Check out important guidelines in choosing the right web development company

With all the service providers nowadays, choosing the right web development company could be hard. Before jumping into it, the first thing to do is to determine what one really requires from the service provider. A good web development company should have a slick online presence that is impressive. Nevertheless, this does not mean that they are the right one for one's particular needs. An ideal web development service provider should put its best foot forward on their own website. If the vendor does not turn a customer on though its site, then the thing to do is to look for another.

Selecting the right vendor is an important decision for any business, but most particularly for small and medium sized organizations. Whether the site would be a basic presence or a highly functional tool, an investment will have to be made. Furthermore, a firm is likely to be working with the web developer for the long term for support, service, and future website expansion and for delivering other services such as social media, search engine optimization and email marketing.

The following are some of the guidelines in choosing the right web development service provider.

1. Responsiveness - this is very important both on the web development process and more so after launching the site. One should determine how fast the vendor responds to initial inquiry and if they are timely in returning client calls.

2. Portfolio and references - the vendor's portfolio should be chock-full of original projects and each should be able to meet the unique requirements of the client. Moreover, a service provider should be willing to share references regarding your past and current projects.

3. Interpretation and listening skills - nothing is more important than having a web vendor who asks the right questions and digs deeper still to make sure what a customer wants and what it says it wants are the same thing. A good web developer will spend time to ensure that the website is developed in adherence to the business goals of the company and the functionality is fully thought out and works with the website as a whole.

4. Ability to suggest willingness and functionality - the web partner should be willing to tell the client if something is a bad idea and explain why. Moreover, the vendor should keep up with the changes in web technology and should serve as the trusted guide throughout the process of development to ensure that one is using the best practices and the best functionality for the certain business requirements.

5. Detailed and solid contract - a lengthy contract reflects assurance that what a company is paying for is well spelled out and to ensure there will be no misunderstandings. There are a lot of details of the law which should be addressed when there is intellectual property involved. The contract should delineate the project details, timelines ownership, payment terms and more.

6. Size and structure of the company - it is important to make certain that the potential firm not only have enough people on staff but there should be commitment to ensure the level of service the customer wants is actually delivered.

Developing web application framework by using CakePHP, a development framework that is cost-effective

CakePHP, an open source web application framework that is based on PHP, crafted on the Ruby on Rails concept. The framework has an architecture that is well-defined and offers a big deal of flexibility in making net solutions faster. Being open source, it is available without cost on the web, so the client could get the development done at affordable rates.

It's based on the MVC(model-view-controller) concept as well as association data mapping. Professionals could easily develop website apps in a rapid and structured manner. One could easily code with the use of the framework while at the same time maintain the flexibility as well. It provides several benefits, making it superior to some of other PHP frameworks in the market these days. One of the largest advantages of using the platform is related to coding. Several practice guides and detailed documentation are available together with the tool, making it making a code simple. Thus, developers could create web applications easily. One could achieve more via writing relatively less code.

Moreover, the code of old projects may be reused, making the process of developing an app or solution fast. Another advantage related to the platform is the cost. Since it is completely open source, one need not spend a single penny to use it. Developers could easily build cost-effective sites. Besides, there is no configuration required and even the validation features are built-in, so it saves a great deal of time. Furthermore, it utilizes several validation rules by itself for every field.

Another major benefit is the MVC pattern that it follows. It helps in clearly defining and separating both logic and business layer. Even though, one might not see much use of the MVC patterns for a small website, when developing a huge internet app, the architecture is a blessing. It enables easy reading, inserting and updating data in the database for the app, since it has an integrated crud. Flexible templating, licensing, ACL as well as flexible caching are among the features that prove the use of the framework extremely beneficial.

There are many service providers that cater to the different requirements of customers by using advanced techniques and tools, which enable them to create even complex resolutions easily. Service vendors have an experienced development team who are adept at developing high quality and challenging solutions. They are skilled at customization in which solutions are built as per client requisites. The service providers understand the pulse of the clientele and the markets and through blending the two; they could make formulas that benefit the clients. These professionals are always updated on the current trends, so they could offer customers their required essentials within the time frame agreed upon and under defined resources.

Some of the services available in the market include the following:

1. Job portals
2. Social networking sites
3. eCommerce sites
4. Internet communities
5. Healthcare websites

There are also additional benefits of utilizing the platform for developing software apps and solutions, such as:

1. It provides good security measures because of its structure
2. Highly scalable and flexible
3. Smaller codes for net and web application development
4. Less maintenance
5. Has built-in features for AJAX, HTML, JavaScript as well as other major technologies
6. Compatible with both PHP4 and PHP5

All of the features of CakePHP make it an easy option since formulas may be developed quickly and does not need a lot of maintenance.

PHP web development is an extremely popular option for businesses worldwide

PHP, together with databases such as MySQL are essential tools for creating contemporary web applications. The PHP platform powers majority of the data-driven websites these days. Moreover, PHP is the foundation technology for powerful CMS or content management systems, such as WordPress. Nowadays, most businesses are conducted via the web that serves as an international arena. Thus, it is pertinent for company websites to include the latest web technology solutions with effective applications.

PHP web development is a very popular option for most businesses all over the world. It is used by many website developers to boost the functionalities and appearance of the eCommerce sites. Mainly, PHP is known to create dynamic pages. The programming language basically is used for custom web solutions since it could be mixed easily with HTML, so most web developers opt to use the programming language. PHP is quite easy to use since it has simple techniques and formats and features that programmers could grasp easily.

There are a lot of pluses of PHP web development that include greater security. The framework has greater security features, making it all the more desirable in the web development world. Moreover, the PHP community is so keen on addressing any holes in the security function. The alertness from the community side has been more acceptable and those who opt for the language as their primary tool gets greater benefit from it. PHP is a widely-used server-side scripting language that is used predominantly to develop dynamic sites. As a general purpose language, it could be embedded easily into HTML source documents.

The language has a robust support for object-oriented programming that naturally enables a web developer or programmer to have several benefits. A PHP web developer has a lot of reasons to smile since the platform is very flexible and cost-effective as well because of its being an open source system. The community is ever ready to help new developers with any queries. Moreover, the platform is compatible with almost all databases and operating systems. As the web development industry is getting more and more significant, a programmer or developer has a lot of opportunities to use the potential due to the world internet and computer of today which has the most inevitable utilities for people.

Thus, mastering the programming language will only add to the career. Interestingly, there are a lot of web development firms that offer great opportunities to programmers and developers. Web development in the language boosts usability and efficiency. It offers incomparable efficiency when used for website development. Any site developed with the platform could function easily and includes rapid data processing features. Many business organizations today prefer to hire professional PHP developers to complete projects on time. It gives a considerable amount of time to the companies to concentrate on their own business projects. There are many service providers who could provide fast and easy solutions to web development. With hiring PHP website developers, excellent solutions could be obtained with minimal in-house effort. The platform continues to be one of the most preferred by programmers in developing different kinds of websites.

PHpBB is a widely used bulletin board application on the web that is open source written in PHP

PhpBB is a most widely used bulletin board app on the web that is open source. It is a popular web forum package written in the PHP programming language. The current release of the bulletin board system is BB3 which offers moderators, users and buyer groups with different permissions that could be created.

The development team is skilled in crafting exclusive bulletin board sites for small groups to large multi-category board for corporate sites. They specialize in incorporating various characteristics like easy-to-use and download interface, administrative panel, numerous add-ons and plug-ins, making certain that clients could acquire the best solution for their websites requirement. With version 3, one could create own modules for the User, Admin Control Panel and Moderator. The approach has a lot of advantages than making the complete page from scratch.

The framework allows net owners and administrators to develop buyer groups, categories, and infinite forums and provide various access rights to the forum. There are many service providers dedicated in providing proficient customization and development services that meet the requirements of clients. Highly professional team of developers has special expertise in a wide range of services with a perfect blend of creativity and resources. The following are the types of development services that could be availed:

1. Web maintenance and support

2. PHPBB implementation

3. Customization

4. Forum integration

5. Developing template and theme

6. Migration and Porting

7. SEO services

8. Custom module development

9. Assembly design and developing

It is the most popular net forum package which is obtainable for webmasters for building a user-friendly and functional assembly. These days, it has acquired tremendous recognition in the market due to its range of features that boot a lot of web businesses all over the world, making it productive. Below are some of the advanced attributes of the platform:

1. Availability of updates

2. Support for unlimited levels of sub-forums

3. Multilingual integrity

4. Search engine spider handling

5. Aptitude to developing custom-defined BBCode

6. User Control Panel and Control Panel

7. Has a complete set of templates, add-ons, sub-forums and plug-ins

8. Supports CAPTCHA visual info, RSS feeds and aids in developing an SEO-friendly website

Millions of people use it daily, which make it the most widely used open source system in the globe. Regardless if the need is to keep in touch with a small group or friends or wanting to set up a big multi-category board for an organization website, the framework has the built-in features required. Newer users would appreciate its extensive admin panel, allowing the customization of even the very intricate characteristics with no need to directly edit code. On the other hand, advanced users value the ease with which it could be integrated to existing systems.

Since it is released via the GNU General Public License, changes to a code could be made without having to obtain permission from the group. The extensive user-created modifications make changing and adding features simple as pasting code to the appropriate files. No other bulletin provides a bigger complement of attributes, while maintaining ease of use and efficiency. Most of all, it is completely free. Bundled with a lot of features, together with the support for several database engines, the development could power an entire website, wherein millions of people could keep in touch with one another.

The 2016 Report on the state of DevOps

The annual State of DevOps Report affirms as well as highlights the fact that acquiring higher Information Technology an organizational performance is a team effort that spans operations and development. Furthermore, it is also an investment that could deliver powerful returns. The report for this year reveals the way of boosting the whole product lifecycle. The lifecycle includes initial planning of a product, the quality and security assurance to customer feedback that hastens delivery and at the same time boosting customer feedback, speeds up delivery while boosting security, quality and business outcomes.

We have surveyed over 25,000 technical professionals over the past five years. This makes the State of DevOps Report the most extensive study on the DevOps topic nowadays. This year, we surveyed over 4,600 tech professionals worldwide. Again, we saw a boost in response from those who are working in DevOps department than last year. Unfortunately, there was just a slight increase in respondents who are female, and we have observed the same in other surveys. Admittedly, there is still a lot of work to be done to improve the inclusiveness and diversity in DevOps.

In the report of the State of DevOps, the following key findings are revealed:

1. Organizations that are high-performing are fiercely outperforming the lower-performing peers when it comes throughput. High performers deploy 200 times more often compared to lower performers, with 2,555 times quicker lead times. Moreover, they also continue to remarkably outdo low performers, with 24 times faster times of recovery and tree times lower rates of change failure.

2. High performers have better loyalty on their employees, as measured by eNPS or employee Net Promoter Score. Employees in high-performing firms recommend their company to a friend as a great work place, and 1.8 times more likely to recommend their team as a great working environment. Other studies showed that this is correlated with better business results.

3. Enhancing quality is everyone’s job. High performing companies spend 22 percent less time on rework and unplanned work. Thus, they’re able to spend 29 percent more time on new work, like for instance new code or features. They’re able to do this since they create quality into every step of the development process via using continuous delivery practices, rather than retrofitting quality at the end of the development cycle.

4. High performers spend 50 percent less time in remedying security concerns than low performers. Through better integration of information security objectives to day-to-day work, teams gain higher IT performance levels and create systems that are more secure.

5. Taking an experimental approach towards development of product. This could boost IT as well as organizational performance. The product development cycle begins long before a developer starts coding. The ability of the product team to decompose features and products into small batches, offer visibility into the workflow.

The survey analysis showcased that using continuous delivery practices as well as lean product management practices have predicted the extent to which people agreed with these statements and whether the culture of an organization was performance-oriented and generative. Moreover, the extent in the way people identified with their company predicted a performance-oriented and generative culture as well as predicted organizational performance as measured when it comes to market share, productivity and profitability. This should not surprise us. If the greatest asset of a company are the people, and most corporate leaders claim that they are, then having employees who identify strongly with the company must prove a competitive edge.

Netflix’s cloud architect by Adrian Cockcroft, was once asked by a senior leader in a Fortune 500 company where he got his wonderful people from. Cockcroft replied that ‘I hired them from you’, making our analysis clear. In the rapidly-moving and competitive world these days, the best thing to do for the products, company and people is to institute a culture of learning and experimentation and to also invest in the management and technical capacities which allow it.

Traditionally, IT has been considered as a cost center, which make it difficult to persuade management to invest in enhancements. Until recently, there has been little evidence that investments in IT could offer considerable returns. In past reports, we showed that there is a predictive relationship between organizational and IT performance, which prove that Information Technology could deliver true business value and provide different organizations a competitive advantage.

In the survey this year, we found that high-performing teams spend the least time on unplanned work and rework, approximately 21 percent. ROI calculations are based on the savings expected. This we expressed in monetary systems, but it is necessary to bear in mind that when it comes to saving employees time, you’re giving them back the space to experiment, think and to be innovative and creative.

Today, DevOps is no longer just a buzzword or a fad but an understood set of cultural patterns and practices. People turn to DevOps not only to improve their daily working time and spend quality time for the family, but also to boost the performance, revenues and profitability of their organizations as well. We have launched the State of DevOps and the DevOps survey report five years ago in order to discover just how the system’s tools, cultural values and practices have impacted IT teams and the companies that they serve. This year, the data gathered were wider in range and more deeply analyzed. We hope that the analysis, findings and guidance in this report helps in the better understanding of the potential impact of DevOps to any organization.

Home automation and the Internet of Things

The fast expansion of connected devices, or the Internet of Things technology as is often called, is extremely exciting. By connecting the devices, we gain more control than ever before. For instance, one could adjust the thermostat at home from the office, check security cameras from a movie theater or turn lights off from just about anywhere, whether one is just next door or across the globe.

As daily devices are increasingly finding their way on the web, there is a plethora of things around the home that are becoming smarter, mainly owing to a new-found ability to connect to the web. Home automation is a process of automatically controlling appliances at home with the use of different control system techniques. The electronic and electrical appliances in a home, such as outdoor lights, lights, fans, fire alarm, kitchen timer and many more could be controlled using different control techniques. There are several techniques to control home appliances. One great example is an IoT based home automation over the cloud, home automation under WiFi via Android applications from any smart phone device, and more.

As more and more manufacturers, like LG, Samsung, Panasonic and many more build connected products, the intent is to help simplify lives. Nonetheless, while it is the ultimate goal, it becomes hard to achieve once you realize that these devices are not actually connected to one another. This is where home automation steps in to deliver the promise of simplifying people’s lives. Connecting devices via an operating system not just simplifies control over various devices, but actually connects the devices to each other as well, regardless of the brand. With IoT, a single application from a smart phone enables one to control everything. And the real magic occurs when these devices are programmed to do a function that is based on the location or actions of another device. Getting out of bed in mornings could trigger music to start playing and the coffer maker to start brewing coffee.

The growing usage of home automation technology through IoT has the potential for considerable energy savings and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. A study finds that the widespread adoption of home automation products such as circuit, temperature and lighting control, when used for energy savings intents, could collectively prevent up to 100 million tons of CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it could lower primary residential consumption of energy by as much as 10 percent.

Research proves that innovation consumer technology could deliver into the homes via IoT could significantly lower the carbon footprint. With a simple touch of a button or screen, one could control and manage home more effectively and more easily than ever, virtually from just about anywhere in the world. Home automation technology delivers potential benefits to utilities too, like for instance, an enhanced demand response capacities and intelligent homes segmentation. Actual energy savings will depend on how a user strongly opt to control the automated home equipment and devices. When activated, intelligent features enable greater savings. For example, smart thermostats could learn when certain rooms in a home do and do not need conditioning to save energy without having to sacrifice comfort. Furthermore, energy savings could potentially be higher when the devices are used together, just like with a whole-home control.

The sales of a lot of home automation technologies are projected to grow in the next few years. Consumer trends showed that the key motivator behind buying automated products, like smart blinds, thermostats and light fixtures, has been for convenience, entertainment and/or security. Further boosting the marketability of the products to homeowners through promoting energy savings potential can lead to more energy savings anywhere.

Complete home automation systems have a lot of security benefits. They allow a homeowner to check in on the home from another location, providing genuine peace of mind. Some systems allow for interacting with a home security system, providing one the ability to arm and disarm the home remotely. Some complete automation systems would alert a homeowner by text, phone or email if there are unusual movements within the home. Home automation products offer convenience and save both time and effort when doing household chores. With proper energy management, one could reduce energy consumption, which or course could help save money. Possibly and perhaps most importantly, complete home automation enables a homeowner to customize the home to fit the unique needs and lifestyle of the family. Complete home automation may sound costly and complex, but a lot of systems surprisingly are affordable and are simple to install.

The DevOps thing

DevOps is a movement that stops the waste of money and time to start delivering great software and building lasting systems. DevOps believe that there’s a better way of creating teams and software that can solve issues of a system.

THE DEVOPS MOVEMENT

DevOps is a movement that stops wasting time, money to begin delivering great software and creating lasting systems. The movement is created around a group of people who believe that the app of a combination of the right technology and attitude could revolutionize the software development and delivery environment. The movement is bold enough to believe that there is a better way of building teams and software that could solve system problems.

The DevOps movement is characterized by people who possess a multidisciplinary skill set, persons who are comfortable with configuration and infrastructure, but at the same time happy to roll up their sleeves, debug, write tests and ship features. These are people who make connections since they could, because they have feet in numerous camps, they could be peace makers, ambassadors, facilitators, and communicators. The point of the movement is to encourage people, compare ideas, train, recruiting and popularizing this method of doing IT.

The DevOps movement is attempting to encourage development of understanding the domain which the software is written, communication skills and crucially, a passion and sensitivity for the underlying business and for ensuring that it would succeed. Born of the need to boost IT service delivery agility, the movement puts emphasis on collaboration, communication and integration between software developers and Information Technology operations. DevOps recognizes the interdependence of IT operations and software development and helps a business create software and IT services faster, with frequent iterations.

Organizations that integrate DevOps practices get more done, simple and plain. They deploy code up to thirty times more often than the competition. Collaboration across the various roles deliver a lot of benefits.

TECHNICAL BENEFITS OF DEVOPS

1. Less complex issue to fix
2. Continuous software delivery
3. Faster solution to problems

BUSINESS BENEFITS OF DEVOPS

1. More stable operating systems
2. Faster features delivery
3. More time available for adding value

THE NEW WORLD OF DEVOPS

DevOps is not just another Information Technology buzzword. It is here to stay. A big majority of businesses either have already implemented DevOps practices or planning to implement them. It is characterized by operations staff that make use of a lot of the same techniques as developers for their systems work. The idea is that rather than avoiding each other in the work place, the development and operations people must learn to work together in numerous cooperation.

DEVOPS AFFINITIES WITH AGILE AND LEAN APPROACHES

DevOps has strong affinities with Agile and Lean approaches. It could be interpreted as agile outgrowth. Agile development prescribes close collaboration of clients, developers, product management and at times QA to fill in the gaps and iterate quickly towards a better product. Simply, DevOps is extending Agile principles beyond the code boundaries to the whole service delivered.

WHY DEVELOPERS SHOULD WANT DEVOPS?

DevOps is great for developers. There are three principal reasons that a developer would want to work in an organization that is DevOps-oriented. Developers who work in DevOps-mode receive lesser calls in the middle of the night for resolving production problems. This is because they see problems before they become catastrophic issues because of an orientation of proactive monitoring instead of reactive alerts.

In a traditional software process, once a software is developed, it is ‘thrown over the wall’ to QA, which throws it over later to another wall to production. Thus, what the end-user ultimately sees could be a bit different from what a developer wrote. But, under the DevOps model, what a developer writes goes live since one continues to have access and visibility to the code even after it goes to QA and production. In other words, developers own the code delivery from creation to implementation.

Developers, such as most human beings, get greater satisfaction from work with relevance in the real world. As the developers in a traditional organization are isolated, often they work on simulated problems in made-up use scenarios and they just find out that these approximations were wrong when something will break. In a DevOps model, the scenarios are real. For instance, environments are load tested before they are put into production to determine if they work correctly. Another instance is that test scripts are, themselves tested for realism via being deployed in a production environment, not only test labs. Sharing the test results with developers provide them the chance to see how their code will perform under real-life scenarios.

DevOps need an orchestra leader. Selling a DevOps environment is all about understanding what is relevant to management. Is it moving higher quality, moving faster? Is it about developers more accountable for their code? All these come about by way of a DevOps environment.

DevOps is all about understanding what is important to organization management. It is great for developers.