Over the years, mobile phones and other handheld devices have contributed substantially to the overall viewership of a website. If latest reports are to be believed, it is not long before the mobile Internet users have more stakes in viewership of a website than their desktop and laptop counterparts. In such as scenario, it is therefore important to make a website mobile friendly and to test it for different smartphone platforms.

Use of Mobile Emulators

If you do not have a mobile responsive website, chances are that you are losing out on potential web-traffic. So how do you know if your website is made for audience on mobile phones and handheld devices? The best way to check if your website is mobile responsive, is to make use of mobile phone emulators.

Benefits of Mobile Phone Emulators

Mobile phone emulators not only check the responsiveness and functionality of the mobile websites across different mobile devices, but also highlight the issues concerning the website.

Testing through a mobile emulator can help you do away with the pain of testing your website on different devices. Developers can test the website on a virtual mobile interface for different functionalities.

There are number of mobile phone emulators available online, here are a few popular ones that you can use to test your website.
1. MobileTest.me
2. iPhone.com
3. MobilePhoneEmulator.com
4. iPadPeek.com
5. ResponsivePx.com

Responsive Web Design is a great way to mark your online presence. But it shouldn’t be the only consideration when you are planning to optimize your website. Thus, before making an informed decision, you should evaluate all your options and opt for a service that best suits your business requirements.

Web Development

WordPress 3.8 Rollout ‘Parker’ Bound to Make Web Publishing a Delight

January 2, 2014 brainwork Leave a comment

WordPress recently came up with their latest version 3.8, just about two months after version 3.7 was released. ‘Parker’, as it is named after jazz legend Charlie Parker is aimed to make web publishing easy, quick and stylish. The swanky new blogging software comes with redesigned themes, quick loading features, responsive dashboard and revamped admin interface. The updated version has been made more useable on tablets and aesthetically attractive.

Aiming to make the pages quick loading, WordPress 3.8 has released “vector-based icons that scale to your screen” while removing the clutter of pixels. Besides the various updates on the backend, WordPress 3.8 has a superb magazine-style default theme, which they are calling 2014. There’re numerous front-end changes; the old skeuomorphic, low contrast rounded corner interface has given way to a responsive, touch-friendly, typographically rich user interface. All this means, that now the websites based on WordPress would become much more responsive then earlier.

The 3.8 rollout uses MP6 admin user interface, which enables resizing and reformatting of the layout with changing screen sizes, thereby making interface more responsive. New version is also going to make website more responsive on tablets and mobile handsets, providing Windows 8 users who use Snap a better experience. The WP toolbar has become more touch-friendly, as the size of bars and buttons gets bigger on smaller screen sizes.

The new layout is spick and span; and has been revamped to be fluid and useable in terms of tabs and smartphones. The orange dashboard is a major overhaul as well; there’re more colours in case you’re not orange lover. Besides the numerous colour combos like default, sunrise (orange I was talking about earlier), blue, ectoplasm, midnight, coffee, and ocean, you get Twenty Fourteen default theme to create a magazine like website. Now you can add slider or grid atop the main page to highlight your favourite stuff and also insert widget sidebars on both sides of the webpage. The Theme Manger also gets a facelift, as it becomes more intuitive and uncluttered interface.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg disclosed that in order to manage update with numerous contributors, most of the features of version 3.8 were created in the form of plug-ins, thereby enabling contributors to iterate individually and later combine them with the codebase.

If you’re super excited about using this new version, then simply go to the WordPress.org and download WP 3.8 right away. The WP loyalists can simply update from their dashboard.

SEO, Web Development

Penalty for invalid HTML – What’s Google’s stance on it?

October 5, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Creating perfect and validated HTML code is an important building block for your SEO. Recently in one video Google’s distinguished engineer Matt Cutts explained its importance.

Creating a perfect HTML code for any website is no child’s play. One needs to be very accurate while building the HTML code. As the phrase goes – “To err is human”, you might have taken utmost care while building your website, there is always a possibility that some or the other mistake might creep in and break the webpage. That’s why you can fall back on Google’s Webmaster Tool which allows you to check and validate your HTML code and rectify any errors.

Now a day, the number of HTML purists is increasing, who will not launch your webpage until all the code is validated. But in reality you will still find many terribly coded HTML that ranks well in search result. What could be the reason? Does Google penalize for invalid HTML? Matt Cutts say: “No, Google does not penalize you if you have invalid HTML; because there would be a huge number of web pages like that”. If Google were to penalize each webpage that has poorly coded HTML, the number will go into hundreds of millions and it will result into poor search result. That is the reason why Google doesn’t penalize those poorly coded web pages.

Having perfectly coded HTML will no doubt yield good search results for your webpage. There are many advantages of it. Some of them are:

Validated code is easy to maintain.
It makes up gradation and editing easier.
It helps making proper indentation.
Validated code helps to keep bugs at low level.
In Google’s algorithm, quicker loading pages rank better in search results. Clean code can help you achieve this.
Clean and validated code helps your site to be free from hacks.
Cleanly coded webpage makes it easier to deploy web content across multiple devices.
Poorly coded HTML tables and forms are less accessible to the surfers.

Despite these advantages, we still encounter broken web pages with invalid HTML; this could be because of the laxity of coders to employ these good coding practices.

Currently Google does not penalize anyone for invalid HTML; however should Google change their mind in future and decide to rank web pages accordingly, poorly coded and pages appearing with invalid HTML will surely get punished. Therefore to keep your web page ranking top in Google’s algorithm it is imperative to have validated code. Start your validation today as “Prevention is always better than cure!!!”

Web Development

Latest Avatar of WordPress – WordPress 3.6 (Oscar Peterson)

September 10, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Wordpress 3.6

Some of us often use WordPress for managing content on their websites; but still many people are not much familiar with this CMS (Content Management System). As per the records till August 2013, only 18.9% websites were using WordPress. It is actually a free and open source blogging tool and the Content Management System is powered by PHP and MySQL. Lately there was an announcement of the greatest and newest version of WordPress – WordPress 3.6. This Twenty Thirteen theme has been named to honor Canadian great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. It is really an important tool that manages blogs, articles and all other types of content. Oscar is inclusive of better auto save and post locking, with native support for audio and video embeds via HTML5 media player, as well as improved integrations with Spotify, Rdio, and SoundCloud. There are various features of Oscar which definitely favor the boost in the use of WordPress.

WordPress offers some bounties to the users in the form of new improved features. They are as follows:

In Twenty Thirteen theme they have focused more on your content with the colorful and single column, media-rich blog design.
Post Locking and Augmented Autosave is a bonus feature which supports simultaneous construction and editing of the content by multiple authors. Augmented Autosave helps each author by offering separate Autosave stream locally as well as in connection with the server.
With the new interface you can easily scroll through the changes and it lets you see what, when and who made the changes line-by-line.
The Menu Editor has become user friendly and is easy to understand with better keyboard / screen reader.
The new built-in HTML5 media player for embedding audio and video is now independent (doesn’t need support of external services). You can simply insert files from media manager into blog posts.
In Oscar, media library gets sorted with the author name.
You can preview / play audio and video anytime directly through the Media Edit Screen.
You can now add font-based icons in the post.

Few tidbits are offered for developers also which are as follows:

Developers get access to media metadata like ID3 tags through new audio / video API.
You can store different amount of history for each type of post with better filters of revision work.
Semantic Markup permits developer to choose HTML5 markups for comment forms, search forms and comment lists.
With has_shortcode() you can search the shortcodes and adjust shortcode attributes with a new filter.

For those who are already using older version of WordPress and for many eager users; the WordPress 3.6 will work like a magic with your hosted website. So don’t waste your precious time in thinking; own your Oscar version today and enjoy the smoother journey!!!

Web Development

Different Engagement Models in Web Development

August 16, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Using websites for searching something or checking your emails has become part of daily chores these days; but have we ever thought how these websites are developed? Although these shiny, catchy websites may look very simple, their development is a costly and time consuming affair. If you possess necessary skills, you may build a website on your own. However, with the growing content and features, you may need a helping hand or an expert to assist you. The obvious choices are to hire a firm or a developer to develop your website. As with other contracting jobs, this engagement also calls for careful study and determination of engagement contracts or models with their pros and cons.

There is no single governing principal as to which engagement model would work in a particular situation. Business strategies as well as client/consultant firms’ operating models often drive the decision on engagement models. Let’s review some of the common engagement models that are often employed by various businesses:

Engagement Models

Dedicated Offshore Resources:

In this type, the resources you hire are dedicated to work on your project. This enables you to employ most experienced and highly skilled resources without having to worry about hiring them on-site and looking after all the related formalities are done. The main advantage with this model is the freedom that you get to change decisions related to team strength and other related areas. This option is at your disposal, whenever you feel the need to step in. You are only required to provide fundamental supplies to initiate. This model is generally used for medium to long term assignments.

Fixed Price:

As the name suggests, contract is awarded for a fixed cost in fixed price model. This is the ultimate model to use when you know the estimated cost before investing, as fixed cost implies low risk. Be sure to define the exact scope and take an extra effort to carefully draft your RFP (Request for Proposal). Scope creep in later stages could severely hamper your budget.

Time and Material:

In cases where the requirements cannot be completely defined upfront and requirements could change over the course of time; it is advisable to use this model. This model is best suited for complex projects. The total expenditure will vary depending on the work, resources and time consumed in the execution of project. However, bear in mind the fact that you may need to shell out extra bucks for every scope change.

Milestone Based Billing:

This model helps to reduce the large project risks and reinforce milestone monitoring. Long term and remotely developed projects are the ideal candidates to deploy this model. Payments are usually predefined in accordance with the accomplishment of milestones. Better visibility of progress aids you in minimizing risks.

The development firms will use various strategies while offering their services and thus use different models. Knowing the underlying differences and understanding the nature of the project helps you to make the appropriate decision for a model selection.

Web Development

Why Magento and e-Commerce Go Hand in Hand?

August 2, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Magento E-Commerce

When Magento first appeared on the scene in the year 2008, it was just another open source e-commerce web application. However, today, this same application has become an integral part of lives for all those who dabble with e-commerce. Magento aids all those small and big business owners, who wish to take their wares onto a global platform.

For anyone who owns an organization or an online shopping portal, there could be no better choice than Magento. Just some of the reasons why more and more people are opting for Magento include:

It is extremely cost effective
There is an immense amount of transparency in the source code
It can evolve along with the needs of the business
It can be customized as per specific requirements

There are so many inbuilt features offered with Magento, that business owners, especially new ones, will be thrilled and well supported. There is the facility of importing large spread-sheets at one time, in addition to creating search patterns as per specific requirements. Since Magento is also Google and SEO friendly, business owners will find it easy to create tags and site navigation mechanisms.

Magento includes a range of features, such as:

Mobile templates
Product display
Multiple options for transactions
Functionality in terms of multiple stores as well as sites.

Users also get benefits like:

User accounts
Loyalty programs with special benefits.

In addition, e-commerce owners will also be able to give their customers discounts and absolute ease of shopping.

It is with the aim of being a truly global application, that the creators of Magento have made it multilingual and usable in all parts of the world. Today, there are small and big businesses that use Magento to ensure that their e-commerce business rises to the greatest of heights.

Web Development

E-Commerce Plugins in WordPress: Just Few of the Most Common Ones Used

June 10, 2013 brainwork 1 Comment

Today the numbers of people who rely on the internet to buy things have increased dramatically. The boom in ecommerce ventures is an accepted reality now and many big players have entered this industry. Both businesses as well as customers have enjoyed a win-win situation. An ecommerce site is thus crucial, which can be easily created with the help of various plugins in WordPress.

The numbers of WordPress plugins that are a part of the ecommerce website are many. Just few those are clearly the paramount plugins that when integrated in an ecommerce website can offer it the best of everything, have been mentioned here.

Cart66 Lite: Unlike others, this is light and powerful. This is used for selling physical and digital products. Businesses can acquire an international edge with this tool due to its multiple shipping and multi-currency option. Ad placing and affiliate marketing is much easier.

Shopp: The most premium WP plugins known, this offers features like coupon codes, tax control, related products, shipping, RSS feeds, Order management, grid and list preview, email notification and can be easily integrated with a number of payment gateways.

EShop Plugin: Known for its simple controls and many listing products, it is very easy to add products and customize setting with this tool. Simple interface, fast browsing and purchase, multiple merchant payment systems, many shipping options are just few of its unique features.

Jigoshop: This tool is known to offer many important features and takes just a little time to design a fully functional ecommerce store with this one. The categorization of products is distinct, which can help people easily find what they are looking for.

Woocommerce Plugin: This offers many features including the dashboard widget that can help in easily checking the progress of an ecommerce business. The highly customizable nature, multiple payment options, cash on delivery and more such features are offered.

WP Ecommerce Plugin: The 1.5 million downloads makes this the most popular plugin. Its easy installation and easy integration with any theme is liked by developers. The many payment options, customizable interface and the freedom to easily change look and modify templates are just few of its distinct offerings.

Quick Shop Plugin: This adds a sidebar that helps in displaying the buyers shopping cart on the page itself. It supports email functionality and integrated PayPal services. Adding products on pages is much easier and customers have freedom to remove any product from their shopping cart easily.

Above mentioned are just few WordPress tools used in the development of ecommerce websites today, the list however goes much beyond these.

Web Development

Managing Portfolio of WordPress Websites Made Easier and Efficient

May 10, 2013 brainwork

Working on multiple sites is a protocol that most professionals need to follow these days. Especially when dealing with clients, managing many WordPress sites at a time, seem essential. Keeping updates about the plugin activation and deactivation and analytics individually for each site can ask a professional for not just his time, but efforts and hard work too. A single mistake can cause anyone a lot of unsolicited troubles, which may lead to their site’s control getting revealed into the hands of a hacker. Just to fix these issues in an efficient manner, today many tools are available that help in managing multiple WordPress sites through a single dashboard.

What these tools are?

Managing multiple sites through a single tool ensures easy time management for every professional. Currently there are many options available, when it comes to choosing one such tool. Seeing the options, getting confused is likely, but researching carefully and choosing one that ideally fits in what one’s looking at, can do the needful.

With several viable options available, the user needs to look deeply into the features and functionality. Just few such tools, which top the popularity list, are mentioned below:

ManageWP

The first and finest WordPress management console known, it helps users in managing unlimited number of WP sites most conveniently.

Features:

A single click access to any number of WP sites
One click theme and plugin management
Instant upgrade to latest versions
Intuitive interface
Real time detection of issues

Infinite WP

What makes this tool different is its ability to run on the user’s server rather than a hosting website. Relatively new tool in market, it can run locally.

Features:

Just one master login for any number of WP sites
Single click plugin update for many sites
Restoration and notifications are instant and so is backup
Installation of multiple plugins on different websites done all together
Instant activation/deactivation of themes and multiple plugins
Efficient management of local and remote sites

WP Remote

Glancing through any number of WP sites turns easier with this tool. It is available for download free of cost.

Features:

Instant updates for plugin, core WordPress and themes
Backups for any number of sites
The number of sites is unlimited
Available as a smartphone app for free

The addition of these tools has helped people in focusing on the core requirements of their work qualitatively. Users now enjoy liberty from the cumbersome and time-consuming task of managing multiple WP sites, with a one-stop solution that is safe, secured, and up-to-date.

Web Development

An Overview of Ten Functional Plugins Offered by WordPress

April 1, 2013 brainwork 1 Comment

CMS or content management system is extremely useful in management and handling of a dynamic website. WordPress is quite popular among web developers as a powerful and versatile CMS that is used for addressing the requirements of diverse web applications from blog sites to corporate websites. Based on PHP, it makes use of MySQL for management of data, and WordPress offers a wide range of features, which are extremely useful. Plugins are one of these essential features that enable developers to utilize WordPress in a convenient manner.

What are Plugins? What is their role in WordPress?

They can be described as instruments that are used to extend and improve the functionality of WordPress. As suggested by the term, these tools offer customized functions and attributes, with which the website constructed with WordPress can be suitably modified to meet business demands. This extensive plugin architecture of WordPress platform is extremely useful to developers in designing the website, alongside central installation. With these plugins, developers can add the desired functionality to websites and improve the efficiency and operation of the site significantly.

WP e-commerce- Efficient WordPress Plugin for Shopping Cart

With this plugin, ecommerce stores can be set up conveniently. This WordPress plugin can be installed quite easily and make use of templated tags and shortcodes. Easily customizable, this plugin supports numerous payment modes, and is also SEO compatible. Browsing, arranging, editing, and organizing catalogs are also quite easy with this plugin. It can also be integrated conveniently with other plugins to increase the functionality of online store.

WordPress Advanced Ticket System- Easy Submission and Assignment of Tickets

WATS or WordPress Advanced Ticket System plugin offers complete features of a comprehensive ticket system, and it can be used as a useful part of helpdesk or technical assistance systems, or for service requests. The plugin can offer numerous features such as submitting and assigning of tickets, as well as setting the type and priority level of tickets. Additionally, updates about tickets are also available via mail notifications, and this WordPress plugin also allows selecting and sorting of tickets. Extremely scalable, the plugin can be seamlessly integrated with WordPress.

Recent Facebook Posts- Listing updates and posts from Facebook is so easy

With this WordPress plugin, the installation is extended to include listings of recent posts or updates from Facebook page. There are numerous benefits of using this plugin, as it reduces the dependency on iframes or JavaScript, and the website can be suitably customized. With validated HTML outputs and SEO compatibility, the plugin also improves speed, with the availability of cached results on server.

Bannerspace- Amazing WordPress Plugin for Stylish Slideshows

Supported by powerful jQuery Cycle plugin, Bannerspace generates customized post type with which basic slideshows can be elevated with interactive transition effects such as scroll, zoom, and fade, to mention a few. The transition effects can be suitably chosen, and the slides can be selected by drag and drop movements, thus making this plugin easy to use.

Contact form7 – Versatile Yet Convenient Contact Forms

Another useful WordPress plugin, Contact Form7 can be employed to manage and handle numerous contact forms efficiently. The form can also be tailor made as per requirement, and this plugin offers support of Captcha, AJAX, as well as Akismet spam filtering.

Nextgen Gallery – Functional Plugin for Managing Numerous Images

As one of the popular WordPress plugins, it offers a sophisticated engine with images can be handled quite conveniently. Uploading, adding, sorting, deleting, or importing metadata is easy with this plugin. The display formats can also be managed with various options for organizing timing, size, and image transitions. The centralized gallery also allows editing of individual images, as well as insertion of watermarks.

Firestats – Managing the Statistics with Accuracy

The practical functionality of this WordPress plugin, as it offers statistical data and analysis on a real time basis. With the ability to translate to multiple languages and capacity to work effectively in high traffic sites, it can be used for details related to SEO keywords, and recent hits. Supported by AJAX, this plugin can work effectively on numerous web browsers.

WP super cache – Caching Engine for Quick Display of Files

This plugin is extremely useful in case of high traffic, where static HTML files are created from dynamic WordPress site, which are displayed to viewers, thus saving time that is taken in processing heavy PHP WordPress scripts. There is evident slowdown or speed variation, and thus such super cache files can be quite useful in handling the traffic directed towards the site.

All in one SEO- Keeping the WordPress Site Search Engine Friendly

Understanding the central role played by search engines in any website, the WordPress plugin facilitates optimization of web pages for the search engines, with automated optimization of titles, as well as creation of Meta tags, which can be overridden by users as per requirement. Thus, even WP e-Commerce applications can be suitably optimized with search engines with the use of this plugin.

Profile-builder-pro- Create Favorable Impressions with Stylish Registration and Login Forms

The pages allotted for processes such as registration, login, or viewing the profiles need to be well designed and functional for any website to stand out. Using dedicated WordPress plugin enables users to look beyond basic features of such pages, and add details such as email confirmation with successful registration, additional fields for profiles, as well as choices for redirecting users to suitable pages after login or initial registration.

Such functional plugins in WordPress with assorted functionalities from handling the statistics to maintaining updates in Facebook allows generation of customized websites that can serve the purpose of the business effectively. Such plugins also allow developers to focus on various important aspects of the project, as well as ensure their timely completion.

Web Development

Web Application Development – Bright Today and Promising Tomorrow

June 21, 2012 brainwork

The internet continues to expand its impact on diverse industries and sectors. Businesses have adopted an online presence and now, cater to online users all over the world. This progress is the contribution of web application development, which essentially comprises of business tactics and procedures that are implemented on the internet. It includes three tiers – user services, data services, and business services. The web application development is essential in the modern business world where companies all over the world communicate with each other.

The proper implementation of web application is important to guarantee desired results and achievement of targets. The core phases include envisaging the direction of the project and the goals to be achieved, preparing a project plan, coding and developing the project, and testing and removing the final inconsistencies and bugs in the project. One has several alternatives to choose as far as the technical options are concerned. PHP is a widely used scripting language for developing dynamic and functional web applications. Since it is extremely versatile, it can perform efficiently over any type of OS. This compatibility over diverse platforms has made PHP extremely popular among developers.