructive ideals of Swiss Style graphic design and its pursuit for simplicity through uniformity, use of whitespace, grids, rhythm and its visualised structure of information.
This, in turn, led to a minimisation of the elements of style in the typography and content layout over an emphasis on texture and illustrations. And with Material design from Google and Flat design from Windows, these typography styles have once again become commonplace.
<h2>The Principle of CRAP</h2>
CRAP, or Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity, offers an easy, yet useful approach to design. Here's a brief summary of each point:
<ul>
<li>Contrast focuses a user’s eyes on important functions – all design requiring a functional response is based on contrast because its difference in appearance clearly defines a call to action.</li>
<li>Repetition is based on similar tasks with a similar function always having a consistent design, so users at all times know what the function of them is.</li>
<li>Alignment entails everything lining up vertically and horizontally, making web design less disturbing on the eye. Its simplicity in design reduces the chance of usability error because it leads the user’s eye.</li>
<li>Proximity defines unity, as mentioned earlier with Gestalt. If you place similar items close together, people perceive them as being related, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
This post is <a href="/advertising/">sponsored</a> by Kentico. Find out more at <a href="http://kentico.com/">Kentico.com</a>.

The Historic Principles Behind Visual Marketing

<img alt="sshot-1" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/sshot-1.png" />The world's largest event for the <a href="http://typo3.org/">TYPO3 </a>community is set to take place on October 26-27 2016 in Munich, Germany.
The TYPO3 Association has been promoting the development of free software projects that have arisen from the TYPO3 community for ten years.
“Make Innovation Happen” is the conference motto, with a Business Day and Future Day day planned to reign in IT decision makers, agencies, marketing managers, developers, designers, and editors.
Throughout the conference, TYPO3 will be focusing on communicating the potential of TYPO3 as a platform, content management, and the web in general. The whole program will be rounded off by a two-day Expo that the products and innovations will be presented at.
<h2>TYPO3 Awards &amp; A Call for Speakers</h2>
Like last year's event, TYPO3 awards will be presented once again at #T3CON16.
A panel of judges will select the best TYPO3 websites from various industries, and the award ceremony will take place as a separate gala event on October 27 at Löwenbräukeller in Munich, Germany, and is also open to visitors who do not have tickets to the main conference.
Here's how the<a href="https://award.typo3.org/" target="_blank"> TYPO3 awards went down back in 2015</a>.
Furthermore, there are still a few months to go before the event takes place, which means that speakers are still being accepted.
If you want to present at T3CON16, <a href="http://t3con.eu/speakers/become-speaker/">you can apply here</a>.
<h2>Tickets</h2>
Ticket sales for the T3CON16 at the Hilton Munich Park am Tucherpark have already begun. Tickets can be <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/t3con16-tickets-21295778246">purchased here</a>.
Discounted “Early Bird Tickets” are available up until June 7, 2016. “Bring Your Friend” tickets are also still available.
To learn more about T3CON16, check out the <a href="https://typo3.org/news/article/typo3-conference-t3con16-october-26-27-in-munich-call-for-speakers-and-papers/">official announcement</a>, as well as the <a href="http://t3con.eu/">official website</a>.

#T3CON16: TYPO3 European Conference Set for October 26-27th

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