CRE loaded oscommerce development

What is osCommerce

What Is osCommerce? osCommerce is a full-featured, open-source shopping cart application. This robust application is packed with all the features needed to create a successful web store. It completely allows store owners to maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved.

osCommerce combines open-source solutions to provide a free and open e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP web scripting language, the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database server.

With no restrictions or special requirements, osCommerce is able to run on any PHP enabled web server, on any environment that PHP and MySQL supports, which includes Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows environments.

Our experience and expertise in customizing, developing and extending osCommerce, can help your web store excel with users in usability and functionality. To view our osCommerce customization capabilities.Please feel free to contact us for a free project estimate.

Offered service for CRE osCommerce

• CRE osCommerce Installation
• CRE osCommerce designing and layout
• CRE osCommerce Migration
• CRE osCommerce module customization according to your need.
• Integration of CRE osCommerce with third party applications like WEB-ERP integration, UPS real time shipping calculator, Ability to generate and cancel package slips from admin panel and lot more features.

X-CART customization.

Some of the most important problems 'out-of-the-box' shopping carts owners usually face are described in few simple questions:

• Will this ecommerce solution reflect all edges of my business?"
• Can I integrate it into my existing website?
• What do I do to make my online shop support special functionality?

Different shopping carts deal these problems in different ways. There is no universal ecommerce shopping cart software to fit every requirement of every online business owner on the planet, so we developed a concept to provide optimal solution for most ecommerce projects:

• X-Cart shopping cart software is based on PHP Smarty templates, this makes it very flexible and easy to modify. The data is stored in MySQL database.
• W3C XHTML 1.0 compliance of X-Cart storefront out of the box.
• You receive a complete source code and SQL tables for MySQL database to make them extended or customized easily.
• X-Cart is a turnkey package. Installation is handled by web-based step-by-step wizard to make the system running immediately after receiving it.
• X-Cart is search engine friendly. It has integrated HTML catalog functionality to gain benefits of dynamic content and static HTML preferred by search engines.

Our experience

We have about 4+ years of working experience of X-CART that is why, we are quite comfortable to work on X-CART. We can help you to create/customize modules of x-cart according to your business need.

• X-Cart installation.
• X-Cart migration.
• X-Cart module customization.
• X-Cart custom design integration.
• Integration of X-Cart with your current working website or third party applications (CRM, ERP, inventory, billing).

What is application programming interface.

In case you don’t know, an API (Application Programming Interface) allows an accepted third party to interact with your web application. It’s a golden gate that allows data in and out of your application and allows it to take action based upon the data received.

What this means in reality is that the third party can do stuff with your web application that you’re happy for them to do. So, for example, we’ve built an API for Novus Leisure that allows third parties to query their online customer database and to add new users to it if they’re not already in it. This simple task means Novus Leisure can grow their database quickly and easily and only pay the third party for guaranteed new unique users.

In practice, API’s can be built and extended to allow pretty much any activity that you wish (so long as it’s programmable).There are two types of API, closed and public. The Novus API (see above) is an example of a closed API whilst the Google Map’s API that we’ve used for Squaremeal and Latenightlondon venue mapping is an example of an open, public API.

As the web rapidly moves towards an integrated experience, so web applications are expected to seamlessly communicate with each other. This demand places enormous hidden reliance upon good API development because they’re the pipes that connect web applications.

Commercially, for many public web applications a good API is amongst the company’s greatest assets as it allows others to build and exploit their platform and a successful public API will help capture customers. For example, the Facebook API allows other developers to developer widgets and tools that link with the Facebook service, providing a richer customer experience, and ultimately driving more traffic and business to Facebook. Having said that a badly made API can be a company’s greatest liability and not only result in poor customer experiences but also an un-ending stream of support calls so it’s really is worth spending the time and effort in getting it right and maintaining the documentation needed for proper use.

Services that use API’s are often referred to as Web Services or Mash-ups. There is a subtle difference between these two terms.

A Web service is a site that is based upon an API, which allows a user to access the single service and undertake the features available whilst a mash-up is a web application that combines data from more than one source onto a single integrated tool.

Accessible doesn't mean boring.

Nothing beats the creative frisson of excitement as you review concepts, brainstorm and plan strategic derring-do. But you can see people switching off as soon as you mention accessibility. To put it bluntly, for years accessibility been perceived as a necessity brought down from a higher-than-thou authority to ensure you can’t have as much fun as you’d like.

Whenever 'accessible' was mentioned, it generated mental images of boring, text-heavy websites that looked like they were designed by geeks for nerds. One of the greatest proponents of accessibility, Jakob Nielsen doesn’t dispel this assumption with his site www.useit.com which is just plain dull (if usable). But bear in mind that Jakob is one of the web's best known accessibility gurus and author of Designing Web Usability, a book that has sold over a quarter of a million copies. Now in it's seventh print run, it remains one of the most influential texts on creating accessible websites.

While his research and opinion is highly regarded, it’s possible that his message has been misinterpreted and mistakenly led to the creation of lots of boring-but-accessible websites.

The big misunderstanding – drop the images

The most common misconception is this: “I thought accessibility meant you had to remove all the graphics and invert the colours [1]”.

Here's an interesting fact, thousands of boring websites are also completely inaccessible! There’s no reason why a visually exciting website can’t be made accessible; it has nothing to do with how exciting a website looks or how engaging the content is. Making a website accessible doesn't involve removing colour or taking out images. Instead, greater attention needs to be paid when thinking about colour usage i.e. is text legible on the proposed coloured background? Simply think about providing content in a range of alternative formats so all your audience can access it.

Even the most exciting ‘experiential’ websites created for blockbuster films and video games are being designed with accessibility in mind. These sites are often built with FlashTM, the developers of which have been working hard to ensure that the latest versions are as accessible as possible, with improved support for a range of screen-readers and text equivalents for graphical information.

Get more search engine traffic

There is one huge benefit of having an accessible website: search engine optimisation (SEO). It’s no surprise to anyone who makes accessible websites that high accessibility overlaps deeply with effective SEO. Google, Yahoo and MSN all love an accessible website - so you're making your website accessible to another category of visitor - the search engine.

Conclusion

Accessibility doesn’t mean boring, it means ensuring that all your customers can access your brand and take part in a relationship with it online. That makes good business sense, but more than that it’s a legal requirement. Most importantly, as customers commonly review and comment upon their online experiences and share them with others in open forum, the importance of creating brand advocates across all your customer segments is vital – switch on all your customers.

References:

1. http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200311/accessible_boring/
2. http://www.web-accessibility.co.uk/types-of-disability.asp

Importance of OpenID.

One of the greatest turn-offs for customers arriving at a website for the first time is the sign-up form. Not only are we required to re-submit our personal details for each and every website but we also have to come up with a new password for each one. If you’re like me you probably end up using one of several key passwords that you’ve applied for multiple sites. It’s a pain and it’s the one of the biggest barriers to overcome in the customer conversion funnel.

What’s more, every time you return to a website that you’re registered for, it’s another hurdle to remember your username and password to sign-in. If you can’t remember your security details you’ll probably use the forgotten password facility (if there is one) and need to wait for the details to arrive in your inbox before you can get on with what you were planning to do initially.

Even sites like those developed by us, that require an email address as a username don’t solve the problem because many customers have multiple email addresses and often cannot recollect which email address they used when signing up initially.

For customers this all comes down to too many usernames, too many passwords and too many forms!

However, there may be a solution to these barriers: OpenID

The idea of a Single Sign On has been around for some time, for example, you may recollect the Microsoft ‘Passport’ service. However, these ‘proprietor-generated’ attempts have failed (and will continue to fail) because not everyone can accept them, as the question is always ‘what if they turn out to be bad guys?’ Even those businesses that today have a reputation for being nice may one day become ‘evil’.

OpenID solves this because it does not have a single point of control.

So what is it? Well basically it means that you have a URL as your identity – i.e. http://chrisjohns.livejournal.com/. What makes it work is that it’s decentralised and you pick who you want to manage your identity.

What OpenID means is that when you visit a site that allows you to sign on using your OpenID URL is that you don’t need to go through all the shenanigans of the sign-up form and creating a new account. With some good coding, the website that you’re trying to sign-up for can exchange information with your OpenID URL and with your acceptance the registration form can pull in your details without you having to retype them.

A benefit for customers is that websites that allow you to sign-on with your OpenID will be able to have your up-to-date details without the hassle of you having to re-type everything. Additionally customers do not have to have a single OpenID account and can have multiple URLs if they so wish and can easily move between ID’s.

Other benefits of OpenID are that accounts can be pre-approved by website owners, that people will create accounts for applications that they previously wouldn’t have bothered with and that corporate users can extend it to use behind a firewall. Similarly it’s possible to create ‘white lists’ of good OpenIDs that can be immediately given access to an application – so for example all members of a particular cricket club could be immediately accepted with their White List OpenID.

Of course there are a few downsides! There are several areas of security that need attention such as concerns over Phishing, server downtime and privacy. However, these issues are resolvable and we feel that the benefits of OpenID for both customers and website owners are so apparent that there will be a significant take-up of the approach by both sides over the next few months. Major backers such as Bill Gates, AOL, Digg and Symantec are all indicators that OpenID is entering the mainstream.

It’s very easy to get an OpenID, and there are many sites that currently offer the ability to create and manage OpenID URLs – these include, sixapart.com, MyOpenID.com, AOL and several others, most of which offer a free entry level service. Our personal favourite is www.freeyourid.com/ .

In conclusion, it’s early days for OpenID but it’s future is bright because it allows the customer to control their online identity whilst at the same time making it easier for website owners to get you to sign-up and have your up-to date details. By helping out both sides of the deal and by not being owned by a possibly ‘evil’ company, the approach is likely to become the standard and therefore usage is likely to be huge.

You can find out more information regarding OpenID by visiting http://openid.net/

An E-Service strategy.

Good customer service is no longer regarded as sufficient for customer satisfaction and to increase customer retention and loyalty. You now need to exceed expectations to provide customer delight.

Customers are more informed and knowledgeable than ever before. Good customer service has become the baseline and expectations are increasing all the time. To meet these requirements businesses need to evolve the way they interact with their customers if they are to keep pace with expectations let alone exceed them.

Technology has done much over the past decade to transform customer service communications. There is now a consensus that for a Customer Relationship Management strategy to produce the desired results a multi-channel integrated approach must be taken.

Because the majority of businesses are now 'multi-channel it is essential that the customer is given a consistent experience no matter which channel is visited, and is offered a uniform service throughout. Additionally, customers expect to have good access throughout without any unnecessary navigation. No matter how attractive an interface is, if a customer can't gain access then the customer relationship will be damaged or at worst, lost.

In the past businesses have concentrated too heavily on having a website that looks good without consideration for the ease with which a customer can get the information they are looking for. This is especially important considering how many businesses are looking to reduce staff costs by driving customer requests through their web interface.

In a recent report published by the Institute of Customer Service called 'Trusting the Internet: developing an eService Strategy' Professor Chris Voss of the London Business School identifies a three tier approach to developing an effective strategy.

What is expected - the foundation of service

As a baseline level of e-service delivery a website should be responsive, easy to navigate effectively meeting the needs of users and fulfilment.

Responsiveness: if a form is submitted then an automatic response should be generated to the customer, if an e-mail is sent then it should be dealt with promptly and professionally.

Ease of navigation: limit the amount of information on a page, segment users so they can reach the part of the site they want, develop intuitive ways of navigating, develop a logical taxonomy of web pages, allow bookmarking at appropriate levels, have a consistent approach across all parts of the business and ensure the site is structured and hosted to allow rapid download of content

Effectiveness: Task performance measured by the time it takes the average user to perform the average task on a site, subjective satisfaction with the site and quality of the outcome for the user.

Fulfilment: Web customers; given that everything else operates rapidly expect faster delivery of service.

What differentiates - customer centred service

To stand above your competitors you need to gain their trust, provide information and status and offer configuration and customisation features.

Trust: Creating trust is one of the major challenges facing businesses that require client confidentiality. It is difficult to gain but easy to lose. The publication of a privacy policy is a must as is the use of a secure certificate for sensitive transactions.

Information and status: If you provide relationship data to your customers in a secure manner that compliments your offline activities your users will find it compelling. Consider the fact that no parcels or delivery company would now consider not having status information online.

Configuration and Customisation: Sophisticated online customers expect personally tailored services, from selection of options through to the pricing plan. Behind this offering businesses need to ensure that their structure is flexible to meet the customer needs and what they require is feasible.

What excites - Valued Added

To be able to 'delight' your customers with your E-Service offering you need to go beyond customer expectations and provide both proactive service and value added service.

Proactive Service - The ability to analyse user activities and actions provides a number of ways that businesses can provide proactive customer service. A good example is at Amazon.com where the site logs your preferences and presents information on what others with similar tastes are reading.

Value Added - This is discreet for each sector, and there are many examples of how the web provides value added service.

• Businesses are providing web based infrastructures to support service delivery. Video conferencing is a good example.
• Businesses are aggregating data from related sources to provide a one-stop information resource. For example Anglian Water is developing an online service for developers, including providing maps online, online application for site visits etc.
• A new value added role is 'dynamic brokering'. For example a customer specifies his/her requirements and this is automatically sent to all the service providers in an automated tender request. The tenders are then automatically offered, amended and considered, all without further input from the customer.

In conclusion, businesses are looking to a customer's visit to a web site not just in terms of the successful completion of a transaction, but as an experience which they will enjoy and will lead them to return in the future. The implications for the management of the business are that if E-Service is to be delivered effectively they need to identify both the nature of the service they are providing and then to deliver it efficiently and to the highest quality levels. Additionally they must look towards new ways of delivering service by exploiting their information resources to provide reporting, customisation, and proactive services that will ultimately go to provide a value added-service.

However, none of this is possible without building the foundation. E-Service delivery, at its entry level, needs to be robust, efficient, and responsive and performance measured against a range of metrics. If this basic level is not achieved then customers will depart your business to seek a competitor who offers the required levels - and frankly, who can blame them?

Brand values.

When Websites are badly designed, don't work or don't do the things that you expect, it's natural to feel let-down and it would be reasonable for you to consider taking your business elsewhere.

It always surprises me that there are so many websites that just aren’t adequate for their purpose. Many are so beyond redemption they will never work unless they’re re-developed from the ground up. Although there are other reasons why a Web strategy can disappoint, in a great many cases the failure could have been avoided or mitigated by good pre-development ground work.

So what can you do to plan a successful Web strategy? The fundamentals boil down to the following:

• Focus on what your business and users need
• Know Your Constraints
• Be Pragmatic
• Know Your Budget
• Measure Your Success

Focus on what Your Business and Users Need

There needs to be clarity on what is to be delivered. Setting a mission statement or key objective for the project will help to keep everyone on track. This should be clear and unambiguous to allow you to test all functional and design issues against.

With the broad objective in place the next step is to try and identify what users want. The best way to find this out is to ask them.

The right questions are as fundamental as asking the right people. Each stakeholder group will have its own views about key requirements and the trick is to get the right mix of opinion. Depending on budget you can use focus groups, user modelling, surveys, think-tanking and Q and A panels, along with international and local competitors offering analysis. If the service is to be client-facing then sitting down with a couple of key clients and asking them what they would like will set a good agenda. Similarly, internal users need to be involved if the system is to help them deliver their services more effectively.

Sifting the data to create a wish list of features will hone requirements further. Categorising them into essential, desired and wishful items will go some way towards identifying what must be delivered within a hierarchy of needs.

Know Your Constraints

From a technical standpoint, if the application needs to integrate with existing legacy systems or other third party applications then any technologies employed need to be highlighted. If the IT department insist that any solution be written for a particular platform then this will have a funnelling affect on the options available.

If there is a great sense of urgency this will limit the options and may increase the costs. As urgency increases there is a greater trade-off between features and deadlines. If urgent, a project should go live in a slimmer state, with no reduction in testing, and with a roll-out plan for further service enhancements after the site has gone live.

Be Pragmatic

Flexibility and common sense at all stages should be encouraged. Often a business perceives their requirements in one way but the reality of how it should be delivered is altogether different. 'Blue-sky' thinking can lead to unachievable results and disappointment at first release and businesses should focus on a pragmatic set of deliverables.

Know Your Budget

Finance, combined with uniqueness of requirements, legacy issues and urgency of deployment will determine if a project should use a packaged solution or custom application.

Typically if packaged software is selected then there is a belief that the cost of developing the solution would have been far more that the price of custom development. However, a packaged solution often provides less flexibility than required because it has not been built with customisation options. The end result is that often applications fail to meet requirements or, if customised, can lead to a situation where you are unable to upgrade the package without incurring great expense.

Getting custom software developed is sometimes the only option for businesses that have unique requirements and a long term strategy needing a flexible solution. Typically the costs are similar to the larger packaged/customised solutions that are available, although the increasing use of Open Source solutions can means lower costs and faster development.

Measure Your Success

Finally, success measurement criteria should be established. Targets should be realistic and flexible, dependant upon other project factors. Not only the eventual success of the application delivered but the project process itself should be measured against specific criteria.

Conclusion

Good pre-development planning will help deliver better results, at lower overall cost. Much of the work takes time and use can be made of consultants to gather the information and compile it into a 'requirements' or 'request for tender' document (RFT). Similarly, your agency should become actively engaged in gathering data and testing assumptions as they produce the project specification. Pre-planning may be seen as an onerous task that uses vital resources but it should account for at least 10% of the development budget.

Inevitably a successful project combines the best blend of research, documentation, finance, management, and technical/design skills to hit the right note; if the mix is not well balanced then the risks of failure increase.

www.yahoo.com  

Human readable URLs.

If we were to tell you the directions to our local pub it would be “Out the door, cross the main road and you're there”. What we wouldn't say is “Open the door to the office, go down the carpeted steps - all fifteen of them - out internal door to the front, go down the concrete steps - all six of them - walk along the pavement, stop at the kerb, look both ways, when safe cross the tarmac road, step back up onto the pavement, turn right, proceed to the front door (wood and glass) of first building on the left hand side”. It's the same with website URLs - what is the point of telling visitors what's going on in the background when it doesn't help them get to their destination?

A URL should be a key element of a website's user experience. Through better use of it visitors will be able to remember locations, guess locations and refer others to the location more easily.

A classic example of a bad URL usage is www.marksandspencer.com - Looking for a wardrobe? - trying www.marksandspencer.com/furniture because it's human readable and guessable? You'd be wrong - the actual URL is http://www.marksandspencer.com/IWCatSectionView.process?Section_Id=833 - try remembering that when chatting to your friends in the pub.

Having clean URLs is becoming increasingly popular, chiefly because there is no reason to expose the core workings of the website in the URL. Simply put, Server technology means that the URL doesn't have to point to a file name - so you can translate the file name to a suitable URL.

If you can guess a URL then you'll get there quicker. Looking for business news at the BBC website? Typing in "http://www.domain.com/news/business" seems logical - and it works.

URLs should never change - if they point to a resource now then they need to keep that relationship in the future - that means that if Siemens bring in URL ‘mapping’ they will need to make sure that if anyone goes to their bookmark for mobile phones that they can still get to the same resource.

As URLs need to be supported forever it means that care needs to be taken in the naming structure for a site. For example if a company has a number of restaurants in London and uses www.company.com/restaurant_name and they subsequently add International wide restaurants to their portfolio then they should consider re-structuring the same URL to www.domain.com/IN/Punjab/Restaurant_name. The best way of avoiding pitfalls is by careful information architecture planning and forethought.

So it's not the coolest thing on the planet, it's not hip or slick - but having a decent URL naming strategy should be a critical element of a website's customer experience strategy - keeping it simple and making it helpful.

E-commerce application development.

E-Commerce enabled website provides the most cost-effective way of promoting your business online. By developing your own E Commerce enabled website; you can reach out to your prospective customers worldwide and offer them your products and services directly through Internet.

Another major benefit with E Commerce enabled websites is its faster order processing method. Using the power of Internet you can take orders from your associates or clients online and deliver them goods quickly than the conventional business routines.

With experience of serving multiple industry needs iZAP offers you the expertise in this aspect of website development. Whether you want to setup a shopping website for your customers or planning to introduce an online order processing system for your affiliates and partners, iZAP offers you wide range of B2B ( Business to Business) and B2C ( Business to Consumer) E-Commerce solutions on your desktop.

At iZAP, we follow structured methodology for every development. Our analysts first study your requirements and propose the online solution that fits into your business model. After taking your approval, our experienced developers work on the proposed solution to deliver quality e-commerce website that manifolds your customers as well as revenues.

To give you the best available in the technology area; iZAP invests heavily in gaining expertise in latest technical tools . Thus offering solutions that are compatible as well as follow current market trends.

We are already tied up with several companies worldwide and work with them through modern business approach of offshore outsourcing.

Snapshot

• Develops wide range of custom E Commerce solutions for B2B ( Business to Business) and B2C ( Business to Consumer) model.
• Follows structured methodology to fulfill your custom requirements within given time and within budget.
• Use latest technical tools to offer you the solution that are is compatible as well as follow current market trends.
• Offers quality web services at low and affordable prices using tested Offshore Outsourcing Model.

Offshore outsourcing model.

What is offshore outsourcing model?

Offshore outsourcing is the modern business approach of outsourcing / assigning some of its commercial activities to expert offshore companies in order to fetch better quality, cost and technical excellence than what is available domestically.

"Hire rather than own expertise" is the concept behind offshore outsourcing model. Rather than spending money on developing and maintaining certain non-core activities, businesses can outsource them to offshore experts and get quality work at much lower price.

According to a report released by Nasscom and McKinsey, Indian companies will maintain their share of 46 per cent in the global BPO market and 65 per cent in the IT outsourcing market till 2010, even as the combined market is estimated to grow 10-fold from $30 billion at present to $300 billion by 2010.

Benefits of offshore outsourcing model

Offshore outsourcing model offers businesses multiple benefits in terms of cost, quality and technical excellence. Here are some of the noticeable benefits of offshore outsourcing model.

• Realistic cost savings of about 40% as compared to onshore or domestic markets.
• Quality product delivery by offshore companies using their expertise, extensive domain knowledge and implementation of matured execution models in their processes.
• Technical excellence offered to clients by capitalizing on quality human resource, robust infrastructure and domain related research and development.
• Maximum time benefit by leveraging the time difference between service provider and service requester.
• Reduced project cycle by implementing globally recognized project management systems in their operational activities.
• Operational flexibility by quickly adapting to changes in business requirements. Better finance management through clearly defined financial obligation and reduced cost.
• Improved competitiveness since offshore companies deliver quality services at affordable rates.
• Renewed focus on company strategic plans by outsourcing certain non-core business operations to offshore companies.
• Exposure to new markets by making alliances with offshore companies and taking business to unexplored areas.

How offshore outsourcing model works?

As mentioned above, Offshore outsourcing model is based on "Hire rather than own expertise" concept. In other words, businesses prefer to outsource / transfer their non-core activities to offshore companies who are experts in their working domains.

By doing this, Businesses get expert services at low cost as compared to the domestic market. Businesses also get more time to concentrate on their growth plans that they might had spent in maintaining these activities.

India advantages

It won't look surprising if we call India as "Mecca of offshore and outsourcing" . According to a study conducted by Forrester in November, 2001, India's edge over other competing nations in the IT outsourcing business is based on the country's decade old experience in this area, fluency in the English language, supportive Government policy, infrastructure, and high quality offerings.

Below, we present you some reasons that justify why India is a preferred destination for businesses to outsource their offshore-based activities.

• Large human resource with approximately 25 Million people available in IT industry by 2010.
• Maximum cost advantage. An independent report estimated that for every $1 invested in India via offshoring, The American economy gained $1.14 in direct and indirect benefits.
• Incorporation of quality standards like globally recognized SEI-CMM, P-CMM levels and ISO 9000 Certification by Indian IT companies to ensure quality services for their customers. As on 31^st March 2002, India had 42 companies at SEI CMM level 5 assessment and 316 companies who have already acquired quality certifications worldwide.
• Friendly government policies towards offshore outsourcing by offering various tax benefits and sops for IT and ITES industry.
• Address security concerns by introducing IT Act, 2000 that legalizes laws and policies related to data security and data crimes.
• Quality manpower with strong technical skills, good language command and eagerness to accommodate clients.
• Strong education system that emphasizes on mathematics and science along with english language proficiency.
• Decade old experience in offshore and outsourcing justifies why India is considered the best in this business.

Your designing resource.

The design of your web site is critical. Often your website may be the first glimpse that potential customers have of your business - that first impression must reflect the strengths and ideals of your company.

At iZAP we design and develop our website for organizations wanting to use the medium as an integral part of their marketing mix. We have an in-depth understanding of the design, technological and marketing processes required to help companies define their strategy and deliver website solutions that reap the benefits available on the Internet today.

Unlike other Internet development companies, we do not outsource any aspect of the website design or production process. We have all the necessary personnel and expertise required to manage our clients' websites in-house, from brief to delivery.

Successful artwork for the Internet is achieved by balancing the needs of strong, eye-catching website design with the technological constraints of download times and the ability to work in all browsers using a minimum of plug-ins. Any website design needs to look authoritative, convey the correct messages and download with optimum speed. Our website design department works on the artistic and technological threshold pushing back the inherent restraints of working online.

Website migration

Today, businesses are competitive and bring frequent changes to attract customers. On the other hand technology is also getting upgraded quickly. Thus, to make sure that your existing website does not get outdated with time; it is always wise to constantly redesign it or migrate it to latest technological platform.

By redesigning and migrating your website; you can avail multiple benefits. It gives you the chance to offer new services on your current website and also the opportunity to pass on the benefits of current market trends to your site visitors and customers.

Whether you want to give your website a new attractive look and feel, or are planning to introduce new services on your website. iZAP offers you its expertise in almost every aspect of website redesign and migration services.

At iZAP, planning is our virtue. Initially, our analysts study your existing website and match them with your current requirements to find areas where it is currently lacking. This helps in identifying bottlenecks and outdated areas in your existing website. We also ensure that the website is build on latest and most compatible technology platform to provide you maximum benefits from it.

PHP PROBID development.

PHP PROBID customization we offer.

We are working with PHP PROBID since 2005. We have experience of every previous release of PHP PROBID. We worked on highly modified version of PHP PROBID by nash developers even. We are experienced enough to customize PHP PROBID based upon your requirements. Please describe your requirements and we'll get back to you with our best quotes as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

PHP PROBID installation and configuration:

We will help you to install and configure PHP PROBID system.

PHP PROBID modules development:

We can develop a shipping module, payment module or any other PHP PROBID module you need. Additional modules will make your customers shopping more convenient.

PHP PROBID contributions installation:

Contributions are ready-made add-ons for PHP PROBID. They provide additional functionality for clients or admin side. Since the most of contribution are rather buggy and are distribute "as is", we offer not simple installation but also testing and debugging.

PHP PROBID data management:

If you have a big number of products, clients, orders, or other data, we are ready to keep it. We can provide automated database management or manual data entry, any type of database converting or optimization.

Features of PHP PROBID.

Admin area:

The PHP Pro Bid admin area provides you with absolute control over your auction web-site. From within the admin area you can:-

• Manage users
• Manage auctions
• Set fees
• Customise categories
• Enable/Disable a wide array of features and settings
• Review accountancy
• Update the site content (about us, contact us pages etc)

Make an offer:

Buyers can now make offers on listed items, this new feature allows potential buyers to make an offer to the seller if the item has not received any bids. The seller can select whether or not to accept such offers and also set the price range they are will to listen offers between.

Combined invoicing:

Sellers can now combine invoices for items sold to the same user saving both time and money.

Direct payment:

Buyers can now make payment to sellers for items won on-site through using popular following payment gateways.

Fee structure according to your need:

Users incurring fees on your site can make payment using popular payment gateways.

Wanted ads:

PHP PROBID is the first auction software package to include wanted ads. Enable your users to post adverts for items they want! You can also charge fees for posting wanted ads and also for a successful sale.

Media upload:

Sellers can upload up to 9 pictures as well as media file (.wmv/.avi) to accompany their listing. As site admin you can impose a fee for the use of this service.

Custom listing fields:

Ideal for specialist sites you can now quickly and easily add new custom fields for sellers to use when listing. For example if you want to run a car auction web-site you can add custom fields for the engine size, color, age, condition and so on. All fields can also be set to be searchable. A major enhancement to all PHP PROBID powered auction sites.

Vouchers:

Offer incentives to new and existing users with our new voucher system. Choose to offer reductions as a percentage or a flat rate.

Stores:

Enable your users to open their very own store on your auction site. Each store owner can pick and choose their own categories from the main selection. You can also setup store subscription packages to attract bulk or Business customers. Store owners can choose whether to list items in their store, for auction or both. Selections of store skins are also included.

Windows bulk lister:

PHP PROBID official bulk list enables you to list items on your auction site from windows without having to visit your site.

SSL support:

If you have a SSL certificate installed you can integrate PHP PROBID to work alongside it.

Private Or Public Site:

Choose to run your site as "Private" or "Public". Private ensures only you and your selected users can list items for auction, this feature is ideal for Businesses wanting to auction stock. The public option is the default selection and it's basically like eBay, i.e. everyone can sell / bid.

Preferred Sellers:

Give your best sellers special reductions on listing fees...

"Pay As You Go" or Account Mode

Charge fees either on demand (Pay as you go) or allow users to build up an account which they pay off once a month (like eBay). You can set a credit limit, offer a signup credit incentive and even invoice users at any time.

Project management methodology.

Managing the software project needs a well-defined project management framework . We, at iZAP follow the top project management practice especially for our offshore software development process . Our state-of the art IT project management process is both interactive and open that allows clients to keep track of everything related to his projects including important documents, communication, financial data and critical login information using our web based CMS application.

For our outsourcing clients, we follow the outsourcing project management process that is transparent and efficient as well. Our effective IT process management allows them to monitor the whole development process and note any unforeseen problems even from their own end.

Below is our project management framework to give you an insight on our software development methodology.

Different phases of application development

Requirement collection phase

The buyer submits his requirement online through standard procedures like interviews and online discussion, our professionals clarify queries, outlining exact requirements and specifications including.

• Functional requirements.
• Operational constraints.
• Nature of changes that are likely to occur.
• Client's list of specifications that may require future consideration.
• Any other requirement

Requirement analysis phase

Client requirements are analyzed at iZAP and a detailed proposal is developed for the client's consideration. The proposal includes.

• Project scope.
• Development and implementation environment.
• Project considerations.
• Project terms and conditions.

Once the buyer accepts the proposal, the project moves into the next phase. At this stage the client is free to reject the proposal - NO OBLIGATIONS

Development phase

The project team first prepares the Technical design document, which contains:

• static prototype with user Interface.
• Flow diagrams.
• Project considerations (if any).
• Future scope of the project (if any).
• Development planning is now done with following considerations.
• Analyze the design to identify risk factor.
• Decide milestones and techniques.

The buyer will be able to review progress through status reports and can give feedback at each stage to be incorporated in the design wherever required. The test model is now hosted on our server with a temporary URL for the clients use. It's debugged over the test period till the client is convinced of its efficacy.

Deployment phase

After itrative testing and system acceptance is done, we move the software to production server.

It is not over yet. We will offer you 1 month of support for FREE. So after the real usage, you will be sure about the system

What is framework?

With over 40+ frameworks available, it’s really difficult to decide a particular one. There are so many comparisons based upon their available features. Comparison of some of them can be find here.

Well these comparisons are not based on their performance but on their supported features and most of these comparisons are done on outdated versions of frameworks. According to me, it’s no need to be stick with these comparisons.

I have experience of plenty of PHP frameworks and according to my experience, the best ones are CakePHP, ZEND, Symfony, CodeIgniter.

CakePHP.

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.

CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. If you're a developer who lives in the real world of shared hosting accounts and clients with deadlines, and if you're tired of ponderously large and thoroughly undocumented frameworks.

Symfony

Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes written in PHP5. It provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster. Choosing symfony allows you to release your applications earlier, host and scale them without problem, and maintain them over time with no surprise. Symfony is based on experience. It does not reinvent the wheel: it uses most of the best practices of web development and integrates some great third-party libraries.

ZEND

Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications. ZEND is consuming widely available APIs.

What is multi-level marketing?

Independent unsalaried salespeople of multi-level marketing referred to as associate distributor, represent the parent company and are rewarded a commission relative to the volume of product sold through recommendation. Additionally, distributors can also earn a profit by retailing products which they purchased from the parent company at wholesale price. Everyone can get good compensation based on the type of compensation plan as described below.

Unilevel plans

This type of plan is often considered the simplest of compensation plans. Uni-Level plans pay commissions primarily based on the number of levels a recipient is from the original representative who is purchasing the product. Commissions are not based on title or rank achieved. By qualifying with a minimum sales requirement, representatives earn unlimited commissions on a limited number of levels of downline recruited representatives.

Matrix plan

This type of plan is similar to a Uni-Level plan, except there is a also limited number of representatives who can be placed on the first level. Recruits beyond the maximum number of first level positions allowed are automatically placed in other downline positions. When all positions in a representative's downline matrix are filled, a new matrix may be started. Like Uni-Level plans, representatives in a matrix earn unlimited commissions on limited levels of volume.

Binary plan

Binary plan is a multilevel marketing compensation plan which allows distributors to have only two front-line distributors. If a distributor sponsors more than two distributors, the excess are placed at levels below the sponsoring distributor's front-line. This "spillover" is one of the most attractive features to new distributors since they need only sponsor two distributors to participate in the compensation plan.

A complete package of MLM.

What we are offering, is a complete package of web based MLM solution.

• Signup fee management.
• A complete shopping cart with the package manager ( Different type of packages can be offered based upon different type of memberships).
• Payment gateway integration of your choice.
• Different compensation plans according to the nature of your business.
• Complete reporting according to the level of the members.
• Cheque printing in pdf format.
• Account management with the software of your choice.

Want to see the working script

Because of the security reasons we can not publish web addresses here. But we can arrange demo of the working script for you. Please place your request here for the demo.

Certified oracle professionals

Maintaining Oracle database systems calls for a high degree of knowledge, skill, and experience on part of the specialist. Each environment is different. Large companies need additional DBA support and specialized expertise while flexibility is the key at small companies that do not require a full-time onsite DBA.

We offer experienced Oracle software professionals for permanent staffing requirements for developing your business projects. Our Oracle software developers are experienced in executing the software assignments in offshore service model. All our developers are highly experienced and having excellent communication skills.

iZAP has been helping customers manage critical information by making sure that less money is spent on systems while getting the most up-to-date and accurate information from them by using Oracle.

iZAP has a growing practice in Oracle applications that focuses on dedicated consulting services around Oracle applications.

Qualifications of our Oracle development team

We have 6+ years of experience with oracle database and developer. All of are professional have masters in computer with 3+ years of experience. We have experience in following different areas.

• Software Development Life Cycle Experience.
• Extensive exposure to ORACLE 10G database and tools.
• Oracle PL/SQL, SQR, Pro*C.
• Forms 6, Forms 6i, Forms 9i.
• Oracle Application Migration Services.
• Developer/2000.
• Designer/2000.

Software technologies we cover.

iZAP believes that latest technologies, though expensive initially, have its long-term benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness, robustness and reliable solutions that they deliver to its clients.

With this view, the company spends extensively on latest technological tools as they come to ensure consistent and quality solutions for its clients. Below we present you a list of technologies where hold hands on expertise and are currently working upon.

Servers

Unix, Enterprise Linux, Redhat, Ubuntu, Windows 2000/NT/2003, Sun Solaris, HP Unix.

Server side languages we are expert in

PHP , Ruby On Rails

Databases

Oracle(8.x, 9.x, 10.x), MySQL(4.x, 5.x, 6.x), SQLite.
Note: We are having oracle certified professionals.

Web servers

Apache2.x, Lighttpd, Oracle9iAS.

Frameworks we have experience with:

CakePHP, ZEND, CodeIgniter, Symfony.

Graphics

Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw, PageMaker, Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape.

Multimedia

Macromedia FlashMX, DreamweaverMX, Director, Fireworks, Sound Forge.

About iZAP.

Who we are?

We’re a web agency, established in 2004. There are ten (or so) of us. We’re located at ludhiana(Punjab) in India. We’re profitable and growing because we’re experts in our chosen field and we support our delivery with great customer service.

What we do?

We’re passionate in helping our clients deliver outstanding customer experiences online. We’re fortunate to be working with a portfolio of fantastic clients who understand and value the importance of customer experience to their businesses.

Our modus operandi.

We start by understanding customer needs. We do this by talking with people, undertaking user research and creating in depth user profiles of typical customers. Once we understand customer needs we determine a site’s information architecture, produce superior interface and user-centred design, integrate content, test vigorously for accessibility, Browser and OS compatibility and support once live.

Our approach, with an emphasis on detailed pre-planning and preparation ensures faster delivery with reduced risk, at a competitive price. Our online project management tools and the provision of dedicated project managers ensures open communication on a project’s progress towards delivery.

The company motto "Dedicated To Deliver" reflects our dedication towards serving our clients. At iZAP, everything else takes back stage when Client Satisfaction comes into consideration.

We show real, measurable return on investment for clients by identifying success criteria at the outset of the project and monitoring the progress of the strategy against these criteria.

About our founder, Tarun.

Tarun is working since 2000 as a programmer. He has spent the last 7+ years doing web development for numerous number of clients and companies. Passionate about delivering good customer service online. Always happy to contribute to articles or research papers. you can write to him at tarun@izap.in.

Privacy policy.

We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our users while providing a personalised and valuable service. You can access our Web site home page and browse our site without disclosing your personal data. This privacy policy describes how and why we obtain, store and process data which can identify you. We may update this policy from time to time and shall indicate on the web site when changes have been made. If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any queries with regard to these practices please contact our Privacy Officer by e-mail at enquiries@izap.in

The information we collect

Our Web site does not enable our visitors to communicate with other visitors or to post information to be accessed by others or include links to third party Web service providers.

Automatic collection:

We do not use cookies on our Web site or automatically log personal data nor do we link information automatically logged by other means with personal data about specific individuals.

Volunteered information collection:

Information is collected from you when you register for a newsletter on the site. We do not collect information about our visitors from other sources, such as public records or bodies, or private organisations.

The information we collect is via email for Technical administration of the website, Customer administration and Marketing support. We do not collect or use personal data for any purpose other than that indicated.

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, we offer you the means to consent to this new purpose.

Why we collect it

We collect information about you in order for you to receive the free monthly email newsletter. Should you wish not to receive these newsletters, please email enquiries@izap.in with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line.

Who we disclose it to

We do not disclose your personal data to our subsidiaries or other organisations.

Security

We do not give visitors to our Web site the option of using a secure transmission method to send us their personal data.

We have implemented security policies, rules and technical measures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from:

• unauthorised access
• improper use or disclosure
• unauthorised modification
• unlawful destruction or accidental loss

All our employees and data processors, who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal data, are obliged to respect the confidentiality of our visitors' personal data.

We ensure that your personal data will not be disclosed to State institutions and authorities except if required by law or other regulation.

Accessing and updating your personal information

We will always let you have a copy of personal information we have about you, should you request it, and you may correct it if you wish. Instructions about how to do this are available by sending an email to enquiries@izap.in.

Questions?

If you have any questions or complaints relating to this Privacy Policy or how we use the personal information we have about you, please contact enquiries@izap.in. We will endeavour to respond to you promptly.

Feedback from our clients.

Latest news.

CreLoaded oscommerce free modules.

Hi guys,

In last couple of days, iZAP did a great job in CRE loaded oscommerc. We created so many important modules for our clients. With the release of CRE Loaded 6.3.2 version, We also decided to release these modules under GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3. All of these modules will be compatible with CRE Loaded 6.3.2 version. Right now we are in the testing phase. We planned to release these modules by the end of this month. All of these modules will be free for every one. For fresh CRE Loaded script. It will be just a copy and paste to install these modules. But for those, Who are using customized versions of the script. We will also release installation guide for them.

Free iZAP video plugin for elgg 1.2

DOWNLOAD PLUGIN

Feature List

Following are some of the features supported by our plugin. This plugin is supporting Youtube, vimeo and veoh for off server videos.

• Cache all thumbnails, title, tags and description from Youtube, Vimeo and Veoh.
• Preview of thumbnails of videos in video listing, latest activities and group video listing.
• Users can overwrite Title, Tags and Description coming from Youtube, vimeo and veoh.
• Members can comment on a particular video.
• Logs and river will work like other default plug-ins.
• User can control play list in widgets placed on their profile.
• Smart ajax rendering of videos from play list.
• Auto-play control.
• Videos and thumbnail storage in elgg's default file repository for better security.
• Group video features like other group elements (files, group pages) etc.
• On server video support is also available now. Supporting formats are 3GP, MP4, AVI, FLV.
• You can switch between on server and off server video storage functionality. After switch, there will not on effect on your old videos available before switching.
• Excellent flash player. You have control on some elements of the flash player. You can change color of the player border and button bar according to your theme. It will give you decent look and feel.

Installation of plug-in

Copy and paste this plug-in in mod directory and rock it.

Small guide for end users

Just need to copy and paste the complete URL of the youtube, vimeo and veoh video page. It will capture all related data.

Server specific requirement

For off server videos mode:

CURL must be compiled with php. System will not allow you to enable plug-in if CURL is not compiled with php.

For on server videos mode

FFMPEG must be compiled with the required sent of codecs. CURL is optional but it is better to have this compiled. In the coming days, We have more features in our road map.

FFMPEG Specifications

We compiled FFMPEG version SVN-r17630 as below.

FFmpeg version SVN-r17630, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --disable-debug --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-gpl --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libgsm --disable-debug --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-nonfree --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora
libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
libavcodec 52.20. 0 / 52.20. 0
libavformat 52.30. 1 / 52.30. 1
libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
built on Feb 27 2009 08:47:19, gcc: 4.2.4

Screen shots

Add off server new video page

Add on server new video page

Group videos page

Group widget

Video plugin setup

Video play under widget

Video play on detail page

Free iThumb 1.0 for CRE 6.3.2

DOWNLOAD MODULE

Frontend demo
Admin demo
Admin username: admin@izap.in
Admin password: admin

Feature List

Following are some of the features supported by iThumb.

• Thumbnail generation not only for your new products but for all of your existing products also.
• Complete control of sizes in the admin panel.
• You can enable / disable this module anytime you need.
• Enable / disable this module will also adjust product setup page options.

Installation of iThumb 1.0

For fresh CRE 6.3.2 version

It's quite easy to install this module in your fresh CRE 6.3.2 version. Following steps need to follow.

• Unzip iThumb1.0.zip to any location.
• Copy all contents in the root folder of your shop. You can leave upgrade-sql-patch folder.
• Execute iThumb1.0.sql file in your database. And here you done! ;)

For customized CRE 6.3.2 shop

Well you need to take care if you are going to install this module on customized shop. You will need to follow manual installation instructions. We made some .xls files having files names need to change and the script, what exactly need to change. You will find xls file under manual-installation directory. Read all instructions carefully and make changes in the corresponding CRE files. We would like to help if you need any more assistance.

Screen shots

Admin configurations page

Product setup page without iThumb

Product setup page with iThumb

I would appreciate to take your feedback. It will help us to make more improvements. So please keep posting your comments below. For further assistance, you can contact me at tarun@izap.in.

Recent profile visitor plugin for elgg 1.5 version 1.5-1.0

DOWNLOAD Version 1.5-1.0

Feature List

It will record all visit to user's profiles. On your dashboard, you will find all users who visited on your profile.

Installation of izap-profile-visitor v 1.5-1.0

Simply copy and paste this plugin in mod directory and enable it from admin panel.

Something need to be taken care

To make it work, we override user details page. It will work fine for all fresh scripts. But there is small hack for those users who have customized user details page. They just need to copy a function "izapMarkVisitor()" and paste it on the top of your user details page script. Usually you could find that page here "/mod/profile/views/default/profile/userdetails.php". You also need to remove this file from our plugin. You will find this file here "/mod/izap-profile-visitors/views/default/profile/userdetails.php

Recent profile visitor screen shot

Recent profile visitor plugin for elgg 1.2 version 1.2-1.0

DOWNLOAD Version 1.2-1.0

Feature List

It will record all visit to user's profiles. On your dashboard, you will find all users who visited on your profile.

Installation of izap-profile-visitor v 1.2-1.0

Simply copy and paste this plugin in mod directory and enable it from admin panel.

Something need to be taken care

To make it work, we override user details page. It will work fine for all fresh scripts. But there is small hack for those users who have customized user details page. They just need to copy a function "izapMarkVisitor()" and paste it on the top of your user details page script. Usually you could find that page here "/mod/profile/views/default/profile/userdetails.php". You also need to remove this file from our plugin. You will find this file here "/mod/izap-profile-visitors/views/default/profile/userdetails.php

Recent profile visitor screen shot

Free iZAP video plugin for elgg 1.5

DOWNLOAD PLUGIN VERSION 1.5-0.6

Feature List

Following are some of the features supported by our plugin. This plugin is supporting Youtube, vimeo and veoh for off server videos. We also made some enhancements listed in bold text.

• Category support.
• New river support.
• Group upgrade according to the new version of elgg.
• Enhanced listing of videos.
• Now you can enable on server and off server in parallel mode.
• Cache all thumbnails, title, tags and description from Youtube, Vimeo and Veoh.
• Preview of thumbnails of videos in video listing, latest activities and group video listing.
• Users can overwrite Title, Tags and Description coming from Youtube, vimeo and veoh.
• Members can comment on a particular video.
• Logs and river will work like other default plug-ins.
• User can control play list in widgets placed on their profile.
• Smart ajax rendering of videos from play list.
• Auto-play control.
• Videos and thumbnail storage in elgg's default file repository for better security.
• Group video features like other group elements (files, group pages) etc.
• On server video support is also available now. Supporting formats are 3GP, MP4, AVI, FLV.
• You can switch between on server and off server video storage functionality. After switch, there will not on effect on your old videos available before switching.
• Excellent flash player. You have control on some elements of the flash player. You can change color of the player border and button bar according to your theme. It will give you decent look and feel.

Installation of plug-in

Copy and paste this plug-in in mod directory and rock it.

Small guide for end users

Just need to copy and paste the complete URL of the youtube, vimeo and veoh video page. It will capture all related data.

Server specific requirement

For off server videos mode:

CURL must be compiled with php. System will not allow you to enable plug-in if CURL is not compiled with php.

For on server videos mode

FFMPEG must be compiled with the required sent of codecs. CURL is optional but it is better to have this compiled. In the coming days, We have more features in our road map.

FFMPEG Specifications

We compiled FFMPEG version SVN-r17630 as below.

FFmpeg version SVN-r17630, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --disable-debug --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-gpl --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libgsm --disable-debug --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-nonfree --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora
libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
libavcodec 52.20. 0 / 52.20. 0
libavformat 52.30. 1 / 52.30. 1
libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
built on Feb 27 2009 08:47:19, gcc: 4.2.4

Screen shots

Video listing page

Add off server new video page

Add on server new video page

Group widget

Video plugin setup

Video play under widget

Video play on detail page

Enhanced river shot

Free iZAP video plugin for elgg 1.5 version 1.0

Fixes of previous release 1.5-0.6

• More informative error messages.
• New method used to fetch the id from the veoh.com.
• Video listing icons have been changed to the video images.
• Short tags issue has been fixed. Now there is not need to enable short tags directive in php.ini.
• You can upload file names having space.

Feature List

Following are some of the features supported by our plugin. This plugin is supporting Youtube, vimeo and veoh for off server videos. We also made some enhancements listed in bold text.

• Now you can post your video anywhere you like. Post them on home page, blogs, comments and so on....
• Nice video gallery to embed your video from izap_video plugin.
• Search on embeddable video gallery.
• Video widget on home page having latest, top viewed and top commented videos.
• Video widget on detail video page having latest, top viewed and top commented videos.
• Embeddable video code to post videos on other sites which are uploaded on elgg's platform.
• You can re-size videos in tinymce.
• Category support.
• New river support.
• Group upgrade according to the new version of elgg.
• Enhanced listing of videos.
• Now you can enable on server and off server in parallel mode.
• Cache all thumbnails, title, tags and description from Youtube, Vimeo and Veoh.
• Preview of thumbnails of videos in video listing, latest activities and group video listing.
• Users can overwrite Title, Tags and Description coming from Youtube, vimeo and veoh.
• Members can comment on a particular video.
• Logs and river will work like other default plug-ins.
• User can control play list in widgets placed on their profile.
• Smart ajax rendering of videos from play list.
• Auto-play control.
• Videos and thumbnail storage in elgg's default file repository for better security.
• Group video features like other group elements (files, group pages) etc.
• On server video support is also available now. Supporting formats are 3GP, MP4, AVI, FLV.
• You can switch between on server and off server video storage functionality. After switch, there will not on effect on your old videos available before switching.
• Excellent flash player. You have control on some elements of the flash player. You can change color of the player border and button bar according to your theme. It will give you decent look and feel.

Installation of plug-in

This package contains two plugins. One is izap_videos and other is tinymce. We made some changes in tinymce and upgrade it to the latest version of tinymce. You have to upgrade both of these plugins to make all new features available for you. Steps to upgrade:

• Override both plugins (izap_videos and tinymce) containing in the package.
• Clear your view cache. And enjoy updates.

Small guide for end users

Just need to copy and paste the complete URL of the youtube, vimeo and veoh video page. It will capture all related data.

Server specific requirement

For off server videos mode:

CURL must be compiled with php. System will not allow you to enable plug-in if CURL is not compiled with php.

For on server videos mode

FFMPEG must be compiled with the required sent of codecs. CURL is optional but it is better to have this compiled. In the coming days, We have more features in our road map.

FFMPEG Specifications

We compiled FFMPEG version SVN-r17630 as below.

FFmpeg version SVN-r17630, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --disable-debug --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-gpl --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libgsm --disable-debug --enable-shared --enable-postproc --enable-nonfree --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora
libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
libavcodec 52.20. 0 / 52.20. 0
libavformat 52.30. 1 / 52.30. 1
libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
built on Feb 27 2009 08:47:19, gcc: 4.2.4

Screen shots

Screen shots with the red border are new screen shots.

Video listing page

Add off server new video page

Add on server new video page

Group widget

Video plugin setup

Video play under widget

Video play on detail page

Enhanced river shot

Embedded video in blog

Embedded video in comments

iZAP Video gallery

Top videos widget on home page

Recent profile visitor plugin for elgg 1.5 v 1.5-1.1

Feature List

• If user is online, Border of this profile photo become green.
• You can enable the widget on profile page also.
• It will record all visit to user's profiles. On your dashboard, you will find all users who visited on your profile.

Installation of izap-profile-visitor v 1.5-1.1

Simply copy and paste this plugin in mod directory and enable it from admin panel.

Something need to be taken care

:) There is nothing to be taken care this time. It will not override your customized profile page.

Recent profile visitor on dashboard.

Setup widget on profile page.