CiviCRM Seminar, Kings Cross

We recently attended a CiviCRM seminar held at Miller Technology in Kings Cross, London. The seminar was well attended, mostly by representatives of smaller charities and not-for-profit groups who were evaluating CiviCRM for their organisations. We think the view at the end of the morning was that CiviCRM could meet their requirements as it is very well specified for the NFP sector and is a mature and well supported software package.

CiviCRM can be hosted as part of Joomla or Drupal web content management systems. Which one is used will probably come down to the developers preference, but it’s worth noting that Drupal has a more flexible permissions system. So if you were thinking of restricting access to elements of CiviCRM to certains users (for example your events team only access the CiviCRM events menu), then Drupal is an easier way of doing this.

2020Media’s hosting supports all features of CiviCRM. Our servers are fast, very reliable and our support team is extremely professional. We furthermore take great efforts to keep your sensitive data secure. If you’d like to talk to us about your next CiviCRM project, please get in touch with 2020Media.

1. Akismet: Keep your comments free of spam.
2. All in One SEO Pack: Transforms your Wordpress site into a search engine magnet.
3. Google XML Sitemaps: You want Google to index your site right? You need this plugin.
4. Contact Form 7: Adds a very configurable contact form to your site.
5. NextGEN Gallery: A image gallery option with optional Flash slideshow
6. WordPress.com Stats: Get an insight into your visitors
7. AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button: The web is now social. Is your website?
8. Google Analyticator: Get an insight into your visitors using Google’s free service.
9. WP-PageNavi: A more advanced paging navigation for sites with lots of pages.
10. WPtouch iPhone Theme: automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme

Plugins

This list was compiled by Vladimir Prelovac, and one of the criteria was that the plugin must have been updated in the last year to be included – so you know these are being supported. Any of the above plugins can be installed from within your Wordpress site, just search for it’s name in the Plugins section.

2020Media offers free installation of Wordpress on any of its hosting plans, and our team is delighted to talk to users of Wordpress about any aspect of its use.

More info on our WebsiteSpark Offer

Joomla Hosting

Here’s a few extensions for Joomla CMS that we’ve found very useful so we thought’d we’d share them with you.

• jLoginAlert Emails you when someone tries to login to your site.
• Mobile Joomla Reformats your site to fit mobiles
• JoomArt Extensions Manager Centralised management and updating of extensions
• Docman document/download manager with user login, notifications and a big supporting community.
• VirtueMart free ecommerce extension that can also be used as a catalogue.
• ReDJ allows you to create short urls on your site that redirect to actual pages. See www.2020media.com/contact for an example.

Coming soon for Joomla fans is going to be the release of Joomla 1.6. This is actually quite a major update, the current 1.5 release has been going for around 3 years and the release of 1.6 will open up Joomla far more to integrate with other services. This is an approach the Drupal has used very successfully so its a case of Joomla catching up with how the web is developing now.

Total Domain Registrations q1 2010

A decline in .cn (china) registrations has resulted in a shift in the global leader board. The top ranking domain name extenstions for first quarter 2010 are now:

1. .com
2. .de (Germany)
3. .net
4. .cn (China)
5. .uk (United Kingdom)
6. .org
7. .info
8. .nl (Netherlands)
9. .eu (European Union)
10. .ru (Russia)

Country code domains (ccTLD) make up around 40% of the total registrations, with 76.3 million ccTLD registrations at the end of 1st quarter 2010.

Big Numbers

Verisign, the registry for .com and .net, handled an average number of DNS queries of 54 BILLION per DAY in the first part of 2010. Peaks were as high as 63.2 billion. The daily average has increased 43% since last year. Taken together with the slower rise in registrations, this suggest more internet users and more internet use by users. These mind-boggling numbers underline how important DNS is to our internet ecosystem. The fees for registering domains are spent many ways, but the most important two are the DNS and the database of who owns what (WHOIS). The registry for .com and .net has maintained 100 percent operation accuracy and stability for the past 12 years, making .com and .net domains amongst the most reliable in the world.

Security

Operational later this year is DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions). This behind-the-scenes add on to the DNS system will be offered by 2020Media to all its customers automatically as it is rolled out, so all our clients will be offered the ability to upgrade the security and stability of their domains.

About Domain Name Security Extensions (DNSSEC)
DNSSEC ensures that requests to visit an Internet web site reach the intended destination. DNSSEC protects against security vulnerabilities such as DNS cache poisoning, pharming and DNS redirection, commonly exploited to commit fraud and criminal attacks

Promotional items from potential new gTLD applicants

2020Media’s Management team attended the recent ICANN (policy making body for gTLD domains and IP numbers) meeting in Brussels, Belgium. The week long conference is part of ICANN 3 annual worldwide meetings to engage with all internet stakeholders, from representatives of government to non-commercial internet using private individuals.

The main topics for discussion were the release of new gTLD (global top level domain names), and the .xxx domain. The last was rather a moot point as ICANN revealed on the last public discussion that they had taken a decision in principle to approve the application, subject to various caveats. After an independent review which found ICANN’s previous decisions was flawed, the board really had few options left.

New domains like .shop, .canon, .london provoked much more discussion, this time about the various guidelines and rules that ICANN has come up with. ICANN is seeking comment on it’s latest release of the applicant guidebook.

Of note to the technically minded was further steps along the road to secure DNS (DNSSEC) with more top level domain signings. The root zone itself is due to go live in July.

Since becoming a separate project in 2005, Tomcat has been developed through version 6.x. The next version of the project, Tomcat 7, is expected sometime in late summer of 2010,  corresponding with the release of Servlet 3, which Tomcat 7 will implement.

2020Media has supported servlet hosting for 11 years now. It was the first to offer shared Tomcat hosting in the UK – before Tomcat, it offered J-Run.

Wordpress hosting here!

2020Media has long recommended Wordpress as a lot more than a blogging tool. But what else can you do with it? E-commerce is one function many retailers would like to add to their site. A good e-commerce package can also be used as a gallery to generate leads.

One such extension to Wordpress is the free and open source Prestashop. Now Prestashop is available as a standalone e-commerce website but if you have a busy website that is already using Wordpress, and perhaps leveraging social networking plugins, or a custom template, it makes sense to integrate rather than start afresh.

Prestashop can be loaded as a plugin to Wordpress using the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-prestashop/. There’s also a e-commerce plugin written just for Wordpress (WP e-Commerce) which offers complete integration with the existing site, although many find this harder to use.

Wordpress hosting from 2020Media (www.2020media.com/wordpress) will provide all you need to build  a successful e-commerce website

SEO hints from Google

It’s no secret that Google uses several factors to determine where a web site is “located” and thus determine its relevance to each individual searcher. But there has been a lot of debate about which factors are most important.

The two I hear mostly commonly are if the domain has a particular country code domain name and where the web host is.

Now Google search czar Matt Cutts has given us a pretty clear answer.

1. country code TLD (ccTLD) such as .de or .fr
2. geotargeting in the webmaster console
3. IP address

Matt Cutt’s post shows that the most important thing Google uses to determine what country your web site is in is the country code top level domain name. How this applies to USA websites or .com domains isn’t clear – is .com considered ‘USA’? Certainly hardly anyone uses the .us domain extension for USA websites.

WebsiteSpark

2020Media.com already partners with Microsoft to offer web development software at no upfront cost. Now WebsiteSpark membership has been expanded to include a membership in the Microsoft Partner Network. With Microsoft Partner Network membership you get a community of fellow members, evaluation software, expert support, incentives, newsworthy articles and announcements about products and initiatives, lead generation, sales demonstrations, and training.

WebsiteSpark provides software licenses that you can use for three years at no cost. WebsiteSpark also provides a path to get exposure and participate in the developer community (through the Partner Program, BizSpark Camps, etc.).