mojoPortal Tips: Making a Living with mojoPortal (Yes, You Can!)

Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 October 2012 04:01 Written by Carole Bennett Saturday, 27 October 2012 12:00

Recently, I was contacted by a developer specializing in .Net, who is fairly new to mojoPortal. He asked me if it’s possible to be profitable supporting an open-source application like mojoPortal; my unequivocal response is “Yes, quite well.” Stick around – after the break, I’ll outline some of the ways that supporting open-source can generate revenue.

Now, it should be prefaced that it won’t happen overnight; you will get pushback from some members of the community, who feel that because the core application (mojoPortal) is free, and open-source, all utilization of it should be free as well. That’s not an unusual perspective for any open-source community, whether it’s WordPress, Joomla!, Dot Net Nuke, or any other application. However; if you talk to most of the actual core developers of these applications, you’ll hear a different story. Every one I’ve talked to has openly acknowledged that their application is used as a tool by for-profits, and indeed in most cases actively encourage it. Some offer premium support packages and sponsor ships to support ongoing development (nopCommerce), while others sell premium add-ons directly from the core development team (mojoPortal).

nopCommerce Tips: Creating a Custom Layout, Part 3 – Plugins, Widgets and Customization, Oh My!

Last Updated on Friday, 3 August 2012 10:42 Written by Carole Bennett Sunday, 12 August 2012 12:00

Read Part 2 here!
Plugins and widgets are features that have been introduced to nopCommerce in order to provide additional options for display of products and information, and improvement of functionality for your nopCommerce site. Today, we’ll cover the difference between a plugin and a widget, the plugins that are native to nopCommerce, and some free and commercial plugins/widgets that are available for your nopCommerce site.

The basic installation of nopCommerce includes 42 plugins/widgets. These plugins & widgets are methods of providing the basic functionality of nopCommerce in a modular fashion, and allow additional functionality to be incorporated as needed.  To see the installed plugins & widgets, go to Administration=>Configuration=>Plugins.

A Warning About Using Izap Plugins for Elgg 1.8

Last Updated on Saturday, 30 June 2012 10:48 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Sunday, 1 July 2012 12:00

A few days ago, someone started a thread in our own Elgg forum, announcing the release of their new plugin: Izap Disk Quota and other plugins as well. However, we strongly recommend staying away from those plugins. In this article, I will strongly recommend you to not to use those plugins in our servers.

After I saw that post, I was curious and went to the Elgg community to see the plugin Izap Disk Quota. For my surprise it was an odd plugin. First, the plugin needs a framework, called Izap Bridge. That’s pretty normal, however such framework is not available on the Elgg community and to get it you must register on another site.

After I finally got the framework, I installed it like you normally install a plugin in Elgg. However, when I tried to use it I couldn’t because I had to register my domain name in their site. In other words, I had to give the address of my Elgg network if I wanted to use the plugin Izap Disk Quota. That’s just plain wrong, because there’s no reason why a free plugin will need my domain name. I find it suspicious, and I believe it sends server information to the developer, which is wrong.

nopCommerce Tips: Your First NopCommerce Site, Part 2: Customizing Your nopCommerce Store

Last Updated on Tuesday, 12 June 2012 02:40 Written by Carole Bennett Thursday, 21 June 2012 12:00

Learn all about setting up a nopCommerce project in Part 1!

I’ve been using nopCommerce for my e-commerce clients since their 1.4 release. To say that it’s progressed significantly since then (version 2.5 as of this writing) is an understatement of epic proportions. The improvements in functionality and usability have been amazing, and it just keeps getting better. One of the most significant additions to nopCommerce has been the introduction of plugins and widgets. With these additions, your ability to customize your nopCommerce application is expanded immensely. With free and premium plugins/widgets available, as well as the ability to select custom themes, you’ll find that customizing nopCommerce is amazingly painless.

Let’s start with the best way to find plugins, widgets and themes for nopCommerce; the nopCommerce.com website. Under the Extensions section of the site, you’ll see that all extensions (themes, plugins and widgets) are organized by type and version of nopCommerce supported. For this instance, we’ll choose 2.5, the version we’re currently working with.

What To Do If You Get Deprecated Warnings in Elgg 1.8

Last Updated on Friday, 24 February 2012 07:15 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Monday, 27 February 2012 12:00

In this quick article, I will give you some recommendations if you are getting several deprecated warnings in Elgg 1.8.

I’ve been getting several emails from our Elgg users telling that they are getting some odd messages on their Elgg networks. Those odd messages were deprecated warnings. What are those? Those are messages that appear when you are using a plugin that was written or developed for older Elgg versions.

Elgg 1.8 was released a couple of months ago and some of the plugins are yet to be upgraded to the current Elgg release.