Benefits of Using Symfony Framework

There are lot of frameworks available in the market today which help developers in developing applications and system faster than ever before!
Most developers however do not like the use of framework, maybe because of their ignorance of the many benefits that they provide.

Below are the some benefits mentioned for symfony:

1. Time Saving
By using Symfony, developer don't to write complex code every time which saves time by 50% in most cases.
Symfony2 is about 3 times faster than Version 1.4 and also takes up 2 times less memory.


2. Unlimited flexibility
Symfony2 is very  adaptable.
Its dependency injector and the Event Dispatcher make it entirely configurable, with each of the bricks being fully independent.

Full Stack : If you want to develop a complex application and you need many functionalities.
Brick by brick: If you build your framework according to the functionalities that you will need.
Micro framework: Works as a standalone, Symfony2 can also be used to develop a specific functionality in one of your projects.
Without having to redevelop everything and without installing the entire framework, but only the specific brick that you need.


3.  Code re usability
Most of the projects have some of the feature's common in each other. But each part of code is separate and at times have to copy the controller, models and view folders to the next projects.
The login system is very easy to copy across the CMS.
Rewriting such system used to to take much time earlier. Now a days we can copy them across and user can start working.


4. Access to services API
By enabling web API (Application Programming Interface) platforms like twitter, Google etc you get the chance to expand a website wit easy.

5. Community Assistance
Now a days community, forums and blog are there for helping developers. Anyone can take help from them.
Once you become experience enough, you can too contribute to community by providing them with your feedback and be of help to them in return.


6. Plugin Creation
When you happen to add a feature to the framework, simply create a plugin in a directory that you can later copy to all your projects.
This is one of its most striking feature which saves on time immensely and benefits enormously.

PHP 5.4.14 and PHP 5.3.24 released!

Hi All,

Good News for PHP Programmers !!! Recently PHP 5.4.14 and PHP 5.3.24 released on  11th-April-2013. This is announced from PHP development team at official PHP website http://php.net/

As stated in official PHP website "All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4.14" This version fixed almost 10 bugs and upgrading the bundled PCRE library.

For more information visit official website of PHP.

Thanks,
Jimmy

CMS Made Simple Content Management System

CMS Made Simple is an open source Content Management System built using PHP.
It helps website developers with a simple, easy to use utility to allow building lot of pages, semi-static websites.

CMS Made Simple is normally used for corporate websites or a website promoting organization or a team.
There are lot of other CMS packages which are specially created for building portals, blogs, or article based content. CMS Made Simple can do most of this, but it is not the primary focus of it.

If one is a professional web developer and have found that other CMS's are sometimes difficult to manage or are not able to full fill the requirement of site and want to get rid of it then CMS Made Simple is a perfect solution for them.

CMS Made Simple gives a functionality for the website administrator to create and manage pages, their content and their design. Through CMS Made Simple you can create a table based layout or a fully XHTML/CSS layout.

CMS Made Simple makes managing the navigation in your website very easy. One can re-organize site pages any way he want and navigation's are automatically created from your page hierarchy.

CMS Made Simple separates design code from content, so that editors can manage content without having to know much about how websites work. With CMS Made Simple you design once, and easily use that same design over and over again.
Smarty (a PHP based templating engine) is used to provide most of the caching, templating, and logic capabilities.

The build-in package provides the facility to manage news articles, search functionality,a contact form. CMS Made Simple gives WYSIWYG editor and also other built in functions.

Additionally, there are hundreds of third party add-on tools that are quickly and easily installable to allow building websites with many different capabilities.

Do's and Dont's of Web Usability - Part 2

Here is Next part of Do's and Dont's of Web Usability

10. Always make sure that the website content is easy to scan and read

Normally, people have short attention time.
So by giving section titles in h2, h3 or h4 tags to split your articles, you allow the website visitor to quickly go through the articles and see if there is something they are looking to read.
While writing the article content you should also be aware of the size of each paragraph as users will get tired of scanning long paragraphs.
Short paragraphs i.e about 5-10 lines are much easier to read.

11. Do not overload a small space with lot of content

That is a very important point – adding lot of things into a small space and not allowing the visitors to focus on the important stuff is not good.
The important information should be easily visible.

12. Make sure that you have included breadcrumbs in your pages

Breadcrumbs are useful in giving website visitor control of where they are at and what they are going to do next.
If the visitor is on a sub page of your Services page, your breadcrumbs will look something like this [ Home -> Services -> Sub Page Title ].
Breadcrumbs tells the website visitor exactly on which page they are and how to go back to the various levels if they like to.

13. Try to utilize color and contrast to shift focus

If you using heading and sub-heading for different pages of your website, you can try various shades of color which will tend visitor to notice the important stuff first.
These changes in colors will indicate what the website visitor will see next, ultimately it will bring user into a space where you want them to be like a sign up page or contact us page.

14. Make sure you don't have any broken links and images on your website

It may happen that you may have visitors coming to your website page from any search engine and if there are broken links, then visitor normally assume that either You are one of the old website which are not getting updated anymore or You are not keeping your website up to date, so they are going to go some where else.
Now a days some of the CMS have there own plugins that works great for checking the broken links.

15. Always include the footer to website pages and use the power of it

When website visitor on your website and he scroll through everything and go to the bottom of the page only to find a single line of text telling you that there is a copyright on the site.

We should put footer up a bit and add some extra content into it like a popular articles.

Do's and Dont's of Web Usability

If you are developing a website you will always think about how to make your websites more usable, whether it is improving the HTML structure of pages which benefits the user’s process or whether it is thinking about how we can show the messages on site in a better way to user by using CSS..
But you normally never bring this thought process into your jQuery-based or any other JavaScript-based website.
How can the user experience and usability of our jQuery events can be enhanced ?

If you are designing websites for a living or running your business online, below are some useful tips you should definitely read and remember.

1. Always add a search form

A lot of visitors will visit your website and immediately look for a search box. If you don’t have any search box, then they leave.
Site visitor do not feel comfortable on a site where they don’t feel in control.
The ideal position for a search box is on the top - right corner of the page.

2. Use a grid for your website structure

Grid helps to structure your website and keep the eye flow going for the website visitor, which is key factor.
Once you are done with a clean main website structure you can incorporate everything into a design of your choice, but don’t forget the grid.

3. Make the navigation easy to find & readable

If you’re website navigation is supposed to take your visitor from point A to point B, why would you place the navigation part in a weird spot or use irrelevant images for the site links.
Try to keeping the navigation easy to read for the website visitor. The ideal position for navigation section is at the top of the site so the visitor can easily navigate through your site.

4. Do not make the “contact us” link in your navigation bar a mailto: link

Most of the website visitor will hover over a link and check what the bottom of our browser screen says before he click on it. Especially visitor do it for the "contact" link since some people think it’s good to link this directly to your email address, causing an email program to open up.
This is not a good User experience practice. Ideally you should create a contact us page, put your email address on it. Website visitor will feel nice and will actually email you more often.


5. Make use of User Experience Applications as much as possible for website tests

Keeping track of the various forms of data from your website is something you should definitely do.
Google Analytics is a perfect solution for checking where your visitors are coming from, what pages they’re going to and how long they’re on your site.
A User Experience applications like Crazy Egg is perfect for learning where your visitors are mostly clicking and which are the most visited pages.
You can take help of some sites like Feedback Army to test how users see and use your site.
By learning such types of statistics for your website you can make sure you’re utilizing space as well as making sure that you've got the important stuff where it needs to be.


6. Do not overload your website’s sidebar with lot of widgets

We understand that if you’re running a blog there are a million widgets you can use on it, but you don’t actually need to use them all.
Think of it like your home. If there’s clutter everywhere and if your home is not clean, nobody in your home might not want to stay in it.
So clean up and keep things organized. Stick to the things that matter most for the user experience on your website and try to improve them.

7. Make sure that your website pages displays well on various browsers

We all know that IE6 is dead and outdated, but do not forget that there is still a lot of users who use IE7, IE8, Opera, Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc.
Just because your website looks good on one or two browsers it doesn't mean the visitor using another browser will like that your site is not displaying properly.
Take out some time and check your code and make sure it all works across the various browsers.

8. Keep your website forms shorter

Your contact us form should not be long and neither should a registration form. We should keep things simple.
The chances that people will leave the page when they are faced with a long sign up form are more then a short one with just three simple questions [name, email, suggestion]).

9. Keep you website pages structure consistent 

You need to remember that people want familiarity when they are viewing your website pages.
If they feel like they are somewhere else when they load a new page up, they’re normally click the back button and this should not happen.
The feel of website should be consistent through out all the pages of website.

I will post remaining part in next post :-) 

Top 10 Tips to Hire a Programmer

1.Check whether developer worked on projects similar to your requirement or not

2.Clearly define your requirements for developer. Test him whether he clearly understand your needs or not

3.Know his Hourly rates. Ask him about what quality of work you can expect from him in a Hour

4.If you are not a programmer, study something in general what is programming and web development   at least for your requirement point of view

5.Make sure your  website server is capable to handle future enhancements. Ask about this with him

6.Ask about certifications he done and check his knowledge about latest related technology updates

7.Ask about how he can provide you best services ? What is his strength and weakness

8.Ask what help he can expect from you in between project.

9.Ask about coding standards and his documentation capabilities

10.Notice his motivation and involvement factors for work related discussion