Truthout.org Finds Refuge in Joomla!

Truthout.org was one among those sites by Drupal which was outdated and scavenged by malicious attacks, and effortlessly hacked every week. Tired of being a pushover Truthout.org turned towards Joomla! Developers to transform the site’s platform to a more flexible and stable premise.

Merits of Drupal and Updates on Drupal Camps

Drupal is developed into one of the most complex open-source content management systems (CMS) on the market and is represented by an array of top notch sites. Drupal is the perfect choice for large Enterprise websites that has high traffic.

Added Up Mobile Features of Magento Enterprise 1.12 and Community 1.7

Magento and its team were pleased to announce the release of two of its best offerings Magento Enterprise 1.12 and Community 1.7. After this announcement the various key features of these releases were also discussed by Magento and its team of Magento developers and Magento programmers.

Joomla Programmer Expertise for Business on the Web

Joomla is an award-winning open source content management system (CMS) to build powerful online applications. The Joomla content management system provides excellent navigation along with superior CMS features.

Ruby on Rails for Web and Mobile Applications

Rapid development of powerful business applications with impressive user interface. Ruby on Rails, RoR and Rails are sometimes used interchangeably.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Business Gets A Competitive Makeover With Apt Drupal Developers


Fremont, CA Dec. 08, 2011 - Fremont based global technology services company DCKAP announced today it has up-shifted its Drupal development service keeping in pace with surging market growth and also to have an edge over in the area f web application.

Drupal is a cost effective CMS solution as it allows Drupal programmers to develop complex websites in minimal time period compared to what it would take using other commercial CMS technologies. There are thousands of community-contributed modules that extend the flexibility of Drupal, so the chances of Drupal supporting almost all the features are high and if a required module could not be found, a Drupal developer can program new modules quickly and efficiently. The versatile platform for Drupal development now comes with a new user interface, accessibility improvements, powerful image handling capabilities, support for rich content metadata, security features, scalability and database interoperability enhancements and automated tests to ensure stability. The advanced version of Drupal has features like better HTML5, Better mobile support, improved multilingual features, setting up Drupal 8 on a modern web development framework. Drupal experts can build the most effective and customized business web applications.

DCKAP Drupal developer team, has successfully completed and delivered a diverse range of Drupal web applications for business, for its various clients, our Drupalexperts are famous for developing Drupal applications in relatively rapid build time and also for its dynamic nature of the websites designed on this framework. DCKAP’s Drupal programmers now work from the new fully equipped development center and also on client site as required.

Drupal is an excellent choice of a Content management system for any business site. Drupal can be used to manage various and every aspects of a website, from adding content and images to updating a product catalogue, processing credit card payments or taking online reservations. Drupal site built by an expert Drupal programmer can easily grow and expand to suit the needs of any business as the business expands. It gives the business owner complete control over content on the site.

Developing effective business applications requires specialized expertise in the technologies. For a business considering contracting a Drupal development company or a Drupal developer/ Drupal programmer, it would be of great significance to select the right Drupal developer resources and setting out the specifications with clarity and completeness.         

About DCKAP
DCKAP (www.dckap.com) is a Fremont, CA based global technology Services Company delivering technology driven business solutions that meet the strategic objectives of the clients. Founded in 2005, with offices in California & Colorado (USA), the UK, Australia and two development centers in India, DCKAP has earned appreciation from well respected Fortune 100 companies for its competent services.

Monday 28 May 2012

CKEDITOR 3.6.3 FOR DRUPAL AND ITS FEATURES

Drupal is an open-source content management system (CMS) and content management framework (CMF) written in PHP. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration. 

The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to content management systems. These include user account registration and maintenance, menu management, RSS-feeds, page layout customization, and system administration. CKEditor 3.6.3 was released by Drupal is a unique solution that integrates the online editor into the Drupal content management system which is reliable for drupal developers. This release brings CKEditor version to 3.6.3, introduces CKFinder version 2.2.1, and includes some fixes specific for the Drupal integration.

CKEditor 3.6.3 is a maintenance release that contains few bug fixes and few new features like including a new image and table alignment option and some accessibility enhancements for the color picker dialog window as well as enhanced Esc key support. Starting from this version the editor now makes it possible to align images just by using the Align toolbar buttons. Various issues with the editor content scrolling to the top in Internet Explorer have been fixed. 

CKFinder is the file browser that is included in the CKEditor for Drupal package is now updated to version 2.2.1. This version contains new features like HTML5 multiple file uploads, drag and drop uploads, read-only mode, and the lightbox plug-in, as well as numerous enhancements and bug fixes like improved detection and support for Android and iOS tablets or improvements of the Upload feature. This release fixes a Chrome 18 bug that makes it impossible to display the CKFinder popup in the browser after clicking the "Browse Server" button in the editor.

From this release onwards, a new security filters policy that protects user from executing malicious code that is already in your database was introduced. In order to configure the security filters, enter the profile configuration for the CKEditor module and go to the Security section. The CKEditor for Drupal module includes built-in support for security filter modules which needs to be downloaded and installed by users. Detailed information about the security filters policy as well as supported modules is available in the CKEditor module documentation.

Apart from the above, CKEditor 3.6.3 for Drupal introduces the Stylesheet Parser plugin with a simplified method of customizing the styles for the document created in CKEditor and populating the Styles drop-down list with style definitions added in an external CSS stylesheet file. Fixes specific for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 versions are also added.
DCKAP with its extensive expertise has been at the forefront of offering services in Drupal development. We have experienced Drupal Developers and Drupal Programmers team with onsite and offsite support. Our expert team of Drupal developers provides end-to-end services in Web development.

Magento and AOE Media Join Hands for Powerful Online Marketing

Today at the Magento Imagine eCommerce 2012 conference, Magento, a leading eCommerce platform provider and division of X.commerce, Inc., an eBay Inc. company, announced that it worked with AOE media, a Magento partner system integrator, to successfully meet the commerce needs of Rovio Entertainment Ltd., creators of the popular Angry Birds game. The implementation highlights will be discussed later today in AOE media's session, "Deployment Pipeline for Magento Enterprise in the Cloud."

AOE media has sought Megneto Enterprise to host and scale to provide for the growing user volume. This is solely because of the increase in demand caused due to the epidemic brought to AOE media by Angry Birds.

Rovio’s Business Development Director spoke to the press recently and said “Since the inception of Angry Birds, our brand's explosive growth has led to more than 700 million downloads as of February. To help us, we approached Magento Programmers and AOE media for a solution to effectively handle the increase in demand of our webshop. We are pleased with the variety of tools available on the platform that have allowed us to create a unique and seamless shopping experience for our customers. Having the option to plug and play other capabilities gave us exactly the flexibility we were looking for."

Rovio has now developed a fully-scalable solution according to its business needs and it credits Magento’s flexible platform for the developments that have happened since it has joined hands with Magento.

The added advantage of Magento’s platform is that it allows integration with Shipwire extension which facilitates Rovio fulfillments services to automatically get the global warehouses managed. This develops the efficiency of shipping which in turn optimizes cost and an increase in global inventory availability.

With such rigorous developments in business for Rovio and AOE media they definitely needed services from Magento which was provided and proved to be fruitful.

DCKAP has an experienced and trained team of Magento eCommerce developers, both onsite and offshore. Design services specializing in custom Magento development from Magento programmers, Magento programmer, Magento developers, Magento developer, Magento commerce developer, Magento commerce developers, Magento commerce programmer, Magento commerce programmers.

Friday 25 May 2012

Truthout.org Finds Refuge in Joomla!

Truthout.org was one among those sites by Drupal which was outdated and scavenged by malicious attacks, and effortlessly hacked every week. Tired of being a pushover Truthout.org turned towards Joomla! Developers to transform the site’s platform to a more flexible and stable premise. 

Obstacles Wiped Out

From the initial stages the site had numerous problems and each problem was a hurdle to the Joomla! developers. The basic problem was the outdated and ill-maintained condition of the site which was making the site an easy target to bots and other aggressive functions to hack it in a regular basis. And securing the site from attacks from all directions was a task which looked like mountain to the Joomla developers. Once this was tackled the next hurdle rose, which was migrating such a huge database of large scale Drupal to Joomla! and this was the first of its kind. With combined content of 200,000+ articles alone, each with 15-20 unique fields in Drupal, and tens of thousands of users, this was definitely a unique challenge.
The process of migration was also done efficiently by the talented Joomla developer and the next task was to clone the site already exiting template from Drupal to a Joomla! template. And finally the high-profile site was secured from external threats.

Procedural Structure of Joomla! Developer’s Job

Security

Delaying even minutes proved to be a security hazard for the site as it was getting hacked on a regular basis. Thus the preference for holding the old site was given priority even while the new site was being developed. Once the old site was kept in a secure place, the new site had to be secured accordingly and for this the Joomla! developers sought the help of the most reliable security providers SecureLive.

Content Construction

The content which was already present in the Drupal site had to be cloned to the new Joomla! site. The content which was present in the old site had to be mapped in a order so that it could be imported and presented in Joomla!. To tackle this barrier of the need for content extension Joomla! developers adopted the K2 CCK. K2 was built as a complete replacement of the default article system in Joomla!.  K2 CCK can be installed like any Joomla! extension which will import articles from the default Joomla! article system and instantly get a host of new features for the existing content. There were many options which were considered by the Joomla! developers to manage the content but finally K2 was opted for as it was technically compatible with the specific format with which Drupal stores data. The work did not end with the process of importing the content, Joomla! developers had to go further and according to the client’s specification building of many custom K2 features to assist in both content editing, and presentation were done.

User Management

While importing content Joomla! developers experience this difficulty of maintaining consistency in the association of user and content. In Joomla! (and K2) a single user can be assigned to a single article. With a news agency like Truthout.org it became necessary for the Joomla! developers to collaborate a single article with multiple users as there were numerous articles and series associated with a number of authors. As this problem was tackled recently by the Joomla team while working in a project for the United Nations, it was simple for them to handle it this time around.

Overall Site Design

The final design of the site was the final frontier for this project as the new site had to be adopted entirely from the already existed Drupal template. To facilitate the requirements of the site layout, and the unique positioning of different modules and new module positions, Joomla! developers started with the T3 framework from Joomlart to build a flexible template that can easily be expanded as needed.
 
DCKAP can build robust and reliable applications on the Joomla framework with experienced Joomla developers, Joomla programmer, Joomla programmers, Joomla developer, Joomla development services, Joomla integration, Joomla programmers, migration, maintenance and support.
 

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Drupal Developers Expertise Helps Business to Be Competitive


Fremont based global technology services company DCKAP announced today it has up-shifted its Drupal development service keeping in pace with surging market growth.

Drupal 7, the advanced version of Drupal, has features like Better HTML5, Better mobile support, Improved multilingual features, Setting up Drupal 7 on a modern web development framework. Drupal experts can build the most effective and customized business web applications. Drupal is a widely used content management system (CMS) well suited for web applications of any kind from web logs (blogs) and micro sites to collaborative social communities. The versatile platform for Drupal development now comes with a new user interface, accessibility improvements, powerful image handling capabilities, support for rich content metadata, security features, scalability and database interoperability enhancements and automated tests to ensure stability.

Drupal 7 releases before 7.12 contained a bug which prevented the use of custom menus. Because the Menu Block module provided a workaround for this bug as it added dependency to this module. With the release of Drupal 7.12 and Menu Block 2.3, the bug was successfully removed. Upgrading the existing Drupal 7 and 6 sites is however strongly recommended. 

DCKAP Drupal developer team, using Drupal 7, 7.12 has successfully completed and delivered a diverse range of Drupal web applications for business, for its various clients,. DCKAP’s Drupalprogrammers now work from the new fully equipped development center and also on client site as required. 

Drupal is an excellent choice of a Content management system for any business site. A Drupal site built by an expert Drupal programmer can easily grow and expand to suit the needs of any business as the business expands. It gives the business owner complete control over content on the site.

Developing effective business applications requires specialized expertise in the technologies. For a business considering contracting a Drupal development company or a Drupal developer/ Drupal programmer, it would be of great significance to select the right Drupal developer resources and setting out the specifications with clarity and completeness.

Monday 21 May 2012

Tips to Enhance Joomla Site’s Security

Joomla has established itself as one of the best Content Management Services in the industry. When sites around the globe start using a specific technology, naturally the security threats pivoting that technology also arises. 

To tackle the increasing security hassles Joomla developers keep tweaking the site and the service in different ways to ensure the optimal configuration is obtained which can withstand any level of threats to the security. The following are some tips to the users and other Joomla developers for ensuring that the site they are developing or using is secure.

Proper Hosting Environment

For all site the platform in which the site is built is the basic foundation and it is always important to check if it is properly configured. There are numerous kinds of attacks that happen to sites hosted in a platform which has no tweaked its security and the arrangements are not done efficiently. Host your site on a server that runs PHP in CGI mode with su_php. This means that PHP runs under your own account user instead of the global Apache user and you don’t need to set insecure global permissions like CHMOD of 777.

a. Set register_globals OFF
b. Disable allow_url_fopen
c. Adjust the magic_quotes_gpc directive as needed for your site. The recommended setting for Joomla! 1.0.x is ON to protect against poorly-written extensions. Joomla! 1.5 ignores this setting and works fine either way.
d. Don’t use PHP safe_mode

Change the Default Database Prefix (jos_)

Every database is named in a default way and the names and extensions they are given are rather common. Due to this bots and other automated entities find it simple to attack the database by random ruling. To avoid this the during installation the default database prefix could be altered to something random rather than using the same default name of jos_users table which will prevent most of the SQL injection attacks as hackers try to retrieve superadmin details. 

Disable FTP Layer

FTP details are stored in the form of plain text under a Joomla configuration file. This becomes a potential security hole. To avoid this glitch it is recommended to all users, Joomla developers and Joomla programmers to disable the FTP layer.

Change Superadministrator Username

Bots and other hazards which try to attack a site are programmed in such a way that if the superadministrator’s username assigned by the Joomla developers has not been changed and remains to be “Admin”, it will easily get access to the site. To avoid this it is always wise to change the username and password of the superadministrator to something inconspicuous like “ted_123” etc. 

Setup a backup and recovery process

Joomla developers are notified to rely on a strong backup and recovery protocol for your live website. It’s not just hacking that may compromise your website but other factors like a faulty upgrade or extension install, hardware failure, hosting provider issues. You can use JoomlaPack, a non-commercial component native for both Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 for backup.

Use Strong Password

For administrator accounts it is advisable to use a strong password which cannot be deciphered by automated bots. Characteristics of a strong password that Joomladeveloper have to keep in mind are as follows:

·         has at least 15 characters;
·         has uppercase letters;
·         has lowercase letters;
·         has numbers;
·         has symbols, such as ` ! " ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = { [ } ] : ; @ ' ~ # | \ < , > . ? /
·         is not like your previous passwords;
·         is not your name;
·         is not your login;
·         is not your friend’s name;
·         is not your family member’s name;
·         is not a dictionary word;
·         is not a common name.

A good addition is to password protect the administrator folder. In apache web server, you can do this htaccess file or in cpanel, you can use Password Protected Directory option to setup a password. This will add another layer of username/password before someone reaches your Joomla admin details. Needless to say, have this password different from Joomla admin password.