Joomla! is a free, open source content management system written with PHP for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets using a MySQL database. Joomla! includes features such as page cactching to improve performance, web indexing, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blockgs, forums, polls, calendars, website searching, and language internationalization. While Joomla is packed with features, its greatest quality is that it is extremely extensible. Because of its extensible structure, there aren’t many things you cannot do with Joomla.

What’s in a name?

The name is a phonetic spelling of the Swahili word jumla meaning “all together” or “as a whole”. It was chosen to reflect the commitment of the development team and community to the project. The first release of Joomla! (Joomla! 1.0.0) was announced on September 16, 2005. This was a re-branded release of Mambo 4.5.2.3 combined with other bug and moderate-level security featuresixes. In the project’s roadmap, the core developers say Joomla! 1.5 will be a completely re-written code base built with PHP 5.

How does Joomla Work?

With traditional website design, there is a bottleneck whereby the webmaster must enter all the content into the site. In a large organization, it’s possible to have designated contributors each with web editing software like FrontPage or Dreamweaver, but the costs add up, and each person must be trained to work with HTML. The larger the group of contributors, the higher the cost. Speaking from experience, a couple of incorrect keystrokes can ruin a website. One poorly trained contributor can make a huge mess.

With Joomla! a template is set up by the developer, the owner/administrator can give permission to others who would simply need internet access to log in and enter content on their own schedule. There are tools build in to the back end to customize the look and feel of the page, much like you would use in creating a Word document. The administrator can allow others to publish directly, or have it approved first.

The ‘J’ Factor

Joomla open source cms is recognized as one of the most popular content management systems ion the internet today due to the following factors.

1) User friendly easy to use administrator and front end interface.
2) Secure, Flexible, scaleable modular architecture.
3) Wide range of open source and commercial modules.
4) Open source - no licensing fees.
5) Thriving support community.
6) Wide range of plug-ins including shop’s, forums, galleries etc.

Basically Joomla enables you or your business to manage and maintain your web site content with out the need for expensive specialized web development skills or paying someone to maintain your website content.

The administrator interface is very easy to use and is similar toin some respects to a Microsoft word editor, you can add text, images and manage, publish your content with a click of a button.

Features Provided By Joomla:

• Completely database MYSQL driven site engine.
• News, products or services sections fully editable and manageable.
• Topics sections can be added to by contributing authors.
• Fully customizable template layouts including left, center and right menu boxes.
• Browser upload of images to your own library for usinge anywhere in the site.
• Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for getting on-the-spot results and much more.
• Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris and AIX.
• Search Engine Friendly system for getting highest search engine ranking position.
• Open source backend server architecture utilizing apache, MYSQL, PHP.

Administration Features:

• Change order of objects including news, FAQs, articles etc.
• Random Newsflash generator.
• Remote author submission module for News, Articles, FAQs and Links.
• Object hierarchy -as many sections, departments, divisions and pages as you want.
• Image library - store all your PNGs, PDFs, DOCs, XLSs, GIFs and JPEGs online.
• Automatic Path-Finder. Place a picture and let Mambo fix the link.
• News feed manager. Choose from over 360 news feeds from around the world.
• Archive manager. Put your old articles into cold storage rather than throw them out
• Email-a-friend and Print-format for every story and article.
• In-line Text editor similar to Word Pad.
• User editable look and feel.
• Polls/Surveys - Now put a different one on each page.
• Custom Page Modules. Download custom page modules to spice up your site.
• Template Manager. Download templates and implement them in seconds.
• Layout preview. See how it looks before going live.
• Banner manager. Make money out of your site.

Author:

By Jagat Kothari

Jagat Kothari is working as a Php Programmer at Semaphore Infotech Pvt. Ltd, India. He has more than 10 months Experience in php. You can contact on email: jagat@semaphore-software.com.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This term is used to explain the marketing technique of developing a website to boost up its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once an appropriate search is undertaken. There are lot many important factors while optimizing a website, which include its content and structure of the website’s copy and page design/layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.

What is SEM?

SEM stands for Search engine marketing which provides an effective method of highly targeted visitors to the web site. The search engine marketing pages make available access to the collective understanding of all the top search engine marketing experts with frequently updated articles, links to resources, and announcements of new tools and services.

Why SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of structuring a web page so that it is found, read, and indexed by search engines in the most effective manner possible.

This makes the site and its content eye-catching, appropriate and observable to search engines and web searchers.

It can happen with your web site if people cannot easily locate it. Traffic volume, if it is not existed at all, slows to a crawl. Potentially valuable customers never even know you are there.

Conclusion:

It’s a need to do SEO for your web site as if you wish to increase the traffic volume on your site & get it crawl easily and soon.

Author:

By Shweta Shah

Shweta Shah is working as a web developer at Semaphore Infotech Pvt. Ltd, India. She has more than 6 months Experience in web designing. You can contact on email: shweta@semaphore-software.com.

Information technology has transformed the way we live  live in and the way we do business. Since last decade, I.T. has made a drastic change in our life. As compared to earlier stage, when computer was used just as a typewriter, nowadays users have become more intelligent and IT literate. Now the user knows that a PC can do many more things rather then just typing a letter in a word processing software or making balance sheets in excel. They expect more things out of their PC. During this phase of industry, every one of us must have heard the word ERP in one or the other form. It may be in title of any IT magazine or may be a point of discussion in any IT Seminar or may be in an advertisement of big IT Company. Thus in any form, we all have been through this word. In this short article, I’ll try to concisely explain the basic yet important concepts relevant to ERP.

What is ERP ?

ERP is one of the most widely implemented business software systems in a wide variety of industries and organizations. ERP is the acronym of Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP is just not only a software. ERP definition refers to both; ERP software and business strategies that implement ERP systems.

ERP implementation utilizes various ERP software applications to improve the performance of organizations for

1) resource planning,

2) management control and

3) operational control.

ERP software consists of multiple software modules that integrate activities across functional departments - from production planning, parts purchasing, inventory control and product distribution to order tracking. Most ERP software systems include application modules to support common business activities like finance, accounting and human resources.

ERP Systems

ERP is much more than just a computer software. An ERP System includes ERP Software, Business Processes, Users and Hardware that run the ERP software. An ERP system is more than the sum of its parts or components. Those components interact together to achieve a common goal - streamline and improve organizations’ business processes. Most important factor for ERP system is the users. Successful implementation of any ERP System more depends on intelligent users who are going to use them, because any standard ERP Software would consist hundreds of input information for any particular business activity. Thus good knowledge of each entity of system to the users is most important factor in ERP Software.

History of ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the evolution of Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP) II in 1980s, which was mainly related to Manufacturing Industry and was designed to control manufacturing process and planning the required production with efficient output. Where as MRP is the evolution of Inventory Management & Control conceived in 1960s, which was mainly designed for management of Stocks in any particular industry. ERP has expanded from coordination of manufacturing processes to the integration of enterprise-wide backend processes like production planning and scheduling of delivery. In terms of technology, ERP has evolved from legacy implementation to more flexible tiered client-server architecture.

Benefits of ERP

ERP software attempts to integrate business processes across departments ionto a single enterprise-wide information system. The major benefits of ERP are improved coordination across functional departments and increased efficiencies of doing business. The implementations of ERP systems help to facilitate day-to-day management as well. ERP software systems are originally and ambitiously designed to support resource planning portion of strategic planning. In reality, resource planning has been the weakest link in ERP practice due to the complexity of strategic planning and lack of adequate integration of ERP with Decision Support Systems (DSS).

Famous ERP Software

No one from IT industry will be unknown from the word SAP. SAP is the most successful ERP Software. To name more here are some examples:

PeopleSoft             (http://www.peoplesoft.com/)

SysPro                  (http://www.syspro.com/)

ORION Enterprise   (http://www.3i-infotech.com/)

Matrix                    (http://www.matrixinfosystems.com/)

(In the past, we have implemented Matrix ERP solution for one of our clients)

ERP Failures

I couldn’t conclude my brief guide to ERP without mentioning ERP failures. The failures of Crore rupees ERP projects are reported once in a while even after many years of ERP implementation.

There are four components of an ERP System –

1) ERP software,

2) Business Processes that ERP software supports,

3) Users of ERP systems, and

4) Hardware and Operating Systems that run ERP applications.

The failures in one or more of those four components can cause the failure of an ERP project. Discussions on each of the four topics will require new article, so I may come up with same in my next article.

Author:

By Premal Vala

Premal Vala is working as a Project Leader for Semaphore Infotech Pvt. Ltd, a renowned IT company based at Ahmedabad, India . He has around 10 years of experience in the field of Information Technology. Working on ERP is his main area of interest. Apart from this, he is also fond of Video movie recording and editing/mixing of Audio/Video. You can contact on email: mailto:premal@semaphore-software.com

DO: 

1. Follow the company coding standard.

2. Read the SRS / SDD carefully and understand the forms.

3. Understand and write down the instruction of the functional and technical requirement of the form. This is very important since we are developing enterprise application for multiple branches and locations of different hierarchy.

4. Ask concerned PL in case of any doubt at any point of time so that problems / errors do not pop up during testing / implementation.

5. Find out the pre – requisite and post – requisite of the form.

6. Put the valid & sensible data into the required masters and transactions.

7. Do the coding such a way so that maintenance of the forms will be easier. I.e. If length of the field is changed then form should take care of it automatically.

8. Minimize the scrolling of the form.

9. Do proper alignment of all the controls.

10. Do not delete any data at any point of time.

11. In data search / find window give at least four to five columns which make sense to users with respect to the context of the field’s and form’s requirement.

12. Enable and disable the controls with respect to the context of the data. I.e. if application is forwarded to other location then do not enable edit or delete button.

13. Take the maximum advantages of database objects like triggers, functions and stored procedures.

14. Share your technical expertise when you achieve something which is abnormal in routine coding.

15. Avoid multiple trips to the database server.

16. Think of a copy of static data to the client side. I.e. District data / system parameter data are not changed very often so keep such data on the client side.

17. Load your changes on the test server and test your changes on test server without fail.

18. Set combo box width to the maximum length of the data being displayed in the list.

19. Same way, make sure that controls have enough space to display data when we take help of select / find window.

20. Height of the text box / combo box / list box should vary with respective labels. I.e. when labels occupy two lines.

21. Give meaningful message when any condition fails or any event takes place. Also message should be picked up from database according to the message no.

22. Understand the internal relation among the fields and enable / disable the field. Also accept the valid data with the context of data in the previous fields.

23. Have the complete environment for development. I.e. Install the font and required files.

24. Have code review with technical leaders and seniors and take care of all the points / suggestions / comments without fail.

25. For data maintenance have one sample program with all the possible conditions. I.e. For master / detail transaction have one sample program.

26. Get back to the concerned PL if you find any problem as per SRS / SDD.

DONT

In next sequence…….

Conclusion:

In nut shell every programmer has to be analyst programmer. Do work with commitment. Check your work with all the possible combination of valid and invalid data. Do not assume that form will work 100 % right without 100 % test.

Author:

By Sanjay Tamboli

Sanjay Tamboli is working as a Project Leader at Semaphore Infotech Pvt. Ltd, India. He has more than 15 years Experience. You can contact on email: sanjay@semaphore-software.com.

Nowadays Microsoft has introduced a new technology called “ Ajax” which is useful for having “fresh” data from the server without delaying more to the client end. There is a product also available in the market produced by Microsoft and named that as “Atlas.NET”.

There is also another way to handle the same state by implementing “Ajax” in the form of “XMLHTTP” request which can be used when there are certain situations where it is necessary to fetch the fresh data from the server without delaying them to persist to
the client.

Whenever there is a situation like in which some data is to be produced in a table and that data comes from the server. This consumes more time to produce the data to the client because every time whole page is sent to and received from the server with the data. There is a solution to overcome this problem by “sending and receiving only required data, not whole page”. Followingexample shows how to overcome this problem using “XMLHTTP”

The “frmAjax.aspx” is the file in which there is a button control clicking on which the data is presented to the client without delaying more.

<%@ Page Language=”VB” AutoEventWireup=”false” CodeFile=”frmAjax.aspx.vb” Inherits=”frmAjax” %>

<html>

<head runat=”server”>

<title>Ajax Lookup Table</title>

<script language=”jscript” type=”text/jscript” >

// JScript File

var xmlRequest=null;

//function that handles button click

function fnajaxcall(){

xmlRequest = new ActiveXObject(”Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);

xmlRequest.onreadystatechange =fnajaxresult;

xmlRequest.open(”POST”,”frmAjax.aspx?Go=yes”, false);

xmlRequest.setRequestHeader(”Content-Type”,”text”);

xmlRequest.send();

return false;

}

//Handling Ready state of XMLHTTP Request

function fnajaxresult(){

if (xmlRequest.readyState == 4){

var response = xmlRequest.responseText;

//this will generate the table came from XMLHTTP request

window.execScript(response);

return false;

}

}

//Clearing Rows from the Table

function fnClearRows(){

var i;

while(tblStudents.rows.length>0)

tblStudents.deleteRow(0);

return false;

}

</script>

</head>

<body>

<form id=”form1″ runat=”server”>

<asp:Button ID=”btnCreate” runat=”server” Text=”Create Table” />

<asp:Button ID=”btnClearTable” runat=”server” Text=”Clear Table” /><br />

<br />

<table id=”tblStudents” border=”1″ cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″>

<tbody id=”oTBody0″ />

</table>

</form>

</body>

</html>

Following is the file named as “frmAjax.aspx.vb“ where the data is fetched from the server.

Imports System.Data

Imports System.Data.OleDb

Partial Class frmAjax

Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

Dim ods As New System.Data.DataSet

Dim ad As New OleDbDataAdapter

Dim cn As New OleDbConnection

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load

If Not Request.QueryString(”Go”) Is Nothing Then

Response.Clear()

Response.Write(filldataset())

Response.End()

End If

End Sub

Private Function filldataset() As String

Try

Dim iCounter As Integer, jCounter As Integer

Dim strJava As String

cn.ConnectionString = “Provider=Microsoft.Jet.Oledb.4.0;DataSource=” & Server.mapPath(“My_Data\dbStudents.mdb”)

ad.SelectCommand = New OleDbCommand(”Select [no],name+’ ‘+surname,address from students”, cn)

ad.Fill(ods)

strJava = “fnClearRows(); var oTHead = tblStudents.createTHead();” _

& ” var oTFoot = tblStudents.createTFoot();” _

& ” var oCaption = tblStudents.createCaption();”
_

& ” var oRow, oCell;”_

& ” var i, j;”_

& ” var heading = new Array;” _

& ” heading[0] = ‘No’;”_

& ” heading[1] = ‘StudentName’;” _

& ” heading[2] = ‘Address’;”_

& ” oRow = oTHead.insertRow();”_

& ” oTHead.bgColor = ‘lightskyblue’;” _

& ” for (i=0; i<3;i++)” _

& ” {” _

& ” oCell = oRow.insertCell();”_

& ” oCell.align = ‘center’;” _

& ” oCell.style.fontWeight = ‘bold’;” _

& ” oCell.innerText = heading[i];” _

& ” }”

With ods.Tables(0)

For iCounter = 0 To .Rows.Count - 1

strJava = strJava _

& ” oRow = oTBody0.insertRow();”

For jCounter = 0 To 2

strJava = strJava & “oCell = oRow.insertCell();” _

& “oCell.innerText = ‘” & .Rows(iCounter)(jCounter).ToString & “‘;”

Next

Next

End With

Return strJava

Catch ex As Exception

Response.Write(”Error Occured”)

Return “”

Finally

ods.Dispose()

ad.Dispose()

cn.Dispose()

End Try

End Function

Protected Sub Page_PreRender(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.PreRender

btnCreate.Attributes.Add(”onclick”,
“return fnajaxcall();”)

btnClearTable.Attributes.Add(”onclick “if(tblStudents.rows.length==0){alert(’No rows’)} else { fnClearRows();} return false;”)

End Sub

End Class

Output

After Clicking on the “Create table button” the page will be displayed the following without having Whole Page Recycling

No	Student Name	Address
1	Saurin shah	xkzfgdfiwgfo wfowhf [wwfwfw
2	Ramesh patel	sfskfgas ifsfhso fhso hf a
3	Nikunj patel	dfasf vassh shgafs a
4	Raj sharma	sfasd fs shgs hs as
5	Dhaval patel	slfnsl nsl snngms; ms;g msp gsagnasgnasd asgnaog h
6	Anjum hirani	sfs fjs hsoghaog wagh sdfapgh phgipea g aw
7	Jayesh sutaria	fj snh glhsgo agoshgosagh oshg oasgosghaosg hasopg
8	Yagnik Jadhav	sfas asdkgbsjagosdghasdl asljgsljgbaslgans
9	Bhumit patel	fgs;gahnsgha gshgoash
10	Vimal patel

Author:

Saurin Shah

Saurin Shah is working as a Programmer at Semaphore Infotech Pvt. Ltd, India. He has more than 3 years Experience in .net. You can contact on email: saurin@semaphore-software.com.