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).

Warning About Facebook Style Themes for Elgg 1.8

Last Updated on Thursday, 2 August 2012 04:31 Written by Rodolfo Hernandez Friday, 3 August 2012 12:00

There are available at least 3 Facebook styles themes for Elgg 1.8 Such themes give a different look to your Elgg network, however it has some issues. In this article I will discuss about the issues with the Facebook style themes in Elgg 1.8

I’ve been testing three of the Facebook themes:

-Facebook Theme

-Cool Theme

-My Ultimate Cool Theme

During my test I found several bugs or errors that made the Elgg installation behave in a bad way.

nopCommerce Tips: Creating a Custom Layout, Part 2 – Customizing the Menu

Last Updated on Friday, 3 August 2012 09:33 Written by Carole Bennett Saturday, 28 July 2012 12:00

Read Part 1 here!
The menu really is the backbone of any website; when it comes to one that processes online transactions, even more so. Keeping a clean and consistent navigation ensures that the user will be able to find the product they want to purchase, pay for it, and keep track of their purchases, and thereby enabling repeat business as well. Each retailer has their own specific needs and concerns, so of course menus will differ. Let’s take a look under the hood of nopCommerce, and see how we can adapt the menu for our customers.

What’s already built-in

nopCommerce Tips: Creating a Custom Layout, Part 1 – Getting Started

Last Updated on Friday, 3 August 2012 09:33 Written by Carole Bennett Friday, 27 July 2012 12:00

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.