Though many PHP programmers involved in PHP development believe that Unit Testing is a waste of time it has been proven that it helps a PHP developer save lot of time and hassle in the later stages when product has gone live. This is possible because it can detect the bugs in the initial stage itself that is before it spreads throughout the application.

Here are 5 different ways which help make the unit testing coding easy for any PHP developer involved in PHP development.

1. It should be remembered that the purpose of unit test is to ascertain that each part of the project works perfectly. Hence while determining assertions it is important only to assert the core functions of the unit and not each and every small thing involved.
2. Testing all the codes at the same time would result in application failure due to overlapping of test results. Therefore a PHP developer should use unit test in a manner that it tests only one code at a time.
3. Tests should be independent of each other and should work irrespective of whether the network or the database is active or not.
4. Avoid using unit test in configuration settings as it will do very little help.
5. Each Unit Test should be named appropriately to relate to the unit it is testing. Also keep the test names as descriptive as possible.

These 5 simple tips on using unit test into a PHP development project will make the whole thing really easy and convenient for you.

Click Tracker: The purpose of a website is to popularize the company it represents and how much popular a website is can be judged only by the clicks the website receives. That is the number of visitors the website has on each day. Click tracker developed by a PHP developer in India is sure to give near perfect results.

Contact Form: The main purpose of a website remains incomplete without a contact form. A PHP developer develops a contact form which is precise and gives all information required by the company to reply to query or process order or complete registration. To keep the page safe from spammers CAPTCHA or email verification is used towards the end of each page.

Search Engine: This is vital to help viewers easily find the information they need. Any PHP developer in India understands this and will always include it on the website. It is generally on the top or the right hand side of the page. A viewer can fill in the search term relevant to the website and soon results containing the search term will be displayed.

Site Statistics: It is very much similar to click tracker but has some advanced features. It can be used to monitor site and check how much time users spend on the website and which pages are mostly clicked. Site statistics is essential for ecommerce sites.

Social Networking Tool: In recent times every one seems to be crazy about social networking. These sites immensely help increase the popularity of a website. Hence a PHP developer always includes scripts related to these tools which directly help increase traffic to the site.

Web Link Validator: No one likes to lose viewer because of broken link. Web link validator helps check broken links on the site. It also helps to make sure that the coding is done appropriately.

A PHP developer in India will always include scripts mentioned as above to give your website a complete look and feel.

After all what is it that is pulling foreigners for PHP development in India. Cost advantage, skilled personnel, international level infrastructure, dedicated staff and time zone difference are just a few factors which pull foreign clients to India for PHP development.

Cost Advantage: A PHP developer with the same knowledge and skills in any other part of the world would be much more expensive as compared to that in India. This is because labor is cheaper in India.

Skilled Personnel: India is blessed with some of the best IT colleges which have the ability to provide outstanding PHP developers. Skilled personnel would mean less time to complete a project. If a client wants to complete any PHP development project in a short time it is possible only if they hire either PHP development India services or a PHP developer from India.

International level infrastructure: Most of the PHP development companies in India have international level infrastructure. This ensures that the employees stay longer with the same company. Also good infrastructure is considered as a sign of growth by many clients and growth is possible only when the company works good. Thus good infrastructure is also instrumental in bringing clients for PHP development in India.

Dedication: Indians have been known worldwide for their dedication towards their work and it is this dedication which brings clients to India. A client can expect on time completion of work if they hire PHP development services or PHP developer in India.

Time Zone: India is located in an area where it is ahead of many countries when it is about time. This is advantageous to its growth as outsourcing hub.

The syntax for PHP programming resembles that of C and C++. The PHP programming grammar is comparatively cheap. This grammar is extensible. Major operating systems such as Linux, Windows and Unix cooperation the campaigns of the PHP programming. PHP programming is not very costly and very much affordable for low corporation owners that do not require excessive website security. Since knowledge PHP programming is affordable, India has a wide number of staff specialized within PHP programming and who are ready towards profession at comparatively lower wages.

India is the right outsourcing destination for the majority of the companies, especially in the US, UK and Australia. This is because India is a rich storehouse of talented PHP developers. It is very easy to hire a world class PHP developer in India through a flexible hiring option. The client can hire PHP developer on hourly or weekly basis and dedicate him or her to a project.

A  PHP developer in India offers uncompromised quality by following the zealously the software development lifecycle, which includes proper documentation, testing and maintenance.  The PHP developer makes the best possible use of the available tools to deliver the desired results, within stipulated time.

A  PHP developer in India develops highly attractive websites, which interact with viewers and give them a feeling of reacting with a living entity. The shopping cart in e-commerce site facilitates online shopping and people can shop, across the globe from the comforts of their homes. PHP allows easy management of the content through its CMS development services. The website owners can easily update, manage and present the content on their website. This plays a crucial role is increasing the visibility of the site on the net, because frequently updated content attracts the attention of the search engines. The site enjoys higher page rankings and is visible to more people on the net. The end result is increase in traffic, which translates into more online business revenues for the website. Thus a PHP developer in India provides world class services in a cost-effective manner to worldwide clientele, so that they can increase their online business revenues.

Some of you might think what is the need for PHP development companies in India to offer such options? The answer is simple these services have come into existence because clients have asked for them. Clients have always been choosy about the services they have been offered.

PHP development services offered by companies in India often fail to cover all requests of the clients due to package constraints. This leaves many clients unsatisfied with the services. On the contrary when a dedicated PHP developer in India is offered to clients they can get the work done as they want with all the changes implemented.

Also PHP services would cost a little more than hiring a PHP developer. Here we are not referring either of them being costly because of price but what we mean to explain is that when you hire a PHP developer in India it is less difficult to get the work done exactly the way you want. PHP development services would be costly in terms of the requests you will have to make for changes and the time it would take to implement the changes.

While hiring a PHP developer the client is given the choice to select the programmer of their preference from the many programmers the company has. Hence the client has the opportunity to select the best programmer for their project. This is not possible when the client opts for PHP development service provided by the company as company can give the project to any coder.

In return the selected PHP developer in India dedicatedly works for the client. They are always in contact with the client and keep them informed of the latest updates. The client has to pay only for the number of hours put in by the developer on their project. This ensures complete perfection and work as promised.

Business owners and companies are gradually shifting their attention to PHP based applications as it provides them reliable and cost efficient web solutions. India offers the best available pool of talented PHP developers, in the world. Hence most of the companies are looking towards India for their web development needs.

The success of the PHP development project depends upon skills of the PHP developer. Hence the outsourcing company should select the right PHP developer in India, who can deliver the desired results. There are some essential steps that need to be taken before finalizing a PHP developer in India.

• The outsourcing client should ensure that developer is be well versed in developing web applications. He or she should be experienced in creating the project from the scratch and well versed in use open source application for the project development.
• The client should check the past performance of the developer by crosschecking with the owner of the website, for whom the developer had worked in the past.  The client should confirm the skills in the developer by asking him or her to demonstrate a project on the server.
• The developer should have a staging server so that the client can check the progress made by the developer in the project on day-to-day basis.
• The developer should be able to code PHP scripts because this minimizes the runtime.
• The PHP developer in India should have good knowledge creating highly secure script code, which cannot be hacked. Security is of paramount importance because PHP codes are used in creation of dynamic websites like online shopping and e-commerce.
• The developer should be proficient in the English language and have good communication skills so that there is no communication gap, which hurts the progress of the project.
• The developer should offer dedicated and highly professional services. He or she should maintain high degree of interaction with client and commit his or her services in such a manner that project is completed within stipulated time frame and to complete satisfaction of the client.

The selection of right PHP developer in India pays rich dividends to the client.  He or she is able to obtain the best services from the developer in a cost-effective manner. This translates into a better return on investment for the outsourcing client.

Many companies although specialized in PHP technology do not exhibit quality work and quick turnaround time. The reasons for this could be either they do not have enough manpower or have engaged themselves with so many projects that they cannot deliver on time. Quality has also been a concern in recent times. With low quality PHP coding, many websites have started losing grace. Customers have also stopped visiting such sites as certain web applications all of a sudden have seen to stop functioning. With professional companies in the industry such cases have come down considerably. Such companies recognize that work has to be delivered without compromising on quality. This is why few companies take up those many projects that they can handle at a single point of time. Newer entries in the PHP market follow streamlined processes, provide consultancy, analyze projects and designs, implement projects based on core factors and perform multiphase testing before they deliver the end product. They also specialize in maintenance and support activities.

PHP Development in India has been more of a gift in disguise. With strong domain knowledge and ever-growing PHP programmers, India is a place where most companies would accept challenges with open arms. PHP experts in India have performed commendable jobs in the past. They have managed projects of all sizes and completed difficult task with ease.

If you are looking to hire a company that has expertise in PHP Development in India then do take recommendations from sources that you know of. It is always best to hire experienced and professional companies to ensure your web project is a successful proposition. With newer online marketing techniques like RSS Feeds, blogging and SEO being highly used in the market, always ensure that the PHP Company you hire has considerable knowledge of such core online marketing web activities.

Business clients are pressing the web development firms to develop more interactive and attractive websites for their business. The aim is attract more visitors to the site and thus increase the visibility in the eyes of the audience and the search engines.  PHP allows easy integration of e-commerce solutions into online shopping sites. This requires programming finesse of a PHP developer. India is the best place to hire expert services of the PHP development company.  The PHP development services provided by Indian web development company are unparallel. This is because there is no dearth of highly skilled pool PHP developer. India also provides PHP services are very competitive prices, without compromising the quality standards.

Many foreign clients find India an attractive outsourcing destination because of its capability to provide innovative web development services as per needs of the clients. The customer can hire dedicated PHP developer in India, who maintains high degree of interaction with the client right from the beginning to the end of the project. This has its own merits. It removes communication gap, ensures better understanding and transparency, and increases mutual understanding and trust. As result the project does not hit any roadblock during any stage and is completed, well within time.

A PHP developer in India provides unmatched quality because the service extends way beyond creating website. The PHP developer in India zealously follows the software development cycle, which includes testing, documentation, maintenance and debugging, before the handover of the completed project. This customer-centric approach, backed by expertise and state-of-the-art infrastructure has made India the global hub of PHP development.

PHP is an open source web based scripting language and used in development of web based application. The open source nature makes it quite easy for the developers to develop application at low cost. The highly skilled Indian web developers are proficient in PHP Technology and thus made India the most favored outsourcing destination in the world for cost effective web solutions provider.

Open source PHP frameworks reduced coding and this speeds up the web development process and that why projects can be finished within deadlines. PHP applications are widely used in the web world and this includes the social media site, CMS application, blog, forums and online shopping sites. PHP provides interactive features to the websites and makes them more attractive to the online audience. Greater acceptability means more visibility on internet.

PHP developer in India is well versed in programming and offers unparallel professional services. In countries like USA and Europe the skilled labor is quite expensive. The lack of talent and expensive labor make it difficult for companies to get the project finished in their own country. They find the services of a dedicated PHP developer in India quite attractive for many reasons.

A PHP developer in India has an extensive knowledge of different PHP versions and frameworks. The services extend beyond this to CMS and CRM software development, social networking and online shopping sites.

The web development companies in India offer a very flexible hiring pattern to their foreign clients. This helps the clients to select the best available PHP resources at very cost–effective rates. Clients can hire dedicated PHP client on hourly, weekly or monthly basis, depending upon their project requirements. This helps to scale down the overall cost of the project without compromising the quality standards. The other great advantage is that there are no communication gaps because the dedicated PHP developer in India is also quite proficient in English language.  Hence there are no language issues which create misunderstandings or confusions during the course of project.

A PHP developer in India follows a customer-centric approach and ensures that clients are well served.  The developer sends daily report and has access to latest communication technology.  Any doubt, misunderstanding or confusion is easily sorted out through mutual discussion. This helps in quicker completion of project with minimal hassles. The client can also serve their local customers satisfactorily and increase their business revenues, thanks to outstanding performance of the PHP developer in India .

Clearly the open source technology platform is gaining popularity as the Internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, YouTube, and Wikipedia are adopting the open source technologies such as PHP, MySQL, Linux, and Apache (LAMP). More PHP developers and PHP development companies are being hired to deliver timely and inexpensive dynamic web applications and websites. And the PHP communities have started to flourish around the web, powered by the hype it has received in the recent times.

The study says that the US accounts for 11.83% of the total number of the PHP developers. India follows closely with 10.47%. The third and fourth markets for PHP development are far away with Brazil at 5.22% and Germany at 4.66%. PHP development in India is steadily increasing as the US market is close to saturated and is showing no signs to revive. The study draws a conclusion from the fact that not more than a few years back the PHP developers in India were just 3% as compared to the massive 20% of the counterparts in the US.

Trying to understand this trend is not easy, but the fact that developing fees are almost half of what US or EU companies charge might be a good explanation for what is happening right now on the market. Actually, it’s very logical, since the cost of life in the US or EU is very high, and salaries are also held at a higher mark. This is not felt in India, because of its developing economy status that has made it possible to provide an educated workforce at lower costs than other countries.

Some people may argue this, saying that Indian developers are solely regarded as work-horses and not programming gurus, performing all the simple and repetitive tasks in PHP development projects. On a list of innovations carried out by the PHP development fraternity, the USA lead the top with 342 points, followed by Brazil and Italy, with 206 and 168 points, respectively. India is ranked only eighth, with 122 points. But even skeptics can’t ignore the fact that India has lately led the 2009 top ten with 47 points, followed by the US with 35.

Clearly the PHP development in India market is booming under the recession as the companies worldwide are coming to Indian shores for inexpensive yet high quality web development services. PHP being and open source technology aides the developers by providing a wide community for technical support and cost effective solutions for any business, irrespective of the size and industry.

Firstly, the size of the Indian PHP market is large enough to accommodate the need of PHP development in India for the companies abroad. And the market is still going strong and growing with the growing needs of PHP web development in India. Indian market targets the biggest audiences like USA, UK and Germany efficiently and cost effectively.

Secondly, the number of PHP developers in India is increasing. More and more developers and enthusiasts are taking up the open source development environment of PHP because – a.) there is a large community to seek support from, and b.) the world is readily adopting the open source technology. Increasing number of jobs for PHP development in India is encouraging the developers young and old alike to migrate to the PHP web development in India.

Furthermore, just like the prestigious Microsoft certifications, the open source community too has started getting valuable certifications and awards in honor of their expertise in technologies and PHP frameworks like Zend and others. Hence if the results of combining cheap technology with cheap labor are of topnotch quality, who would not want to hire those services? So PHP web development in India has always been a major prospect for business growth of many organizations, irrelevant of their sizes and nations, as PHP development in India helps them save two major business resources – time and money.

• Increasing the visibility of all pages of your website (for users and search engines alike)
• Providing a straightforward navigation structure that helps customers find the product, service, or information they are looking for on demand
• Allowing a webmaster to strategically use target keywords to improve your site’s organic search rankings
• Directing the search engine spiders to all the webpages on the website, ensuring page indexing of each webpage
• Helping in the monitoring and correcting of broken links

Getting a Sitemap ready should ideally go with your ecommerce development. If the case may not match, i.e. you have a ready website and then you realize that there is a sudden need of a Sitemap, you need not worry as there are tools that dynamically generate an HTML Sitemap for your website. A point to be noted here is to stay consistent while designing a Sitemap.

Clearly we are creating a link mine for the search engines in a Sitemap. So we need to take care in putting up what the search engines like most – text, text, and more text. Hence a text-based Sitemap is the best solution for your ecommerce website. Moreover you have that pleasure to put in a truck load of keywords with links and make it look like it isn’t stuffed at the same time! The design should be such that it gives the user an idea if the link is a sub-page of other webpage. Most importantly, give a link to the Sitemap from each page of your website. Lastly, since you have an ecommerce website make sure you keep updating the Sitemap as and when you add and/or remove products and pages from the website, lest occurrence of broken links and missing webpages.

1. Akismet

Akismet is a very powerful comment filter that checks each comment against the Akismet web service to see whether it looks like a spam and caches them under the “Comments” admin screen for you to review.

2. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is a one-stop-destination for all SEO related functions. You can optimize your site with this plug-in as it has fantastic features like:

• Advanced canonical URLs
• Fine-tune page navigation links
• Built-in API to accommodate other plug-ins to extend the functionality
• The ONLY plug-in that provides SEO integration for ecommerce sites built on WordPress
• Nonce security
• Automatic title optimization and META Tag generation for search engines
• Avoids content redundancy

3. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker monitors your blog and checks for any broken links to bring them to your notice on the Dashboard. It detects redirects, missing images, modified links, and links that don’t work very efficiently. Each link can be modified without manually editing each post individually. This saves a lot of time and effort.

4. cforms II

cforms is a powerful and feature rich form plug-in for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.

5. FeedBurner FeedSmith

For the best results using FeedBurner with your self-hosted WordPress site, the FeedBurner FeedSmith plug-in is the best and most popular choice (originally authored by the legendary Steve Smith). The plug-in will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

6. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps plug-in generates an XML Sitemap for search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com and thus better indexing of your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plug-in supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs. Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content.

7. WordPress Automatic Upgrade

WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows the user to automatically upgrade to the latest WordPress version provided by wordpress.org. This plug-in backs up all the files and the database before installation and provides a link to download it later. Downloads the latest files from the Internet, unzips them, and puts the site under the maintenance mode temporarily until the installing will be successfully completed. This is an intelligent plug-in that remembers to re-activate each plug-in that it had deactivated prior to the upgrade installation. The complete process is smooth and hassle free for the user.

8. WP Super Cache

The WP Super Cache plug-in helps in reducing page load time by generating static HTML files from your dynamic blog. This HTML file is cached on the web server and rather than loading heavy PHP scripts, the browser swiftly loads these light weight static HTML files. Hence your server won’t remain busy as before and will serve more visiors.

9. WP-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup, as the name suggests, is the plug-in specifically designed to save backup copies of your WordPress database including the tables and the forms. One really appealing feature of this plug-in is that you can store database tables other than your WordPress blog’s in the same database.

10. WP-PageNavi

WP-PageNavi add a more advanced paging and navigation feature to your WordPress blog. Travelling between web pages was never before easier and more fun.

Joomla development is more than it meets the eye. Joomla CMS comes with a helping hand in form of code samples, technical views, overviews, and reviews, Joomla development team and community updates, documentation and many such essential tools for smooth website development and effective content management. Content management in Joomla does not refer to the conventional techniques of writing text content on web pages and adding them seamlessly on the website, in fact Joomla lets addition of images, audio and video content as well. The update functionality is as effective as its addition tool. You can create all forms of websites with Joomla including B2B corporate websites, B2C ecommerce websites with online shopping carts, or even personal websites with blogs.

Joomla supports integration of ready to use templates and even extending them to give a customized look and feel of your website. Joomla CMS UI is simple and intuitive. A person with basic computer usability knowledge and skills can use Joomla CMS to maintain their websites. .Joomla has lots of other advantages like, a strong community of developers that provides modules, plug-ins, and add-ons, which can be easily installed into your Joomla CMS admin panel. Users can customize their site for free far beyond what could be done with even a limited budget.

Stage One: Setting Corporate and Business-Unit Strategy. Corporate strategy addresses the interrelationship between the various business units in a firm, including decisions about which units should be kept, sold, or augmented. Business-unit strategy focuses on how a particular unit in the company attacks a market to gain competitive advantage. Stage Two: Framing the Market Strategy. Stage two entails the analysis of market opportunities and an initial first pass of the business concept—that is, collecting sufficient online and offline data to establish the burden of proof of opportunity assessment. Stage Three: Formulating the Marketing Strategy. Internet marketing strategy is based upon corporate, business-unit, and overall marketing strategies of the firm. The marketing strategy goals, resources, and sequencing of actions must be tightly aligned with the business-unit strategy. Finally, the overall marketing strategy comprises both offline and online marketing activities.

Stage Four: Designing the Customer Experience. Firms must understand the type of customer experience that needs to be delivered to meet the market opportunity. The experience should correlate with the firm’s positioning and marketing strategy. Thus, the design of the customer experience constitutes a bridge between the high-level marketing strategy (step three) and the marketing program tactics (step five).

Stage Five: Designing the Marketing Program. Stage five entails designing a particular combination of marketing actions (termed levers) to move target customers from awareness to commitment. The framework used to accomplish this task is the Marketspace Matrix. The Internet marketer has six classes of levers (e.g., pricing, community) that can be used to create target customer awareness, exploration, and commitment to the firm’s offering.

Stage Six: Crafting the Customer Interface. The Internet has shifted the locus of the exchange from the Marketplace (i.e., face-to-face interaction) to the Marketspace (i.e., screen-to-face interaction). The key difference is that the nature of the exchange relationship is now mediated by a technology interface. This interface can be a desktop PC, subnotebook, personal digital assistant, mobile phone, wireless applications protocol (WAP) device, or other Internet-enabled appliance.

Stage Seven: Evaluating the Marketing Program. This last stage involves the evaluation of the overall Internet marketing program. This includes a balanced focus on both customer and financial metrics. It emphasizes customer actions as well as financial metrics used to track the success of marketing programs.

India has been in the forefront in the Drupal web development arena since the release of the popular PHP/MySQL based CMS. India has provided a strong base as an offshore outsourcing services provider and has adopted to bring in global projects for Drupal web development in India. The low development costs with uncompromised high quality have pushed companies abroad to partner software development companies in India for their Drupal web development. Moreover, over the past years Drupal has created a higher acceptance among the webmasters so much so that it has overshadowed the big CMS players like WordPress and Joomla.

Some of the reasons that have been accounted for Drupal’s fairytale success are:

• Its advanced URL rewriting control
• It offers custom content types and views
• It has terrific revision control
• Drupal uses PHP templates that help in building and maintaining dynamic websites
• The Meta tag content and HTML content is managed more skillfully
• Content is categorized automatically and helps in organizing data accurately by tagging
• Managing social networking and community websites is smoothly done
• The basic system can be further extended and customized by adding Drupal snippets available on its official website
• The CMS comes with a comprehensive user guide and documentation
• Proves more than capable of building search engine friendly websites

With the evolution of web development tools and technologies with a significant emergence of web 2.0 India has updated itself to cater to web development services to the global clients and help them reap maximized profits and ROI through high quality solutions available at low rates. Looking at the current popularization of Drupal and India’s strong presence for providing

Separating these three components allows the PHP Web Development Company to update, tweak, and control the web application according to your changing specifications and requirements. The MVC architecture will thus contribute to significantly improve your relationships with the PHP web development company. The most useful way to build a PHP application based on the MVC design outline is to leverage the power of templating system like Smarty for the Viewer, a PostgreSQL database as the Model, and object-oriented PHP classes as the Controller.

Now we shall study the MVC architecture in detail.

Though MVC comes in different flavors, control flow is generally as follows:

1. The user interacts with the user interface in some way (for example, presses a mouse button).
2. The Controller handles the input event from the user interface, often via a registered handler or callback and converts the event into appropriate user action, understandable for the Model.
3. The Controller notifies the Model of the user action, possibly resulting in a change in the Model’s state. (For example, the Controller updates the user’s shopping cart.)
4. A View queries the Model in order to generate an appropriate user interface (for example, the View lists the shopping cart’s contents). Note that the View gets its own data from the Model. The Controller may (in some implementations) issue a general instruction to the View to render itself. In others, the View is automatically notified by the Model of changes in state (Observer) which require a screen update.
5. The user interface waits for further user interactions, which restarts the cycle.

A PHP Web Development Company understands the intricate processing of the PHP – MVC architecture and helps you build a robust, reliable and secure PHP web application through open source PHP web development.

1. Blogger to WordPress when blog is hosted on Blogger.
Import your blog directly from the Blogger if you are hosting your blog on Google (i.e. Blogger itself). You will know this when you see a“.blogspot.com” after your blog mane in the URL. This is because you are using Google’s BlogSpot domain to host your blog on the Internet.  In your “Manage” or “Tools” panel of your WordPress dashboard and click on “Import”.

From here go to the Blogger import option and authorize the blog that you will be importing to WordPress.

Then you need to grant WordPress an access to your blog account on Google and start “Import”. Pretty straightforward, huh? Well, you are done transferring your blog on Blogger that is hosted on Blogger itself (very important point to be noted) to your WordPress blog.

2. Blogger to WordPress when blog is privately hosted on personal domain.
This one is for those of you who are hosting your blogs privately on your personal domains. Well, if you are using Google’s Blogger service to maintain your blog on your own domain, there some bad news for you. You will not be able to import the Blogger blog that is not on Blogger. It is obvious, isn’t it? WordPress allows importing Blogger blog as there’s a code written for it that includes tine BlogSpot domain. But if you are trying to mention a Blogger blog hosted on a domain other than BlogSpot, WordPress has no solution to this query. Though don’t be disheartened, as there’s a solution to it. Now let us rewind back to a sentence that said that Blogger allows Blogger to Blogger blog transfer. Even if you have different domains, this function still holds true. So, transfer your privately hosted blog on to a dummy blog created just for the transfer purposes, but remember to host it on BlogSpot account. This is how you do it:

Go to you blog (the original one hosted privately on your personal domain) Settings on your dashboard and click on “Export Blog” under the Basic > Blog Tools section. Press the flashy orange button that says “Download Blog”.

Save the blog as an XML file. Now if you haven’t yet created the dummy blog for the transfer, this is the right time to do it. When you have created the dummy blog, there will be screen that tells you to “Start Blogging”. Don’t just start yet, open the “Advance Setup Options” and click on the “Import Blog Tool”.

Browse and select the XML file that you had downloaded earlier and press “Import Blog”. You got your dummy blog ready, with all your blogs and their comments intact. Think you are done? Well, you almost there. Follow the step #1 above to transfer your blog hosted on BlogSpot domain (your new dummy blog) to your WordPress blog. Voila! You are done now. You may delete your dummy blog if you may wish, but after the import process is over on WordPress and all your blogs are being shown on the new WordPress blog.

You may think this to be a tedious process to transfer your Blogger blog to another Blogger blog and then import it on the WordPress blog. But believe me, this is the only way, there’s no other method to do so, unless you are a coding master and decide to rewrite your WordPress functionality yourself. For the lesser coding efficient ones this is a tried and tested method for them.

URL rewriting can significantly boost your website’s search engine friendliness by changing the long, unreadable, and tough to remember URLs to convenient and succinct names. There are a lot of guides to be found on the Internet, but none come even close to this one. This post is a comprehensive know-how for URL rewriting.

Uniform Resource Locator or URL foe short is the address to your website through which a user can visit your site using the Internet. There are two types of websites – Static and Dynamic. Thus gives rise to two types URLs with the same names respectively. The Static URLs are easy to understand and remember as they are hard written by the webmaster during the Static webpage generation. The problem arises in Dynamic URL writing. A Dynamic URL tells the site exactly what information to show to the user by including variables in the URL itself. It is these variables that make life difficult and create misery in reading these URLs by the user as well as the browser. A typical Dynamic URL looks like this:

http://www.google.co.in/#hl=en&q=hello+world&meta=&aq=f&oq=hello+world&fp=c5b9ba6cbe6cba1e

As you will see these URLs do give us the nightmares, so webmasters have come out with a solution for this by introducing a technique called URL rewriting wherein the obscure Dynamic URLs are rewritten to match their Static counterparts. The cleaner and shorter version of the URL is much easier to read, understand and remember. The URL must tell you what page or file it refers to and the rewritten Dynamic URL does that precisely. Search engines and users alike get all the useful information they require from these cleaner URLs. A typical rewritten Dynamic URL will look like this:

http://bit.ly/hello_world-google_search

Now, clearly, one can read and correctly predict what the URL might be referring to – in this case the Google search for “hello world”. The former longer and absurd Dynamic URL too refers to the same page (follow the link to see where it points), but could you decode it at the first glance, majorly no. So now that we have laid foundations of what is URL rewriting and why to do it, we shall delve further into the tools and techniques of URL rewriting.Remember hyphens are treated as spaces by the search engines while underscores are not, hence remember these thumb rules, as you would like to remember them as, while rewriting Dynamic URLs.

Web Server Support

Before launching ourselves into the core of URL rewriting we shall discuss about the web servers that your websites run on and their support to understand your rewritten URLs. One thing to mention here would be that unlike the search engines, a server cannot easily understand rewritten URLs and thus, they have to be in a sense “translated” to be understood by the server. In order to do that all you need to do is provide an access to your rewriting module for the web server. The access depends on what server you are using.

If you are using the Apache server, there is no need of granting an explicit access to your URL rewriting module as the Apache server comes with its own in-built URL rewriting module – mod_rewrite enabled. This is hassle-free working with URL rewriting and uploading correct formatted files to your Apache server. For more information on mod_rewrite module, its enabling and working, there’s a forum here.

Now, seemingly, the Microsoft IIS is the devil that you may want to avoid while rewriting a URL. IIS does not have the default URL rewriting capability as that of Apache. But nothing to worry here, as the IIS does support add-ons that give it prosthetic URL rewriting capabilities. One closest to mod_rewrite is the ISAPI_Rewrite add-on for IIS. To understand the installation and configuration of ISAPI_Rewrite please visit its online instructions manual.

Basics of URL Rewriting

Before all you may ask why do all this perspiring work? Well, the main thing we target here in rewriting a URL is making it search engine friendly. Our website should rank higher up the Google index. Google likes, no wait, Google loves a well-structured folder hierarchy. So to play the SEO game, we need to play by the rules and follow Google’s nomenclature system.

Up till now you have learnt all about what a Dynamic URL is and why and how to rename it. Another thing to remember is that the name changing has to happen internally on the server, i.e. the address bar on the browser will be showing the old long, and monotonous URL even when you click the smart new one. The server will redirect all requests in the name of rewritten URLs page having the older version of the URL – the Dynamic version. This can be done by modifying the .htaccess documents.

The last thing to mention here is the common mistakes that people tend to make while rewriting URLs. Please keep the following points in mind as not doing so may result in a fatal broken link and your webpage could disappear from the Internet, even though it shows on the server.

• Session IDs: What are those? e967ef2d7f923aab20e10ddb4164a351 ? It’s a session ID. It’s different for every user so every user has a different address.
• Apostrophes and other special characters: %e2%80%93 – This is an apostrophe in a URL.
• Numbers instead of speaking URLs: Decide, 123 or full-website-sitemap, which URL speaks your language, which one you’ll rather click?
• Multiple URLs for one page: www.example.com, example.com, example.com/, example.com/index.php, example.com/index.php? All leading to one homepage? No you have 6 homepages and counting! Use a canonical URL script (WordPress 2.5 already does by default).
• Too many parameters which also change randomly. Dozens of combinations are possible for passing parameters. This is even worse than the point above.
• Use only relevant keywords in URL.
• Avoid too many subdirectories or huge link depths.
• Changing URLs after publication: It is really silly to change URLs after publishing a page and getting traffic on it.

There is no rocket science involved in embedding the Google Maps API into your webpage. All you need to know is exactly where you need to put the map for the public display and use. Other things are managed by Google for you. Just follow the following steps and you will have a seamless integration of the Google Maps API on your page in no time.

1. Sign up for a Google API key.

You are required to accept the Google terms and conditions, provide the URL of the website that you are going to embed the Google Maps API in, and confirm the registration to get the API key. You can apply for the key at http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html.

By checking the agreement box, entering the URL, and pressing the “Generate API key” button, you will get an API key that looks like this:

Save this key in some text file as you will need this key to integrate it in the scripts to generate the maps.

2. Incorporating the Google Map.

Incorporating the Google Map is really simple now that you have your API key. Copy the following code and paste it into your HTML file where you want your Google Maps API to perform.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
      "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=1
            &key=<YOUR_API_KEY_HERE>">
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div style="width: 400px; height: 300px"></div>
    <script>
//<![CDATA[
    var map = new GMap(document.getElementById("map"));
    map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint((37.38216158779348, -122.08145141601562)3);
//]]>
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

The <YOUR_API_KEY_HERE> is to be replaced by you API key provided by Google on confirmation as mentioned above. Executing this script will show Google Headquarters at Mountain View, CA as the center of the map. You can change the default center of the map by replacing the geographical coordinates in the

map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint((37.38216158779348, -122.08145141601562)3);

line. (37.38216158779348, -122.08145141601562) are the coordinates of Google Headquarters.

View Larger Map

Save and upload the file on a web server and then you are ready to roll.

A CMS can be used to manipulate data in any form – be it documents, pictures, audio, video, and others as well. An enterprise may deploy a CMS to store, control, semantically enrich, revise, and publish documentation related to organizational process. There are a great number of open source CMSs available on the Internet, one just has to find the right one to suit his needs. The most popular ones are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3.

WordPress, the award winning Open Source CMS, started as a blog builder and now has come a long way to be an individual full-fledged content management system. The first impressions of the system are that it is quite easy to operate, simple, and free! On can make multiple accounts online or WordPress can also be used to run our own website and even on the local computer (localhost). The best part of the CMS is that it supports a large number of plug-ins and the templates are changeable at will. It was awarded the best CMS on the Internet because of its inbuilt search engine friendliness for SEO purposes. This will always rank a website top on the search engine indexes.

Drupal on the other hand claims to be the best current CMS defeating the Joomla prowess. It is easy operational functionality are used to maintain simple as well as large professional websites. It might be touted as better than Joomla but has fewer plug-ins as compared to the same. It has not found many users in the developing countries, but has a humongous fan following in the greater Internet development market.

Joomla was one of the pioneers in the CMS market to bring in open source characteristics to the web content management system. It claims to have the largest user base in the open source CMS world. Joomla frequently launches updates of the main CMS as well as the supported plug-ins (which has the tallest number as well). Being famous in the open source community, many developers are constantly adding features and functionality to the Joomla CMS, and the releases are free to update and upgrade the existing systems. The default version may not support search engine friendliness a la WordPress, but it has components for SEO.

Other popular CMS are Typo3 and Mambo that have all the desirable features of a CMS. In spite of their user friendliness they have not yet managed to pip the biggies off, but they certainly are capable of doing so in the near future. Every CMS above has its own strengths and weaknesses, but it is solely on the user for which CMS to select that suits their work perfectly. The choice is personalized and is dependent on the individual interests and needs. There is no reason to promote any particular CMS here, as each one them is a significant contributor to the open source CMS community.

SugarCRM offers a wide range of feature-rich set of business processing tools that are not limited to the customer-facing business demands. SugarCRM enhances marketing effectiveness, drives sale force performance, improves customer performance, and provides and executive insight into the business performance. vTiger too follows the suit and provides sales force automation, marketing management, and customer service, support and procurement for small enterprise users.

SugarCRM is the ideal choice for the large organizations as it provides really advanced features that are convenient to manage the complete organization. SugarCRM has excellent collaborative and administration capabilities that adapt from business to business, thus no constraints around deployment. On the other hand vTiger is really easy to use as compared to the functional heavy SugarCRM and even loads faster. Unlike the paid version of SugarCRM, vTiger is completely free and does not require any up-front investment. Albeit that SugarCRM provides a 100% open source code for inexpensive customization and support.

Of all the advantages and disadvantages both these Open Source CRM software balance each other. Though it would be safe to speculate that vTiger will be taking over the market share of SugarCRM in near future.

The Apple SDK not only allows developers to make applications for iPhone and iPod touch, but also provides an “iPhone simulator” environment to test them. The SDK is built on the Xcode development environment, and similar to the iPhone OS and Mac OS X the iPhone apps are written in Objective-C. The Apple SDK not only targets the corporate developers, but also the niche individual developers who are attracted to the phenomenally successful iTunes store. Any iPhone app build through the SDK can be put up on the iTunes store to get mutual customers for the third party as well as Apple. Apple allows both free release, as well as a paid release from which it would rake in up to 30% of the price tag of the app.

The developers can build various apps targeting personal entertainment, business processing, daily utilities, and the Internet. Apps built with the Apple SDK run best on the iPhone 2.0 OS and higher versions.