If you’re going to ask us here at Lakeshore Branding which e-commerce platform we would recommend, there’s one answer: Magento. Why? Because it’s loaded with powerful features to help you drive sales: features like product browsing, analytics and reporting, catalog and order management, secure checkout, international support, and an array of marketing promotions and tools. (You can find out more about the platform here.) We’ll understand, though, if you choose to go with something else. Hey, to each his own, right? And there are loads of e-commerce solutions and shopping cart systems to choose from. One of these is OpenCart, an open-source e-commerce platform that’s as feature-rich, easy-to-use, and search-engine-friendly as Magento. Frankly, you won’t go wrong with either. We’ll even help you out developing your online store if you like. Anyway, like Magento, OpenCart also enables you to customize the way your online store looks and works. Because it’s an “out-of-the-box” solution, you can just install it, choose your – Read the full article
WordPress was first released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg. Yes, it’s that long ago. Before Facebook even happened. Since then, it has grown to host, as of late last year, around 15 percent of the world’s top 1 million websites. It has also been downloaded over 65 million times! But if you’re still looking for reasons that will convince you to build – or redevelop – your website using the WordPress platform, we won’t shy away from giving you several: WordPress isn’t just for blogging. It’s flexible enough to power your business website, your e-Commerce site, your product and services page, your social networks (check out our recent post on BuddyPress), your anything. It’s simple and pretty easy to use. If you know how to use Microsoft Word, you’ll know how to use WordPress, which has its own WYSIWYG editor to aid users who prefer not to use codes (like HTML). Training a client on WordPress site administration is also – Read the full article
Magento is an ecommerce script which is said to be more authoritative for ecommerce and was developed by Varien. Magento uses Zend PHP and MYSQL databases and is said to be an open source program. It is said to be more flexible in nature along with the modular structure and is totally capable of being scaled and also possesses a vast range of management options which most of the users of magento are fond of. Magento is more superior in nature and presents your products in a very powerful manner. You can create your products catalog easily and also manage it. Varien previously worked with osCommerce and they intended to diverge osCommerce but then decided to redraft and rephrase it and hence it resulted in the formation of Magento. Magento was started to develop in 2007 and in the month of august in the same year, a public beta version was announced and in 2010, Magento mobile was made available – Read the full article
From humble, open source beginnings, WordPress now powers over 61 million sites worldwide. The extent to which it has grown in popularity not just for bloggers but professional designers and developers is evidenced by Smashing Magazine recently launching an extended, dedicated WordPress section. I’m currently one of these working in web design in Chicago. The Project I recently had a very simple project of launching a blog with a small shopping cart installed in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup held in New Zealand. Wait-of-Nation.com went live a little over two months ago. The Client With a background in PR/Advertising my client was well versed in getting himself out there, which in a country of 4.5 million people really isn’t that hard to do. He had a good product (sports blog of the most popular sport in NZ), with a niche message/ slant (“Home of New Zealand’s crushing expectation” – that the All Blacks – the National team – – Read the full article
First of all, this is not a recommendation for Dreamweaver. If the title sounds like a covert suggestion to use Dreamweaver, please accept my apologies. All I want to do is tell readers why Dreamweaver is such a big hit amongst developers when it comes to creating websites and web applications. So without wasting any more of your time, here goes: Single Panel – Multiple Designs Dreamweaver CS5.5 offers you a feature known as ‘Multiscreen Preview Panel’. This feature allows a single panel view for styling and visualize rendering for not only the PC but also for smartphones and even tablets like the Apple iPad. This has made the job easier for developers to corroborate styles and data and ensure that a particular website design is compatible across various platforms and devices. Faster and Simpler Integration of Interactivity What do people want from their websites these days? They are looking for better interactivity, yet another reason why website developers love – Read the full article
WordPress is arguably today’s most popular blogging platform – for reasons that the most brilliant Web programmers and developers or novice bloggers and startup business marketers can appreciate. Actually, WordPress is popular for reasons that even search engine giant Google can appreciate. Matt Cutts – the well-known SEO guru and Webmaster behind Google (which, by the way, has Blogger as its own blogging platform) – even went so far as to praise WordPress, saying that: “WordPress takes care of 80 to 90 percent of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization (SEO).” But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – let’s go into more detail about SEO later. For now, let’s go through the list of highlights of WordPress as a blogging platform. Getting Started The process of signing up for WordPress is simple and easy enough. The most awesome part? It’s free. WordPress is open-source software, which means that you don’t have to pay any license fees to use the core – Read the full article
Google offered another preview of the upcoming Chrome OS Tuesday in a media event in San Fransisco, introducing a fourth option for operating systems – after Windows, Mac, and Linux – while opening the doors to the new Google Chrome Web Store. The event also launched the Chrome OS pilot program and highlighted the search giant’s ongoing efforts to build “an operating system that is essentially a browser, (which helps) make computers faster, much simpler, and fundamentally more secure.” An open-source, lightweight operating system, Google Chrome OS leverages the Internet by delivering a speedy operating system in which all applications are Web applications (instead of hard drive-based). It is scheduled for release in the middle of 2011. Chrome Web Store and Cr-48 Chrome Notebook Along with these developments, the company introduced the Google Chrome Web Store, which features apps, extensions, themes, and collections for users of the Google Chrome OS. Developers have already started uploading apps, and one of these – Read the full article
It is no secret that Google has become a dominant influence in the way the Web is accessed and used. The word “Google” itself has become a verb, and people will often begin their web sessions with Google, even if they know the exact URL of the site they want to access. From E-mail to search to maps to shopping, Google dominates the Web experience of millions of Internet users. Google, however, is not just a passive player. The search engine giant extends its influence over every aspect of the Internet it touches and has aspirations to reshape the whole Web in its image. The purpose here is not to determine whether those goals are good or bad, but to highlight the many ways in which Google has already changed the web and what might be on the horizon over the next few years. Searching for Anything and Everything Google’s bread-and-butter is still search, and they have systematically nurtured their – Read the full article
