Nine Essential Things Drupal Developers Need For Projects

If you are a site owner or manager of a development team — someone who helps web developers stay productive and on-task — you face an interesting challenge. You need to support, motivate and coordinate a group of people who are basically doing magic. Even though the web is completely mainstream, the knowledge of how it all actually works is classic “sufficiently advanced technology.”

What do Drupal developers need to succeed? As someone who’s been on both sides of the table and peeked behind the curtain, I have some general tips to share:

Version Control

This might be tricky if your developers do not want to use it, but in this modern era there’s really no excuse not to learn, love and religiously use version control. It is the engineer’s “undo” and the best way to collaborate with others on projects.

While there are some niche tools that still have appeal, the undisputed leader in this space is Git. If you are developing your website without a git-based workflow at the foundation, consider stopping until you can get that in place.

Local Development Support

Nothing is faster than local development — where a developer sets up the “full stack” on their desktop or laptop, using their personal computer as client, server and development environment. You cut all network latency out of the picture completely, and let a high-powered modern CPU focus on delivering pages for one user only. You can also work without an Internet connection, which can come in handy.

In order to get this going, you will need ways to easily sync with the rest of the development team. Version control handles that for code, but you will need an efficient method to quickly grab database and files snapshots.

Online Workspace

This sounds contrary to local development, and it is, but it is no less important. If you do not have an online workspace that will enable you to easily share your project with other team members, it is going to make your process a nightmare of bureaucracy and slowdowns. You will need both online and local development if you want to move fast.

Continuous Integration Tools

One thing that makes projects chaotic is when unexpected bugs crop up. The whole “it worked on my machine” conversation is everyone’s least favorite. For the sake of developer sanity and the project’s velocity, you need to ensure that developers are working against the latest code and up-to-date content, and that several different developers’ changes are tested together frequently.

An Environment That Matches Producion

Going along with the Continuous Integration point, there is nothing more frustrating than a bug that manifests in production. These can be absolute killers, and it is crucial that you have places to develop and test your code that are running all the same things as production: same versions of service, same filesystem, same architecture, same everything.

Access To Debug

f you are trying to figure out a bug, and it works locally but not in the deployment pipeline, you’ve got to get direct access to start hunting it down. Speculatively making git commits and pushing them up to see if they fix the issue makes everyone die inside. It is also cumbersome and slow.

Drush Remotes

Drupal developers love Drush, the “Drupal shell”. Drush is a command-line utility for performing several common tasks on a Drupal site without having to log in or use a web browser. It is awesome for automation or batch jobs. In order to make use of it in an online context, you need to provide SSH access to each of your environments, and then configure an “alias” file so developers can run drush commands from their laptops in the online environments.

Power Tools

The modern website performance stack goes well beyond LAMP. You need to make sure your developers have access to Redis, Solr and can test their work with a reverse-proxy cache like Varnish. Otherwise, they will be missing out on great features, and setting themselves up for bugs in deployment.

Integration Points

If you are ever stuck trying to think up a conversation-starter with a group of developers, ask them what text editor they use. Everyone has their own favorite tools, from command-line to full IDEs. There is no one solution that will solve all your development needs, and outside of the few general points I have made above, it is generally not productive to force developers to standardize.

Instead, you get everyone aligned on the major points — using version control, developing and testing against the same stack, frequently integrating changes, using a solid deployment pipeline to go live — and then let them do whatever makes them the most productive. These kinds of tools and techniques are a part of every pro Drupal developers playbook.

Drupal Developers – Working On Custom Drupal Development

Drupal has indeed become one of the most popular content management systems (CMSs) used by a majority of web developers all over the world. Rich in modules and themes, Drupal has served as an excellent option for designing and developing business websites, job portals, informative sites, e-commerce sites etc. Recent years have witnessed a considerable improvement in the count of Drupal developers who’ve come up with great web development solutions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In this post, I will be covering the reasons why custom Drupal development solutions have been chosen by a majority of SMEs.

Reason # 1 - Drupal is highly modular

The modular nature of Drupal makes it the best fit for developing e-commerce websites and employment portals. With Drupal, you get handy tools to manage your site’s content, track statistics and handle multiple users at one time. This web development platform provides flexibility to build solid websites, tailor-made for SMEs.

Reason # 2 - Drupal offers easy customization and integration with other applications

Customization plays a crucial role in keeping the website up to date. As a small/medium-sized enterprise owner, you ought to update your website to increase your business success. Using Drupal you need not edit the entire coding for your website. All you need to do is upload the customization codes to the modules and you are done. In addition to this, you can also avail the flexibility of integrating third-party applications into your site to give it uniqueness.

Reason # 3 - Reduced Set-up and ownership costs

Unlike other Open Source Softwares, Drupal is available free of royalties and fees. You can start using the software without the need to pay expensive upgrade fees, administrative overheads, maintenance fees and management costs. The easy-to-install and user-friendly nature of Drupal makes it the best bet for SMEs who are not comfortable enough in spending a lot on installation and usage of website development softwares.

Reason # 4 - Reliability, security and quality guaranteed

Drupal’s source code undergoes many rounds of tests performed by trained professionals. These testing experts make sure to prevent the source code from security breaches, hack attacks and virus attacks. Thus, with Drupal CMS , Drupal developers can rest assured about developing a website or web application that does not need you to indulge in virus checking, downtime or data loss.

Reason # 5 - Drupal supports a variety of content types

Drupal has been quite popular among SMEs that need to manage their site’s content on a regular basis. With Drupal, you can create and manage different content types ranging from videos, blogs and polls to podcasts and statistics. Hence, irrespective of what type of content you want for your site, custom Drupal development makes things possible for you.

Conclusion

So, if you too own a small or mid-sized business organization, choosing Drupal for your web development needs can benefit you to the fullest. Hiring a proficient Drupal developer can aid you in meeting your web development requirements in a time-efficient and result-oriented way.

Developing A Website With Ektron

Ektron's line of  web authoring tools and web content management solutions have evolved over the years becoming the ideal choice for organizations who want their everyday business users to manage content on their website. Ektron continues to rise to the demands of the marketplace by making web content management more powerful and robust, yet keeping the process easy-to-use.

Ektron has revolutionized the way website authors make changes on the web by giving them the tools that they need to create HTML, without knowing HTML, using Ektron's web-based WYSIWYG editor, eWebEditPro. Built around eWebEditPro is Ektron's award-winning content management solution, Ektron CMS400.NET. CMS400.NET extends the capabilities of just authoring web content by incorporating functionality like workflows, approval chains, audit trails, and HTML form building.

The content of a website is not the only thing distinguishes a good web site from a great website. Several elements are also required including the overall look and feel of the website. Where does content management end and design begin? Why do these aspects need to be separated? The answer is...they don't. Ektron has pondered this question and delivered quite possibly the greatest development tool specifically for Macromedia Dreamweaver developers, the Ektron CMS400.NET Dreamweaver Extension.

Ektron focuses on 80% of web developers

According to Macromedia, 80% of professional web developers use Dreamweaver for developing websites due to its ease of use and flexibility. Similar to Macromedia's approach, Ektron provides an intuitive and easy-to-use content management solution to create and mange website content, documents, navigation, forms, and calendars on the web.

More and more, it is becoming the ideal solutions for website content authors, website administrators, Webmasters, and web developers because of it is easy of use, integration, and low price point. Several content management vendors depend on web developers to learn new languages and environments to deploy a website using their product. Ektron on the other hand, empowers these same developers by offering a wide array of choices allowing the developer to develop a website in the language, and environment, that they are most comfortable with whether it be ColdFusion, ASP, ASP.NET or PHP.

As an added bonus, since the pages that you create are in these commonly used languages, all the custom code that you have written, like e-commerce code, can still be used on the same page that content managed by Ektron CMS400.NET is displayed. Ektron's Dreamweaver Extension installs in minutes, and the benefits are unbeatable. Above all, developers can keep using Dreamweaver, the product that they are most skilled with and most proficient with.

Today when people are talking about responsive web designing, one thing which comes into my mind is the use of a CMS. For me, nothing fits well than Ektron. It is so useful and easy to manage. Responsive web design is all the craze when it comes to making websites look great on a multitude of devices. Imagine if you could increase your mobile leads by over 350 percent and reduce development efforts. It’s time to get started. All you need to do is register for the Ektron Responsinator and plug in your company website URL. Ektron simplifies the creation, management and delivery of digital experiences for global organizations that are looking to drive revenue growth and improve customer satisfaction. Ektron helps companies deliver customer experiences to their audiences through digital channels by using content to engage consumers and drive business outcomes.

Steps that will make your Android apps development process easier and breezier

Have you ever dream of Android apps development? Well, now it is time to set aside your dreams and get started with it. There are more than one million new mobile device activation each day. The mobile platform that boasts of maximum reach is Android operating system.

Some of the most important tools that you must use for Android apps development are the following:

Eclipse IDE
Android ADT
Android SDK
Android system images for the Android emulator
An Android device for testing your application

The Android SDK tools make it easier for Android application developers to start with app development. This article teaches you how to develop an Android application with the help of Eclipse (with ADT plugin).

1. Firstly, you have click 'New' in the toolbar.
2. In the window which appears, you have to open the Android folder and then choose Android Application Project and then click 'next.'
3. You have to fill in the details in the form such as:
             a) Application Name: This is the name that appears to the users.
             b) Project Name: This is the name which is of your project directory and the name that's visible in Eclipse.
            c) Package Name: This name has to be very unique, therefore, you can choose the reverse domain name of your company to fill up this namespace.

4. Minimum Required SDK is the lowest Android version which your application supports – this is indicated with the help of the API level. The lowest version is selected to support as many Android devices as possible in the market. If there are any feature in your Android app which runs only on the newer versions of Android, you can enable the feature only when it runs on the versions that support it.
5. During Android apps development, Target SDK shows the highest Android version ( with the use of API level). As new Android versions come up in the market, you must test your Android application on the newer versions too and update it to match the most recent API level in an attempt to take full advantage of the features of the latest version.
6. Compile With is the version of the platform against which you will compile your Android application. This is usually set to the latest Android version that's available in your SDK. It must be more than Android 4.1 and if it is not there, you must install one with the help of SDK Manager. By setting your app to compile with the latest version, you will be able to optimist your app and provide a much greater user experience.
7. Theme is the user interface that you must choose for your Android app.
8. There will be a few other steps such as customizing your app icon, and so on, which you must follow before you make your Android app ready for use.
9. At the end, all you need is an Android mobile device to check whether your app is running and functioning properly.

Android apps development is one of the easier processes and you need just a few tools to develop these apps successfully. Developing your first Android app and seeing it running in a phone is a truly fun-filled experience. So what are you waiting for? Start developing one for your website or company soon.

Android Application Development For Business

How do businesses keep up with the fast-paced wants and needs of customers? With the advancements in technology and communication, clients’ inquiries and expectations have shot through the roof. Keeping your business afloat in the new world market requires high efficiency and low turnaround times. In other words, get things done quickly. Multitasking is the way to go. And mobile apps for business let you do just that.

In this day and age, Android smartphones save time. Benjamin Franklin would certainly agree with his old adage "time is money". Sitting in a cold office room late at night, for a conference call on Skype, when you should be catching the last bus home is reason enough to add an Android smartphone to your business arsenal.

Android Apps for Notes

Conferences and seminars are a constant source of vital brain food in the business world. No need to lug around your five-kilogram laptop and a notepad to jot down notes and key points anymore. You can do all that and more with Android mobile apps for business like Catch Notes and Evernote. You can type your note, read out a note using Android voice recognition, record a note as an audio file, and the easiest and best part, take a snapshot of it with the camera on your smartphone.

Android Apps for E-mail Management

From the start of the internet revolution, we were all instantly hooked on the e-mail. We still thrive on e-mail like our lungs still thrive on oxygen. The business world practically has its life support system built out of the e-mail. E-mail syncing on Android smartphones now makes your public transport a portable office. Android apps like Exchange for Android will sync your smartphone with your company’s e-mail server. Apart from e-mail, a wide range of mobile applications for Android, like CompanionLink offer ways of synchronizing your calendar, tasks, contacts and notes from Microsoft Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes to your smartphone. It is like a personal assistant who works all day long! E-mail mobile applications for business use are the backbone of remote offices and organizations that have field personnel.

Conferencing Mobile Applications for Android

Businesses thrive on communication. Conference calls are the most time-saving form of communication, involving several participants in one call. You don’t need to schedule a call and book a conference room in advance. The Google Voice app will make conferencing a breeze, and lets you attend the call at any location you find yourself in: airport terminal, restaurant, or at your holiday home on the beach.

Android Mobile Apps for Documentation

Creating presentations and slides has never been easier. Top office suites for Android, Documents to Go and Quick office, will take care of all your word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation needs. These Android apps let you create, view and edit all your documents with the ease and simplicity your laptop offers. Several Android business apps like Gmote also convert your smartphone into a remote control for your presentations.

These are just some of the most useful Android mobile applications for business. Everyday there are new business applications being created. In conclusion, Android is fast climbing to the top spot as the best smartphone operating system in the world; and mobile apps for business on the Android platform are definitely the future of business management. So, there are lot of responsibilities on the hands of Android apps developers who are working on their toes to create new and exciting apps.

Stimulate Your Business ROI With iPhone Apps Development

iPhone app Growth is a continuously growing pattern in mobile app development industry nowadays. An iPhone has outstanding functions; mind boggling looks and multiple performances that display the reason for it being so well known among the iPhone buyers and iPhone app developers. These days, people get fascinated by iPhone and they are investing huge financial commitment on this Apple product. The need of iPhone is improving day by day; therefore obviously the requirement of app is increasing as well.

In existing situation, entrepreneurs are increasing in iOS development industry. They know the potential of iPhone app development and are very enthusiastic to get outstanding ROI through those means, hence their concentration is on the iPhone app market. Moreover people are tied up with iPhone app development companies for creating high quality iPhone Apps and because of these purposes, they are choosing devoted groups of iPhone apps developers.

iPhone shave got a tremendous fan following from teenagers looking to explore the app world and relish the classy looks of iPhone. Nowadays, everyone is charmed by iPhone not only youngsters but also people of all ages. Business owners realize the importance of having a iPhone app, iPhones are everywhere in the corporate world and having an iPhone app definitely helps giving a boost to your business. iPhone apps is a good approach for reaching your potential customers and the type of apps on the app store is always increasing.

Mainly all entrepreneurs are creating their sites, which is suitable with iPhone. Provided the web page is simple to use, easy routing and outstanding looking then there is an opportunity to improve your web page reputation. One can also increase your business over the Internet to a greater extent. This is one of the reasons why iPhone app developers are in great need. iPhone apps development is one of the most popular industry these days and has a market of billions of dollars, so it is not a bad plan to conceptualize your idea and transform it into an app and make money out of it through the various revenue making options possible.

These days, there are loads of mobile content management organizations available all around the world. The developers working within companies are ready to make iPhone apps for their customers. They are knowledgeable and possess comprehensive experience in development profession. Using their information and ability, you can make top quality iPhone apps which will fulfill your company needs and help you to get hefty revenues. You can seek the solutions from iPhone app developers or from devoted iPhone app development team. They provide cost-effective iPhone app development services according to your requirements and will finish your development Venture within the given time frame. Hire iPhone application developers from well-known iPhone app development companies and get advantages by creating iPhone programs which are later on deployed to the app store to make an app presence and capitalize on the ROI through iPhone apps development. So, what are you waiting for? Hurry up man! Go and increase your business ROI with the said strategy.

Know How Drupal Developers Create Powerful Websites

Running an online business is no more a kid’s play. If you want to have a successful online business then it is important that you keep pace with changing times. For business owners who are craving for a well-paced online business venture can now count upon the open source platform – Drupal.

The concept of Drupal development is gaining popularity each passing day because of the various advantages that it has to offer. Being one of the most powerful content management systems available today, it lets you come up with some of the most well-designed and developed websites. Having an online website that neither appears in search engines nor generate revenues is close to not having the one. The way in which a website is designed and developed has a vital role to play in establishing a powerful image of your business on the virtual world of the internet.

Since Drupal first hit the market, there has been no looking back. It is being used by diverse industry verticals for designing and development of website. No matter what your business, when you hire Drupal developers then you can be assured to get outstanding results. Enlisted are some of the websites, including mobile or responsive websites, that can be designed using Drupal:

• Corporate websites
• Personal websites
• E-commerce / M-commerce websites
• Community portals

One of the prime reasons that this software is being preferred by webmasters as well as clients alike is because of the user-friendliness that it has to offer. However, if you want to make the most of this CMS then it is suggested that you hire the services offered by professional Drupal developers. There are many professional developers in India who has gained proficiency is designing and development of such websites. When you rely on the services offered by expert developers, they will provide you with the necessary guidance and support for developing new add-ons and components for customer friendly, navigable, functional, feature rich and attractive website.

When you are looking for Drupal development firm then you have plenty of options to choose from. India is home to some of the most renowned and famous companies offering Drupal development services. Professionals are known for high quality work and timely delivery of the project. No doubt that cost is yet another factor that makes Indian developers the most preferred ones in the world. They give your website a look that is compatible in all browsers and optimize web pages so that you can get maximum exposure in leading search engines. This, in turn, would increase the traffic to your website that will ultimately add revenue to your website.

So, if you think that your online business is going nowhere, and despite trying hard nothing much significant is happening to your website then considers creating an impressive and powerful website by making use of Drupal. Hire Drupal developers for results that will speak for themselves. Giving your online business a boost by simply getting a website designed and developed in Drupal.

Benefits Of Android Apps Development – Opening Doors For Android App Developers

While the Android SDK provides a great starting point for an individual developer of Android code, it is missing features that facilitate the collaboration and coordination needed when a team is developing an Android application. By integrating the device-specific, native platform SDK with a compatible commercial development solution, agile teams can achieve tremendous efficiencies and higher-quality results.

The Android Software Development Kit (SDK), which Google provides for free, is a great starting point for developing an Android-based smart device application. The SDK contains a variety of useful materials for developers, including extensive documentation, tutorials, samples, best practice guidance, and an array of tools for numerous development purposes.

The SDK’s set of Java APIs gives application developers access to native functions that Android-based devices support, such as 2D and 3D graphics, multimedia codecs, telephony features, and location services. A device emulator in the SDK allows developers to try out their code directly from the development environment without requiring a physical device. And the SDK has an Eclipse plug-in that exposes the Android APIs and SDK tools in a rich Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Opening the door to collaboration

For an individual developer of Android code, the SDK is valuable and is becoming more so as it is being extended with new features all the time. However, it is missing features that facilitate the collaboration and coordination needed when a development team is creating the application.

By integrating the device-specific, native platform SDK from Google with a compatible commercial development solution, agile teams can achieve tremendous efficiencies and better results. Integrating the native Android SDK with a commercial development environment opens the door to seamless source control, iterative application planning, effortless work item management, and a host of enterprise-quality development capabilities for an Android application.

For instance, many Android applications are structured as hybrid web applications, where part of the application runs on an application server on the network delivering data to the device from an enterprise storage system, perhaps a mainframe computer. Another part of the hybrid application runs on the device itself, displaying the data it receives across the network and formatting it for the device form factor while accessing the device’s services such as GPS, camera, and accelerometer to deliver a rich and well-performing user experience.

Such a hybrid application is typically created by a small team comprising a few developers of the fundamental business logic and web application components, a few User Interface (UI) developers, a user experience designer, a couple of testers, and a team leader or manager. Let’s consider how this team can leverage the Android SDK in an environment that allows each member to efficiently communicate and collaborate.

Commercial static analysis products can be integrated with the Eclipse-based development environment and deliver the ability to analyze the code for quality and security issues. Some of these products can be integrated with the actual change set deliver process so that no code is integrated into the main line code stream unless it has been analyzed for fundamental quality and security issues.

All of the capabilities delivered by the commercial development products extend and enhance the basic SDK supplied by Google. While the Google Android SDK is the fundamental starting point for any project delivering code to be executed on the Android platform, the SDK can be dramatically more effective when integrated with the traditional agile team development features available in other Eclipse-based commercial products becoming more widely available today. This is really a boon for android app developers