Here we are discussing the various types of content managements systems available to you. There are several others out there, but these four are the more popular ones with a pretty large public support.

Wordpress

This CMS type is a very successful & the most popular blogging system. A lot of effort is being put into constantly upgrading it with focus on presentation, usability and functionality. Even my high school nephew would have no problems using Wordpress. And you can download it for free! It also has a wide variety of free plugins that can help extend your website.

Its downside is that it is not the best source for an e-commerce platform.

Joomla

Joomla is another popular type of CMS. It has over 4,200 extensions available and some acceptable free templates. You may also download Joomla for free. With this system, you can easily and instantly create simple to moderately-advanced websites even if you don’t have a clue about PHP. Joomla is one of the most user-friendly CMS around.

Its major set-back is that it uses some terms that may be confusing, like “plug-ins”, “modules”, “components”, “categories”, “sections”, etc., which requires some experience to understand. Secondly, Joomla extensions and some of its templates are not free.

Expression Engine

Expression Engine is another CMS that makes the creation of an advanced website attainable. It is a powerful CMS known for its flexibility and for opening limitations that are holding back other CMSs.

One of its set-backs is it requires the user to have a certain knowledge of PHP and can be difficult to design and code. It is free only for personal and non-profit use. If you are a business, it will cost up to $249.

Drupal

Drupal uses a powerful templating system and generally used for very large sites. Any XHTML or CSS template can be easily converted to Drupal. It also has a high flexibility and many high profile companies use Drupal. (e.g.: MTV UK, BBC, the Onion, Nasa, Greenpeace UK, New york observer. )

It’s major flaw is their frequent updates which find programmers finding it difficult to keep up with plug-in development. In addition, there seems to be a lack of a thriving community contributing to plug-ins and themes.

CMS stands for content management system. It is a system used to support the development, management, distribution and publishing of content on your website. But is it CMS suitable for your website?

Like any system, CMS has its pros and cons. Let’s run them down before we come into conclusion if a CMS is for you.

Content Management Systems Pros & Cons

The PROS:

• Simplifies content creation and editing by its easy-to-use authoring environment that works like Word. So no worries if you are not familiar with html or writing codes.
• Can be much less expensive and faster to build if using one of the many templates or themes available (rather than custom designing).
• Allows managing of the structure of the site by simplifying the process. You may even just drag-and-drop to restructure the site without breaking links.
• Allows for multiple users while ensuring that each can only change the section of the site that they’re responsible for. Once content is written, it is sent to a central hub where it is automatically sent for approval and editorial review.
• Ensures consistency across the entire site by featuring publishing engines that allow the page layout and appearance of the site applied automatically during publishing.
• A CMS can also be customized to build template sites, site builder sites or blogs. * Low Cost – some web-based CMSs are free.

And the CONS:

• If Custom Designed can be Higher Cost – to design a customized CMS site will cost a lot more than a static site because it will require a lot more work for the designer.
• Restricted HTML editing. The design can be somewhat restricted after the website is developed.
• It can be difficult to switch web hosts.
• Prone to errors – the fact that it’s open to multi-users, especially if the site contains many files makes it error-prone. It may take the web developer a lot of time to figure out the error and can result to having to get the site offline to fix it.
• Flexibility in design is limited to the templates that CMS sites primarily use.
• The website can tend to look like a CMS website.

So is CMS a good fit for your website?
The answer depends on your requirements like how many times a year do you make updates on your website? How much does your developer charge you for an update? Do you only require regular updates on some parts of your site? Do you have the time and the manpower to sustain your site’s update?

Once you have answered these questions, we will be in a better position to decide whether CMS is suitable for you.

If you need additional recommendations on what system will be most effective for your website, call me on 281-940-7002 or email me.

P.S. If a CMS interests you, look out next week to find out which CMS type is best for you.

As part of your ongoing effort to increase your website’s visitors stats, it is important to include your business to Google Local. If anything, it helps your current customers find you quickly after typing your company name, but it is FREE! Be sure you include all of your locations.

Here is how:

1. Go to www.google.com/local/add. If you don’t already have a google account (such as a gmail or a google calendar), register for an account with google.
2. After logging in, search for your business address to see if your business is already there. If it is, there is a link  Google will ask you to enter things such as address, phone, fax, website, email address and description (see below)
3. If you do not, you’ll be asked to add a business listing.
4. Once google has located your address on google maps, you will need to fill out are the details about your business. Enter your hours of operation, a description of the products you sell, and your category(ies) to help people find you, visit your location, read reviews, and link to your website.
5. The final page will help google to verify that the location is truly yours. You have the option of either verifying your location by postcard or by phone. If you plan to verify by phone, make sure the phone line is open and google will have an automated message sent to your phone with a verification code. Verifying by postcard is much slower, but may be necessary if you utilize a call center. Once you receive the verification code, log into the Google Local Business Center and enter the verification code. Your business will become active after the code is entered.
6. From here you’ll be able to access reports on who came to your location listing and the actions they took, for example, from where did folks get directions?

Social Media Websites:

Social Media Tools:

• TweetDeck – www.tweetdeck.com
• HootSuite – www.hootsuite.com Manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Ping.fm accounts.
• Twitter Grader – http://twitter.grader.com
• Add blog to Facebook – www.ehow.com/how_2031202_import-blog-facebook.html
• Add blog to LinkedIn – http:/www.linkedin.com/opensocialInstallation/preview?_ch_panel_id=1&_applicationId=1500
• Add Wordpess blog to LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/opensocialInstallation/preview?_ch_panel_id=1&_applicationId=2200
• GoogleWave – wave.google.com (Not live yet) Computing platform designed to bring together social networking, IM, email and wiki
• TwitterFeed – www.twitterfeed.com, add your blog entries to Twitter automatically.
• WordTwit – www.bravenewcode.com/wordtwit, add your blog entries to Twitter automatically.
• Social Mention- www.socialmention.com, real-time social media search and analysis.

Social Media Strategy:

• Mashable: www.mashable.com
• Hubspot: www.hubspot.com/
• Business guide to twittering : business.twitter.com/twitter101
• Business guide to facebook: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/FacebookPagesProductGuide.pdf

Blogging:

• Wordpress: http://www.wordpress.com
• Blogger: http://www.blogger.com
• Moveable Type: http://www.movabletype.org
• TypePad: http://www.typepad.com
• TextPattern: http://www.textpattern.com/
• Review of Blogging Software: http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/blog-software-smackdown-review#

Most web pages include resources that change infrequently, such as CSS files, image files, JavaScript files, and so on. These resources take time to download over the network, which increases the time it takes to load a web page. HTTP caching allows these resources to be saved, or cached, by a browser or proxy. Once a resource is cached, a browser or proxy can refer to the locally cached copy instead of having to download it again on subsequent visits to the web page. Thus caching is a double win: you reduce round-trip time by eliminating numerous HTTP requests for the required resources, and you substantially reduce the total payload size of the responses. Besides leading to a dramatic reduction in page load time for subsequent user visits, enabling caching can also significantly reduce the bandwidth and hosting costs for your site.

Basically, the .htaccess file is telling the bots to cache certain files at various times for returning visitors.

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0

<FilesMatch “.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$”>
ExpiresDefault A29030400
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$”>
ExpiresDefault A604800
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(xml|txt|html|js|css)$”>
ExpiresDefault A7200
Header append Cache-Control “proxy-revalidate”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(php|cgi|pl|htm)$”>
ExpiresActive Off
Header set Cache-Control “private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform”
Header set Pragma “no-cache”

</FilesMatch>

So, we are taking additional steps in improving our website’s speed as well as our customer’s. Google suggests installing their speed tool, Page Speed, to help diagnose and suggest ways to compress the site and speed it up.  Below are the areas that Page Speed will review:

1. Browser Caching – to help with the browser by instructing it to load previously downloaded resources (images, css, html, etc.) from your local disk rather than over the network.
2. CSS compression – Removing CSS from documents, compression external CSS and removing unused.
3. JavaScript compression -  minimizing and combining javascript code.
4. Images – Optimizing and setting dimensions.

So far I’ve compressed our website’s CSS file by removing spaces and extraneous styles. The next suggestion was installing in our .htaccess file with the recommended caching code. (My next post will include this code)

If you are on Vista, Windows XP or Windows 7, go through the following steps to restart the printer spooled files.

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Select System and Maintenance (skip this step for Windows 7)
3. Select Administrative Tools
4. Double-click on Services
5. In the list of services, scroll down until you find one called “Print Spooler”
6. Right-click on “Print Spooler” and select “Restart”
7. The “deleted” jobs will disappear and any queued jobs in your print queue will print

These are other print spool solutions from Windows as well.

]]> http://www.globalspex.com/2009/11/30/stuck-print-jobs-on-windows/feed/ 0 http://www.globalspex.com/2009/11/11/outlook-syncing/ http://www.globalspex.com/2009/11/11/outlook-syncing/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:55:18 +0000 admin http://www.globalspex.com/?p=831 As there are several ways to get your email, I am often asked by my customers about getting their email downloaded to their desktop, laptop, and even a mobile device.

POP3: The problem with POP3 sharing is that you are essentially downloading the same email 2 or 3 times; and these are being marked as ‘unread.’ This means you will have to wade through your email each time on each machine. Therefore, this is not truly syncing but rather sharing.

The only way to truly sync your email is with Exchange Server (for Windows) or utilize Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP).

IMAP allows for two-way communication between your e-mail account and your devices. That means whatever software or computer you use to access your e-mail, they will sync. But this requires that the email remain on your email server. If you are like me, I have over 2GB of emails and many hosting accounts limit your web and email space. If you go over this amount, your website can go down for going over the limit. If you choose this, be sure that you have enough email space and bandwidth to account for this traffic.

Exchange Server: For my business this was the best solution. All my emails are truly synced on all of my devices. The downside is the Exchange Server can get expensive if you require several email accounts (on a hosted solution) or intend to host your own email at your business. They generally run between $8 – $25 per month per account. Having said that, how much will you save in frustration and time reviewing the same emails.

We recommend Apptix for Hosted Exchange Service

Setup POP3 on several devices

By default, when you download new messages from a POP3 e-mail account, the messages are deleted from the POP3 mail server. If you check your POP3 e-mail account from different computers by using the default Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 POP3 settings, the computer that downloads a new e-mail message is the only location where the message is stored. The message is no longer on the POP3 mail server when you connect from another computer. – Microsoft.com (read more)

To setup your POP3 with your Outlook on your PC and laptop, here are the steps:

1. Click Tools | Account Settings
2. Under Name, select the POP3 e-mail account that you want to change, and then click Change.
3. Click More Settings.
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then under Delivery, select the Leave a copy of messages on the server check box.
5. Then be sure to select the number of days to remove older messages from your server. These settings might help prevent you from exceeding the maximum mailbox size set by your Internet service provider (ISP) or web host.