Drupal vs Joomla: In Search of the Best CMS

13 July 2016
by: admin
in: Web Designs,web hosting
Tags: Drupal and Joomla web hosting in uganda, drupal cms, hosting in uganda, joomla cms, web designing companies in uganda, web hosting companies in uganda
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Drupal and Joomla web hosting in Uganda

While WordPress powers a whopping 24% of all websites on the Internet, it’s certainly not the only open source content management system (CMS) available. In fact, there are two highly effective software platforms, Joomla and Drupal, that warrant great attention when considering a CMS for your website.

With Joomla raking in over nearly 50 million downloads and Drupal housing more than 1,000,000 elite websites, these powerhouses are worth investing the time to see which platform will best serve your business and site goals.

Although each CMS provides the basic functions of adding, deleting, publishing, and storing various types of content, each tool has different strong points and weaknesses which should be explored prior to making your final decision. The purpose here is to provide a comprehensive overview of Drupal vs Joomla to give you clarity for your next (or current) business website.

Joomla

Joomla is becoming an increasingly popular content management system. Actually, after WordPress, it’s considered the world’s most accepted CMS, currently supporting over 3 million websites. Joomla has the power of being extended to provide state of the art functionalities. It has been presented with the Packt Open Source Awards multiple years in a row, making it highly credible to be used as a CMS for your web application.

When it comes to complexity, Joomla places somewhere between simple WordPress and comprehensive and advanced Drupal. Using Joomla means that there may be a slight learning curve particularly for beginners, yet webmasters are usually very happy with the features it incorporates.

There are many advantages including better architecture as compared to other content management systems.

The Advantages:

Simple to install
Knowledge of CSS, PHP, or HTML is not required
Manage users with various permission levels without switching tabs
E-commerce made easy
Several thousands of free extensions available for increased functionality and interaction for your site
Amazing support with programmer tools and tutorials for users
Advanced administration panel offers many functions for complete optimization
URLs generated are SEO friendly thus better positioning in search
Update installs are easily done through web browser
Application framework makes it effortless for developers to create sophisticated add-ons
Highly strong and active community support

The Disadvantages:

Although simple to use, beginners may initially be intimidated by the multitude of functions and possibilities…there is some learning involved
Some of the plugins and modules are paid
Limited adjustment options particularly for advanced users
May experience compatibility issues with some of the plugins, requiring some PHP knowledge to get the functions to work properly
Limited access control list (ACL) support

The Challenge:

The structure may seem complicated and you may have to go through a learning curve before you master the layout system.

Brands that Use Joomla:

IKEA
Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs
IHOP
Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
University of Notre Dame – Alliance for Catholic Education

If you have some experience with CMS systems and you’re looking for something more than WordPress, but you’re still intimidated by Drupal, Joomla might be a solid option.

Drupal

Currently over 1 million websites run on Drupal, widely known to service entities like governments, higher education institutions, NGO’s, and global enterprises. This CMS proudly services The White House and prides itself on its top-notch security element. Its incredibly powerful and comprehensive framework is suitable to house virtually any type of website.

The beauty about Drupal is that it was designed especially for search engine optimization. Placing high value in security, reliability, and flexibility, this CMS is indeed the cream of the crop. Its large robust community is also highly responsive to inquiries and concerns.

This CMS is definitely for the advanced with developer expertise…it is not for all users like Joomla. Installing Drupal for your next project will require an experienced web developer on staff (or a contracted one). Using Drupal is indeed a great choice with the ability to create amazing looking sites.

Here are the advantages, the disadvantages as well as the challenges users may experience with Drupal:

The Advantages:

Top notch enterprise-level security
Great ability to handle large amounts of content and data
Lots of functionalities including advanced menu management, polls management, graphics modification tool, and users management
Built for high performance
Advanced control over URL structure
Pages load faster because of its defaulting caching features
Features countless modules, themes, and extensions
Ideal for community platform sites that require complex data organization with multiple users
Supports multiple site stakeholders (admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.)
Very clean, professional look
Flexible with lots of versatility
Stable and scalable
Downright powerful platform!

The Disadvantages:

Upgrades need to be completed with developer knowledge
Not user friendly
High learning curve
Requires technical expertise
Hiring a web developer to install is more expensive than a Joomla installation
Premium themes and plugins (modules) cost a lot more than WordPress

The Challenge:

It is very difficult to install…you will likely need an expert.

Brands that Use Drupal:

The White House
University of Oxford
The Weather Channel
Bruno Mars
Verizon
The Economist
Fox
Forbes
New England Patriots
NBC
Rutgers University
Twitter
Australian Government

Drupal is an advanced CMS system offering plenty of functions that make it possible to create simple or advanced websites, blogs, discussion boards, social networking pages, etc. However, it does require experienced knowledge of PHP and HTML languages as well as CSS. For those with at least basic knowledge of these languages, there’s a very good technical support to guide them through the process.

How to Choose the BEST CMS for Your Business

Being clear on your business goals, objectives, and intentions is the first step towards selecting a CMS that is optimal for your business. This clarity will guide you as to what type of website is congruent to your needs while better serving your unique target audience.

Joomla is also a good option for small to mid-tier e-commerce stores or for building a community or a network with a membership features, newsroom, forums, articles, input from external authors. If you want something more powerful for large projects in which stability, scalability, and power are essential, or for more enterprise use, then consider Drupal.

Choosing the right CMS for your project will save you a great deal of headaches later. A reliable web host also saves you from headaches. Fortunately, with Hostaculous you can get both reliable hosting and the CMS of your choice, be it Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, or Magento.

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Why Small Businesses Should Budget For Social Media Marketing

12 July 2016
by: admin
in: Online marketing,search engine optimization,Social Media
Tags: search engine optimisation, search engine optimization (SEO) companies in uganda, social media marketing in uganda
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It’s never been a secret that in order to run a successful business, you need to invest in marketing to ensure your brand is visible among the noise. While SEO and content creation are huge aspects to focus on, ignoring social media is no longer an option. People have come to expect finding all sorts of brands online, and your business is no exception.

Social media can provide benefits the best advertisements and email lists cannot compete with on their own. While it’s entirely possible to use your own time to run a commanding social media campaign, it’s often easier and a better investment to budget for social media opposed to using your valuable hours of the day.

What are some effective ways to spend on social media?

Spending money on social media marketing boils down to a few different strategies, all or one of which may work best for your small business:

Use your budget to boost and purchase advertisements.
Hire an additional employee(s) to be your official social media marketer.
Pay someone to create photo/written/video content for your brand.

Here are six reasons why creating a budget for social media is an excellent decision.

1. High ROI Potential

Over the last two decades the world of advertisements and marketing strategies have rapidly shifted towards focusing on the Internet.

And where do people spend most of their time online? Social Media.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram know this better than anyone and have provided incentives for businesses to purchase advertisements for less than you would pay for most other advertisements based on potential reach. Due to social media’s targeted approach, you’re much more likely to have the right potential customers viewing your ads.

2. It Gives Your Business Direction

The best businesses take the needs of people, however large, and fulfill them on a regular basis. The best advertisements figure out who these people are, and send them directly to your business. As previously mentioned, social media excels in targeting by seeking out audiences based on data patterns, or as we call it in the tech world, analytics.

As your business ages, you can use analytics to determine which products, services, and advertising strategies are (and aren’t) working for you. Paying for ads or hiring a social media analyst will be key in being able to use the data beneficially.

3. Unlimited Reach

The thing about social media ads is they don’t have a specified limit for how many people can view them. Since ads are integrated right into the social platform there’s an unlimited potential for people to share, tag, and re-post your content all over the Internet.

This is why companies create advertisements that often have nothing to do with their product until the last few seconds. If you can engage people for 15-30 seconds with something memorable, no matter how ridiculous, the amount of people who will see it can be endless, and for years after the time it’s released. If your business doesn’t have any team members capable of creating dynamic content, this might be an area where you should focus spending your budget: hiring creative content creators.

4. One Click Away

Printed advertisements have been on the decline for a number of reasons:

Tracking ROI is difficult and usually comes down to word of mouth.
The expected reach for print ads is more finite, and can be capped at how many copies are printed.
Print ads lack in-depth analytics about who is seeing them, and where viewers are coming from.

Internet ads, however, don’t have to deal with any of those pitfalls. Best of all, if someone feels the need to take action on your advertisement they’re only a single click away.

5. Developing A Customer Relationship

Have you ever left a comment on an advertisement you saw in a magazine? Me neither, an artfully-drawn mustache perhaps, but never a comment I would expect someone might reply to.

With social media you have the unique opportunity of creating advertisements that also develop a personal relationship with your customers. If anyone has a question, or something to compliment you on, you can answer it on the spot and thank them personally for using your service.

6. Looking Towards Permission

Even though this whole article has been discussing the benefits of ads, I have to talk about advertising as a whole. People are sick of ads.

With things like Netflix, subscription music services like Pandora, and the option to skip ads on YouTube it’s very apparent people are over having sales pitches thrown at them, and will even pay to have ads turned off. Nowadays we want to define ourselves through the brands we spend money on, and that means looking at choice.

On social media people choose to like your page. People choose to say “I find this ad annoying.” Instead of paying to have it crammed down peoples’ throats, pay to have your ads put where people are actually looking, their social networks.