by Robert Long | Feb 24, 2016 | CMS, Web Design, Web Development, Wordpress
Clean and efficient code is crucial for making a WordPress site load faster. Especially, when you're running an online shop, it's imperative that visitors can load the web pages as quickly as possible. One best way to achieve such an objective is to make use of a theme framework for WordPress such as Genesis.
The Genesis framework helps offer child themes that are specially designed for fast loading sites. Also, most of the themes are compatible with the WooCommerce plugin, which helps in incorporating better e-commerce functionality into your site.
Here's a list of some excellent Genesis Child Themes ideal to be used for creating WooCommerce powered e-shop:
If you want a flexible, mobile responsive and HTML coded theme suited for creating a child theme in WooCommerce, then you should give the Jessica e-commerce theme a try. Designed by Web Savvy Marketing, the theme helps in building an e-commerce site, by helping you pick WooCommerce, iThemes Exchange, and WP e-Commerce plugins.
Key Features:
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Dedicated section for displaying advertisements, widgets or text
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Social media integration
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Help add product review, ratings, categories
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Fee shipping option and more.
Cost: $59.95
A clean and elegantly designed theme, AyoShop is perfect for building any online shop – be it clothing, jewelry, or some other shop. It's a free theme created by Designmodo.com – that provide support for styled child themes. The great aspect of AyoShop is that it is simple to use and does not contain any bloat.
Key Features:
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It comes loaded with all of the Genesis Framework features.
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It is WooCommerce ready
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Features a responsive layout that can be tested using the Opera mobile emulator.
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Access to AyoShop's documentation is available online and much more.
Cost: Free (however you need to subscribe to designmodo)
Do you want to build a WooCommerce ready child theme inspired by Apple's iPhone 4S design? Well, then look no further than Clip Cart. It boasts a professional and future-proof responsive designs for the modern mobile platforms like iPhone, iPad, and others. Clip Cart helps in integrating shopping cart functionality via Cart66/Cart66 Cloud plugins.
Key Features:
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Comes with a highly customized front page template.
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It works across all the major browsers
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Offers comprehensive documentation and great forum support
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Contains custom shortcodes and so on.
Cost: $69
In case, you specifically need to build a food-related site on WooCommerce, then Daily Dish is exactly what you need. It has been developed for users who seek to make use of a clean and new design for putting up a food website. But, another great thing about Daily Dish is that it can also be customized for creating a non-food blog. This theme is the perfect example of setting up a site with balanced white space and elements – that helps make your content easily stand out.
Key Features:
Cost: $99.95
Another great modern style child theme suitable for building an e-commerce site and WooCommerce support is Brutal. Created by Zigzagpress, the theme provides (optional) animation-style effects – that will allow your visitors to scroll down the homepage. You can use Brutal for building almost any site, ranging from corporate, marketing, to a portfolio and many other websites.
Key Features:
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The theme is mobile ready and adapts beautifully to any device screen size
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It is localization ready
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It comes with theme options panel
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It comes loaded with Genesis SEO options and features.
Cost: $49
Last in our list of Genesis child themes is Vanish. The theme provides complete support for the WooCommerce plugin, helping you develop a WordPress online shop that allows selling products and services online. Vanish theme is a must-have for people who wish to create a visually alluring online storefront that can have a profound impact on their visitors.
Key Features:
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It is a fully responsive theme
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Vanish features minimalistic style, making it an excellent choice for creative projects
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Impressive typography settings and more.
Cost: $49
Wrapping Up
Using Genesis child themes for building an e-commerce shop will ensure in improving your website speed and performance, which ultimately enhances the users experience. So, here in this post, I've tried covering some of the best Genesis child themes suited for building WooCommerce store.
by Robert Long | Feb 13, 2016 | CMS, PHP, Web Development
PHP frameworks have become an integral part of web development projects, as they make the task of application development effortless for developers. Most importantly, the frameworks help speed up the development process. While there are plenty of great PHP frameworks out there, CakePHP happens to be the best choice over other frameworks in terms of rapid application development.
An open source PHP framework, CakePHP is based on the Ruby on Rails concept. Furthermore, the framework enables developers in developing flexible and secured CMS solution via the CakePHP based CMS. Well, if you're CakePHP user then you'll apparently want to know about the types of CakePHP based content management system. Without wasting any more time, let's discuss some of the best CMS solutions that users working on the CakePHP Application Development need to know about.
1. Croogo
This is one of the most popular and extensively used CakePHP based CMS available online. Croogo is an open source CMS solution that is built using the CakePHP framework. It gives CakePHP users the ability to create a blog, node or a page containing taxonomy. Also, there are several themes made available by Croogo that can be used to setup a site or application in CakePHP in no time. What's more? It offers WYSIWYG Editor to allow editing directly from the browser and so on.
2. BEdita
BEdita is somewhat different from all other content management systems in the list since it is based on semantic rules. It is a modular and flexible CakePHP framework that fits the need to create many projects because of its MVC design. Another great aspect of this CMS is that the creators continuously provide new version releases that comes with more advanced and better features. For instance, the latest 3.6.0 Corylus Release has introduced several features that helps resolve security issues and bugs.
3. Coderity
Would you want to use a CMS that can be expanded and tailored to fit your needs? Well, then Coderity is exactly what you've been looking for. It's an out-of-the-box CMS built using CakePHP framework that give users the capability to expand it as per their own needs. The CMS is elegant yet simple to use. Coderity is a feature rich CMS that includes the ability to manage pages, create blogs, drag and drop ordering of the menu and so on. The Coderity's development team is working on making the CMS as a CakePHP plugin.
4. CupCake
CupCake is yet another open source CMS based on CakePHP ideal for freelancers – that helps in updating features on the site dynamically. This CMS solution is aimed at providing designers a simple to use tool that helps in managing content for both small and medium-sized sites effectively. However, it is a lightweight CMS that deploys websites quickly. CupCake also comes with a WYSIWYG editor (also referred to as FCKEditor) that helps in creating and updating content by authorized users with no need for having to learn markup language such as HTML. The only downside to using CupCake CMS is that it not perfect for managing community-driven online portals.
5. Wildflower
If you love working with jQuery, then Wildflower CMS is worth a try. This open source CMS is not just built using the CakePHP framework, but it is also based on the jQuery library. It is a user-friendly CMS ideal for WordPress users who want to take advantage of the code separation logic. The purpose of this CMS is to provide the wherewithal to work on common functionality in an elegant way. It helps in creating pages containing preview feature – that enables you to see how your page looks in real time. Additionally, Wildflower comes loaded with plenty of enhancements and bug-fixes.
6. Lumad CMS
Do you wish to use a simple to operate CakePHP based CMS suited for developing small size websites or applications? Then, look no further than the Lumad CMS. It boasts a smooth interface that helps in managing multiple tasks or activities in sites a breeze.
Wrapping Up!!
Are you a CakePHP user interested in adding CMS like functionality into your site or application? Luckily, there are many good CakePHP based CMS's on the web that can help you achieve such a need efficiently. Make sure to carefully study about each of the content management system and choose one that best fit your project needs.
by Robert Long | Feb 4, 2016 | Articles, CMS, Joomla, News, Resources, Tutorials, Web Design
So you are searching the Internet for a content management system and you want to know what Joomla! is? This article will explain the basics.
What is Joomla!
Joomla! is a very powerful, open source, content management system, which will allow the user to build almost any type of website their imagination can come up with and all with very little web design knowledge and skills. In fact, some web hosting companies allow Joomla! to be installed with one click via their control panel. We have been using Joomla! for over 8 years now and it’s a fantastic system.
Extensions
You can expand your site easily with extensions, you may be familiar with WordPress, which is also a content management system and is also powerful, but Joomla! is more focused on content management whereas WordPress is more focused on blogging. However, WordPress is still a very powerful content management system and I will give an overview of it later on in another post. Joomla! is used on millions of websites worldwide for sites ranging from 1 page landing pages, to massive online communities. Joomla.org runs off their own software and it has a lot of traffic, which shows it can handle it.
You can install extensions for almost anything, such as SEO, newsletters, online stores, social networking platforms and the list goes on. There is a huge community of developers that build themes and extensions for Joomla! and you can find them on their website: http://www.joomla.org. You can also submit your own extensions to them, we have created several, some of free and some are paid, it’s a good way to get some extra money and traffic to your site. Here are all our plugins in case you want to take a look: http://www.webdesignservices.net/free-joomla-twitter-plugin.html
Joomla! Resources:
Joomla!’s main website: https://www.joomla.org
Download Joomla! https://www.joomla.org/download.html
Joomla! Documentation: https://docs.joomla.org/Main_Page
Joomla! Extensions: http://extensions.joomla.org
Joomla! Templates: https://www.joomlart.com/joomla/templates
by Robert Long | Jan 20, 2013 | Blogging, Business Website Advice, CMS, Joomla, Online Business, PHP, Web Design, Web Development, Wordpress
PHP based content manage systems, also known as "CMS" are Open source, which means their code is free to use and share with far less restrictions than other non-open source systems. Content management systems (CMS) are currently very popular, and are used to run websites of all shapes and sizes, such as; blogs, online stores, social networks, service business websites and almost any other kind of website you can imagine. But which content management system is the best? The content management systems compared in this article are very easy to install and configuration, especially with WordPress, is extremely simple, far simpler than if you had to use a normal website, without a content management system. A well built CMS avoids the need for hand coding.There are many popular PHP CMSs available, such as; WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Typo3. In this article I have a comparison of the top PHP Content management systems (CMS). This comparison is based on Google search trends which helps you to choose best PHP CMS to run your website or personal blog.
Comparison Chart Drupal vs Joomla vs WordPress vs Typo3
No doubt, WordPress is the most popular and used content management platform from PHP. It's widely used by Over 60 million people all over world for websites and blogs. WordPress used to be mainly for blogging, but in the last few years it has become the main CMS for all types of websites, in all industries worldwide.
Pros:
- WordPress is free, just like all the CMSs on this list
- Very easy to install, usually one click install in most web hosting environments
- Great for blogging, as this is what it was designed for
- Great community, with thousands of plugins, themes and tutorials online
Cons:
- Can be slow, if not correctly configured and if it has a lot of content with no CDN
- Not quite as powerful for larger applications, might want to use Drupal or Joomla! for very complex sites, such as an online store or Social Network
Well Known Websites That Use a WordPress CMS
Download
Drupal is most popular with PHP web developers, because it has a higher learning curve than the others on this list. Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications worldwide. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world. you can use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications, which makes it the most powerful CMS on this list. There are thousands of add-on modules and designs, which let you build any site you can imagine.
Pros:
- It's Free, just like all the CMSs on this list
- Very easy to install, usually one click install in most web hosting environments
- Great for all types of websites, but it shines for the very complex ones. Drupal seems to be aiming at developers, rather than designers as it has a higher learning curve and requires some development skills
- Great community, with thousands of plugins, themes and tutorials online
Cons:
- Not for the non-programmer, this CMS has a learning curve, make sure you know your PHP/mySQL before you plan on building a large site with it.
Download
One of my personal favorites is Joomla!. Joomla! is also a very popular PHP based CMS. It's an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build websites and powerful online applications. It has thousands of extensions and designs which speed up development. I recommend Joomla! if you are building a small to medium sized website, social network or online store.
Pros:
- It's Free, just like all the CMSs on this list
- Very easy to install, usually one click install in most web hosting environments
- Great for blogging, but not as good as WordPress
- Perfect for an online store or social network website
- Great community, with thousands of plugins, themes and tutorials online
Cons:
- Can be slow, if not correctly configured carefully
- Not quite as powerful for larger applications, might want to use Drupal for very complex sites, such as an highly complex company website.
Download
TYPO3 is a free, open-source CMS that uses the GNU license. TYPO3 is fast, sophisticated, extensible and customizable. It also provides a great deal of interoperability between its platform-distinct versions. Currently, TYPO3 supports Apache or IIS running on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD and OS/2.
Download
