One area where the Lean Canvas model may fall short is in its approach to partnerships. For example, in the realm of WordPress plugin development, key partners like WebPageTest and PageSpeed Insights API might not get the attention they deserve.

So, let’s delve into the Lean Canvas model, understand its strengths and limitations, and explore how it intersects with WordPress development. It’s a journey that will uncover new perspectives, highlight potential pitfalls, and ultimately empower you to make better decisions in your entrepreneurial journey.

Understanding Lean Canvas

Moving ahead in our discussion, let’s decode the Lean Canvas model in depth, gaining insight into its structure and elements.

The Basics of Lean Canvas

Lean Canvas, as conceptualized by Ash Maurya, presents a strategic blueprint for startups intending to launch innovative products or services. This model emerged as an alternative to the Business Model Canvas, providing more relevance to startups focused on innovation and change. In implementing Lean Canvas, startups pivot from traditional methods, considering distinct perspectives focusing on customer problems, conceived solutions, unique advantages, and data-drive key metrics. Essentially, Lean Canvas structures a business model around a customer-centric axis.

Key Components of Lean Canvas

The Lean Canvas model comprises nine significant components. Addressing customer problems stay at the core of this model, triggering the need to deliberate on strategic pathways to mitigate these issues. The solution component works in direct synchronization with problems, focusing on achievable and innovative strategies.

Simultaneously, observing unique competitive advantages helps the startup to differentiate their offering in the market, enhancing their competitiveness. Keeping track of key metrics sustains the commitment to date-focused decision-making and long-term success.

Additionally, the model addresses components like customer segments, revenue streams, channels and cost structure, knitting together a comprehensive overview of the startup’s operation. Thus, Lean Canvas, unlike traditional models, emphasizes problem-solving and customer-centric methodologies, steering startups towards achieving market relevancy and sustainability.

Applying Lean Canvas to WordPress

Identifying User Problems with WordPress

To apply Lean Canvas to WordPress, a primary step is pinpointing user problems. Many WordPress users report issues such as issues with theme customization, difficulty in plugin installation, and general usability challenges for non-technical users. A thorough analysis allows a better understanding of the problems these users face, sparking relevant and user-centric solutions.

Crafting Solutions Using Lean Canvas Principles

Once you pinpoint the users’ problems, the Lean Canvas model offers a structure for brainstorming effective solutions. For instance, for users struggling with theme customization, offering guided tutorials or an enhanced user interface can be an advantageous response. Similarly, with the invention of installation wizards for plugins, one can resolve the issue of complicated installations. The Lean Canvas model, emphasizing streamlined and efficient solutions to customer problems, aligns the problem with its appropriate response.

Utilizing Lean Canvas for WordPress Project Management

The Lean Canvas model isn’t just beneficial in addressing user issues. It’s also an effective tool for WordPress project management. When anticipating future developments and updates for WordPress, the principles of Lean Canvas help distinguish the key metrics, revenue streams, and channels upon which to focus. This strategic approach ensures an optimal balance between project improvement and cost efficiency, promoting productivity and keeping WordPress in a robust and relevant position in the market.

Benefits of Integrating Lean Canvas with WordPress

As we delve deeper into the advantages of Lean Canvas and WordPress integration, two core aspects emerge. Improving the way we streamline development processes and enhancing strategic planning; both serve as driving forces that offer immense benefits.

Streamlining Development Processes

The foundation of any efficient development process lies in deciphering the user’s needs and problems. Lean Canvas offers a systematic framework for the process. By identifying pain-points, such as plugin installation difficulties or theme customization issues in WordPress, it provides a clear direction for developers to follow. Creating user-centric solutions becomes a far less daunting task when the problems are clearly defined.

A paramount aspect of streamlining the development process is project management. Lean Canvas compliments the efforts in this arena by helping structure tasks, delineate responsibilities, and set recognizable goals. It is the combined power of a well-defined problem and solution framework and effective project management that leads to dramatic improvements in the overall development process.

Enhancing Strategic Planning

Strategic planning can make or break a business venture. Thankfully, the Lean Canvas model plays an instrumental role in formulating effective strategies. With its focus on key metrics, Lean Canvas provides a visual guide that highlights the elements of the business model needing attention.

A crucial part of strategic planning is the assessment of cost efficiency and revenue streams. Lean Canvas brings more clarity to the dynamics of these elements. By mapping costs to the solutions, it aids in gauging the financial feasibility of the products or services on offer. Similarly, identifying potential revenue streams such as sales or subscription services contributes to strategic financial planning.

In sum, combining Lean Canvas with WordPress not only streamlines developmental processes but also enhances strategic planning. The benefits of this integration are ripe for the picking, making it a worthy venture for startups and businesses alike.

Conclusion

I’ve taken you on a journey exploring the integration of Lean Canvas and WordPress. It’s clear that this combination is a game changer for startups and businesses. By applying Lean Canvas to WordPress, we can pinpoint user issues – think theme customization and plugin installation – and create targeted solutions. The value of Lean Canvas isn’t just for problem-solving, it’s a strategic tool that focuses on key metrics, revenue streams, and cost efficiency. This approach streamlines development and boosts productivity. So, if you’re looking to enhance your business strategy and address customer needs effectively, marrying Lean Canvas with WordPress is a smart move. It’s about time we start using these tools together to navigate the ever-evolving business landscape.

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The intriguing alliance of WordPress and AI is garnering significant attention, and for good reason. From smarter home appliances to advanced frontier packages, AI is transforming the way we interact with the world. And it’s not stopping there. As AI continues to evolve, its impact on WordPress is predicted to become even more profound. Let’s embark on an enlightening journey to explore how AI can revolutionize your WordPress plugin development.

Understanding AI in the Context of WordPress

AI brings a wave of innovation to the world of WordPress, propelling efficiency, personalization, and user experience to new heights. By diving deep into the world of AI, I intend to unravel the multifaceted realm of WordPress influenced by AI technologies.

How AI Is Transforming WordPress

In the world of WordPress, AI has emerged as an irreplaceable tool. It’s brought about a transformation within the WordPress ecosystem, enhancing its efficiency, user-friendliness, and intuitiveness. AI-powered plugins have simplified tasks such as content creation, live chat, SEO, and image generation, bolstering their effectiveness.

Specifically, plugins like WordLift use AI capabilities to process human language, thereby understanding the type of content and information that website visitors seek. AI’s intelligent interference ensures improved SEO by providing straightforward tips. The translation of entered text into a machine-friendly context enables the provision of relevant facts, links, visuals, and images, making site content engaging and user-centric.

Additionally, WordPress has turned to AI-powered aids like Grammarly and Jasper to provide suggestions and corrections when writing, further refining the clarity and context of the text.

AI Facts

Artificial Intelligence is not just a buzz phrase but a powerful tool primed to contribute approximately $15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030. In the current scenario, AI’s extensive use branches out to stock insights, business reports, and even sports recaps.

On the other hand, sentiment analysis on WordPress, backed by plugins like Watsonfinds, accomplishes the task of identifying and categorizing opinions, thus gauging sentiments or emotions of site visitors. This smart technique is beneficial for boosting conversions and helps improve site content based on predicted user responses, emotions like joy, fear, disgust, and more.

WordPress, eager to evolve, is experimenting with new AI writing content. As AI progresses, it’s predicted to gain a deeper understanding of customers, providing a more personalized experience. The rapid integration of natural language processing and machine learning powers AI-based plugins, thus enhancing website functionality, SEO rankings, and automating content creation.

For those seeking a guide to Canada’s best mobile casinos, AI-driven tools can significantly improve the accuracy and relevance of the information provided.

In a nutshell, the evolution of AI and Machine Learning is set to reshape the WordPress landscape in ways one can only begin to fathom. While debates persist on the pros and cons of AI, the transformative effect of AI on WordPress remains undeniable.

Key Benefits of Integrating AI With WordPress

AI’s integration with WordPress has become a game-changer bringing forth a cornucopia of benefits. Some of the critical advantages for users include streamlined content management, improved accessibility, better user interaction, and enhanced security measures.

Streamlining Content Management

Harnessing the power of AI, developers have pioneered versatile plugins such as Jetpack that utilize AI to aid in the content management process. It provides a contextual spell checker, contributing not only to error detection but also introduces language improvements. Adding to the power of these systems, After the Deadline, another AI-based tool, offers a keen understanding of misused words, style errors, and biased language. Such automated content generation and management capabilities play a significant role in maintaining high-quality articles while minimizing errors, thus saving valuable time.

Improving Accessibility and User Interaction

AI personalizes the user experience and interaction by understanding user behavior and preferences. AI applications create personalized experiences on websites, recommending relevant content, products, or services. Moreover, the AI-powered Jetpack assistant’s automated translation feature translates text into numerous languages, adding a new dimension to user interaction by catering to a global audience. This attribute significantly enhances accessibility, creating an impressive user experience for visitors from different cultures and language orientations. AI has even made strides in the emerging trend of voice search optimization, thus providing a seamless experience for users interacting with voice assistants.

Enhancing Security Measures

AI has become central in fortifying security measures in WordPress. One noteworthy implementation of AI in securing WordPress is an AI-based spam detection tool. Without requiring any manual intervention, it efficiently eliminates unwanted comments containing malicious code or links. AI’s propensity for making unbiased decisions based on practical and rational algorithms has made it particularly effective in these security endeavors, thereby reducing a lot of potential site management headaches. Ultimately, integrating AI with WordPress elevates the security protocol to a more reliable, productive, and proactive level. This, in tandem with privacy and user data protection focused policies, significantly contributes to an enhanced and safer user experience.

Popular AI Solutions in WordPress

WordPress, enriched with Artificial Intelligence (AI), is revolutionizing its ecosystem. Its contributions have brought significant improvements in essential areas such as content creation and SEO, leading to an enhanced user experience.

Automated Content Generation and SEO

Firstly, AI-powered tools bring content creation to an automated level in WordPress. Plugins, powered by AI, like AI-based Content Generators, effortlessly churn out blog posts, social media updates, or product descriptions by analyzing existing content on your site. Examples also include image generation tools such as DALLE 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. These tools use machine learning algorithms to suggest graphics based on users’ input or previous designs.

SEO isn’t left behind. AI’s role in SEO optimization is also instrumental. Automation in this field has led to SEO-friendly content, enabling WordPress websites to reach higher visibility. For example, Jetpack AI Assistant can translate your content into numerous languages, improving website visibility and reach across different cultures and locales.

Personalization Through AI: Crafting Custom User Experiences

AI isn’t just about automation. It’s also about providing a personalized experience to each visitor. Plugins employing AI can analyze user behavior and preferences to deliver tailored experiences. AI’s capability of content tagging and internal link creation enhances user engagement, making the WordPress site more intuitive.

AI Chatbots, for instance, integrate with WordPress to provide instantaneous customer service. They handle queries round the clock, maintaining constant user engagement, thus improving the overall user experience.

The inclusion of AI in WordPress is a significant leap towards efficiency, intuitiveness, and usability. From automating content creation to enhancing user interaction, AI tools are proving to be invaluable assets in WordPress.

The Challenges of AI Integration in WordPress

While AI has proven to be a game-changer in the WordPress ecosystem, its integration isn’t without obstacles. The advent of Artificial Intelligence brings forth ethical, privacy, and technical concerns that demand astute attention.

Navigating Ethical and Privacy Concerns

AI-driven decisions present a unique challenge: they’re only as unbiased as the training data sets feeding them. This characteristic of AI brings biases, prejudices, and discriminatory tendencies possessed by these data sets under scrutiny, mirroring any bias within AI decision-making mechanisms. Another concern that demands attention is job displacement–a real threat, considering the automation efficiency AI offers.

Policy areas require focus to strike a balance. Stricter control on personally identifiable information collection, more transparent user visibility into accessed data by AI applications, and improved anonymization of previously collected consumer data are some key initiatives needed. Additionally, watermarking AI-generated content can prevent unauthorized usage and offering customers the chance to purge training data of their details can respect users’ digital rights.

Addressing Technical Limitations

Despite its advancements, AI does face technical limitations when incorporated into WordPress websites. A noteworthy challenge is its inability to comprehend complex human emotions and contexts accurately. For instance, the reception of AI-generated content varies across fields– with a Pew Research Study showing the medical and scientific communities being more open to it than other sectors. 45% deem AI-written news articles as not an advance, underlining the skepticism towards AI-generated content.

AI is also infamous for making up data, labelled as ‘hallucinations’. An example of this would be asking the AI for a book list, only to have it spit out nonexistent titles or incorrectly attribute authors. AI’s indebtedness to verify anything it generates is equally crucial to prevent propagation of incorrect or biased information.

In essence, while AI holds massive potential for WordPress, careful attention to these concerns is essential to leveraging it effectively.

The Future of WordPress With AI

With AI integration becoming commonplace in WordPress Content Management Systems (CMS), its future is worth discussing. It’s evident we’re heading toward an era of impressive AI innovation in website building and management, dictated by artificial intelligence.

Predictive Trends in AI Development

The AI wave in WordPress brings a host of new opportunities. By 2025, AI, according to a Gartner report, is expected to be a pivotal component of managing digital content. This statement solidifies the prediction that AI’s role in WP will broaden and strengthen its impact, revolutionizing experiences on digital platforms. Companies today are already utilizing algorithms capable of website creation, suggesting AI’s positive disruption in near future. AI assistants like ChatGPT are playing a significant role, contributing to website layout design, branding, and other aspects based on user criteria. An increasing number of WordPress-specific tools working with AI, such as CodeWP, are also appearing swiftly in the market.

How AI Could Reshape WordPress Development

One of AI’s primary applications is in data analysis; AI deciphers voluminous sets of data to offer invaluable insights. These help developers make decisions grounded in user behavior, market trends, or performance metrics. For instance, user interaction analysis can recommend improvements in website usability or personalized content suggestions. Moreover, AI can significantly enhance a website’s search functionality. By analyzing user behavior and content relevance, AI delivers personalized and precision-based search results.

AI’s superior capability in understanding patterns and making predictions can also optimize website navigation. By analyzing user behavior, it can recommend user flow improvements, thus, refining the overall user experience.

It’s crucial to remember that while AI brings a lot to the table, it isn’t infallible. There have been instances where AI-generated data turned out to be erroneous or biased. One must thoroughly verify the information AI creates to avoid ‘hallucinations’—an AI phenomenon where it fabricates non-existing data. For example, when asked for a list of books, AI might list non-existent titles or incorrectly attribute authors.

Ultimately, AI promises a bright, innovative future for WordPress, but its usage should be well-regulated and checked for accuracy and ethical standards. This will ensure the successful and responsible integration of AI into WordPress development, potentially leading to a revolutionary era of web design and management.

Conclusion

I’ve seen firsthand how AI’s power has revolutionized WordPress, making it more efficient and user-friendly. Plugins like WordLift and Grammarly have brought about a new era of personalized experiences. AI’s not just transforming content creation and SEO, it’s also boosting user engagement and predicting customer behavior. The future of WordPress with AI looks bright, with emerging trends hinting at an optimized data analysis, search functionality, and website navigation. However, it’s important to tread carefully. Issues around accuracy, biases, and ethical standards need to be addressed for AI’s successful integration. As we move forward, let’s embrace the potential of AI while also considering the challenges. This is an exciting time for WordPress development, and I can’t wait to see where AI takes us next.

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As an open source content management system (CMS), Concrete5 helps users reduce the cost of developing and managing a website. At the same time, it simplifies the development and management of web applications by providing several robust features as well as community and enterprise support. These features make many businesses prefer Concrete5 over other popular content management systems.

Themes, Add-ons, and Extensions

Concrete5 allows web developers to quickly create websites using a number of free and commercial tools. Similarly, developers can easily add functionality to a web application using a number of free and commercial add-ons. Themes and add-ons allow developers to quickly create custom websites without writing additional code. At the same time, developers can extend the CMS using enterprise extensions such as internationalization, HTML exporter, and multi-step content workflow.

Content Editor

The content editor provided by Concrete5 helps programmers customize a website to meet specific business needs. The WYSIWYG content editor also allows developers to customize a website without writing or modifying code. It also has robust features such as contextual editing, easy theme management, and dynamic forms. Programmers even have the ability to drag and drop blocks of content in a template.

Style Editor

Cocrete5 allows developers to customize the design of the website using different fonts, layouts, and colors. Developers can further edit these elements using the style editor provided by the CMS. The style editor further simplifies website customization by providing features such as image editor, videos, gallery, blocks, stacks, templates, and page layouts.

Optimization for mobile devices

Concrete5 allows developers to optimize websites for mobile devices using responsive web design. Developers can also make web pages look good on different devices using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In addition, they can optimize a web application for mobile devices using the features provided by Concrete5 – adaptive images, adaptive layouts, adaptive video and mobile navigation / menus.

Form Builder

Concrete5 allows users to accelerate digital marketing campaigns by dynamically creating forms and surveys. Programmers can use the form builder provided by the CMS to create forms and surveys without writing additional code. Additionally, users can collect user data more efficiently using the features provided by the form builder – customizable form fields, form validation, error detection, and drag and drop.

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Since 2009 the system was divided into two branches: Evolution and Revolution. The first one is based on the original code, but the developers stopped supporting it (the active community took over). The second one was rewritten from scratch, and updates are released for it, including blocking system vulnerabilities. At the same time both branches are functioning and have their own audience.

ModX was appreciated first of all by professional developers, who note cross-browser and cross-platform. That is, it is convenient to work with the engine in any environment. It is also easy to expand the functionality using a variety of ready-made modules and plugins. With their help you will be able to solve problems of any complexity.

With the use of ModX you can develop a corporate website, entertainment blog with a large amount of media content, lending, online store, news portal, etc.

Unlike other free engines, ModX does not offer ready-made templates. But this does not mean that you will have to buy them separately or develop them in-house. The engine is made so that you can pull any HTML-templates on it. As a result, you will have a lot of layouts, including free ones. However, note that customization will require skills with HTML and CSS, which is unlikely to be possible for beginners.

A professional designer will definitely not encounter difficulties in adapting any template for ModX. The only thing that can go a little wrong is the need to learn the structure and syntax. They are different from those presented in other engines. Beginners, however, will have to seriously study the documentation and watch a lot of video tutorials.

One of the updates opened the possibility to use the FRED visual editor, which has a drag-and-drop interface. It functions in much the same way as website builders. That is, you will be able to customize pages manually by dragging and dropping elements and changing their appearance. For deep customization, you will still have to interfere with the source code, and here you can’t do without HTML/CSS/JavaScript knowledge.

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The first thought of creating such a platform came to Christopher Manu back in 1998. But then he was busy in other projects, and the idea remained unrealized. A couple of years later, Daniel Kerr, a British developer, became interested in the idea of creating an engine for e-commerce projects. In 2009, he managed to launch a complete system. At the moment, the most current version with the latest updates – 4.0.1.1 from August 2022. Now the service is freely available under the GNU General Public License – a universal public license.

Minimum requirements for normal operation of the system:

• server: Apache, recommended by developers;
• PHP: from version 5.3 and later;
• database: recommended – MySQLi.

With Opencart you can create an online store of any complexity. The system allows you to accept payments, manage and process orders, and for this you do not need additional extensions. These features are the basic functionality by default. If you need to customize the project to your needs, you can add special plugins.

Those who have programming skills can make changes to the source code. Opencart software is written in PHP, so knowledge of this language will be useful.

If it is not possible to edit the code yourself, the addition and expansion of functionality can be delegated to programmers. There are a lot of specialists ready to work with this CMS. The Opencart community has more than 110,000 members. In addition, there are enough resources, training videos and articles on the Internet, and the service’s website has detailed documentation.

Who is suitable for CMS Opencart

Opencart is a platform for those who want to create a ready-made online store without significant financial costs and as quickly as possible. The system works on the principle of “easy to install, easy to use”. In practice, it is so. Easy-to-use interface allows you to launch the store in the shortest possible time and within a week to get the first sales. And technical support is ready to answer any question of the developer.

On the one hand, Opencart is suitable for beginners. Since CMS is free, in case of failure the losses will be insignificant. On the other hand, even a beginner will need to independently install plugins, upload products, customize the site, find a suitable hosting and much more. That is, Opencart is an ideal solution for entrepreneurs who have experience in e-commerce. The system will also appeal to those who have a team of specialists who can be entrusted with the tasks of setting up and managing the site.

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TYPO3 CMS is a good platform for a medium or large project, a site for which flexibility and extensibility are important. Of course, the flexibility of the engine means that it must be handled by a competent person who can understand the customization system and understand how TypoScript works.

If you are a customer (or just thinking about what to create a website on), TYPO3 CMS will suit you if:

you have a medium or large budget for creating a website;
your site is not an online store or a social network;
the number of pages will be approximately average (not small – 10-20, but not large – 5-6 thousand);
you will not use the built-in CRM.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t implement the above written on TYPO3; it means that implementation will be problematic, so it’s easier to take some other, more suitable CMS.

To summarize, TYPO3 is a great fit for medium-sized companies.

TYPO3 CMS extensions

Extensions are plugins that can be selected in TER and then installed via TYPO3 CMS using the Extension Manager in the menu. TER is the TYPO3 Extension Repository and it can be found here. This is the official collection of extensions for TYPO3.

As in other CMS, here extensions have the most different functionality: some of them affect only the appearance of pages, others are responsible for internal features; most of them affect the internal and external sides of the site (we are talking about news, galleries, etc.). You will have a large scope for customizing these extensions.

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Important features – a large number of ready-made templates for stores, free access to full functionality and an unlimited number of products that can be added to the catalog.

Users appreciated the rich functionality “out of the box” – a lot of extensions, which makes it possible to create a website with minimal knowledge. Immediately available analytics of sales, orders, average check, visits, conversions. Search engine optimization at all levels is also available. The separation of user rights and built-in payment modules are very convenient.

All this is important for a new online store, but the existing ones will not mind to save money by switching to PrestaShop.

Pros and cons of PrestaShop

CMS has many advantages, some not available in other engines. Specifically:

• Ease of installation. You will need to download the installation file from the official site, upload it to the admin panel of the site and then follow the clear instructions. The installation file is small, so it can be downloaded even with a slow connection.
• Price. Free platform is one of the most important arguments in favor of PrestaShop. You do not need an online merchant license to install the store.
• Ease of use. Clear interface and simplicity ensures that even a beginner will understand the functioning of the engine. You do not need any special knowledge and skills to launch an online store. Monitor and maintain the performance of the site without problems. Today PrestaShop has more than 25000 plugins available.
• Easy customization. You can adapt CMS to the needs of a particular site, because the system is very flexible. Set and remove customizations based on your needs.
• Tools for customer retention: base, mailings with promotional offers, work through social networks.
• Global coverage. Support is provided in 70+ languages. Online store on PrestaShop in USA, India, Germany, China, UK, Japan, Canada have shown its effectiveness.
• Integration with Google Analytics – get detailed statistics of site visits.
• Payment reliability. This is one of the most important advantages for e-commerce. For your site you can connect a reliable payment gateway and install different payment methods. For example: PayPal, Skrill, Klarna, Bitcoin, Payments and others. When making a payment, there is no redirection to an external resource – the user remains on the payment page.
• Plus PrestaShop has ready-made solutions. Especially relevant are free advertising tools, such as automation of tracking emails, promotional offers, vouchers.

There are disadvantages in PrestaShop too, although they are much less than advantages. The first problem is the limited scalability. The engine is good for small and medium-sized businesses, but for large projects its capabilities are not enough.

The second disadvantage is too simple design. On the one hand – this is good, because it is easy to find the required sections of the online store. On the other hand – for large businesses CMS PrestaShop is too simple, it may seem that the site does not look professional.

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Adding new categories, pages and products, as well as their editing, is done directly in the admin panel. Here you can also manage add-ons, customize templates and much more. If we consider this approach from the technical side – the absence of a visual editor directly on the product pages gets rid of unnecessary scripts, which often become a stumbling block on the way to productivity. After a little studying the basic functionality of the engine it becomes easy to manage, as there is literally nothing superfluous that could affect important performance indicators.

Admin panel design

The admin panel of Magento is made in the classic style for such things. When logging in, the user gets to the Dashboard section, where the summary information about the events on the site is collected. Here you can view the number of purchases, identify products that are sold more often, find out the average check and determine the most popular requests.

The main menu is located on the left side and is divided into several categories:

• Dashboard – store summary;
• Catalog – divided into sub-items “Categories” and “Products”, here you can add new products and categories, as well as adjust them;
• Costumers – information about site visitors;
• Content – here you can customize the visual part of the online store, you can customize the look of individual pages, as well as connect or disconnect individual widgets, users can also add in this section of the pages of the Landing format or make blog posts, which are then displayed in the news;
• Stores – a particularly useful section for owners of multi-language online stores, where you can translate and make regional add-ons for each of them;
• System – a tab containing the main engine and system settings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Magento provides standard tools for search engine optimization of the site:

• Changing the title and description of each page;
• Changing the visibility status of the page;
• Adding keyword phrases;
• Customizing the robots.txt file;
• Adding a sitemap.

Using the canonical link meta tag for categories and products.
Including canonical links helps to eliminate the creation of double pages. This is a common problem in online stores, where there are similar or identical products with different attributes.

If the store is large, it is useful to use automatic generation of metadata. Magento has this feature “out of the box”. In the standard configuration there are also tools for changing the site map.

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Optimization includes at least three stages:

• Forming aliases – synonyms of addresses assigned to units of content;
• Adding metadata for search engine optimization;
• Setting up a sitemap for better page indexing.

All content placed on the engine is a node – a unit with a unique address. Between themselves they differ only by numbers at the end, so it is difficult for people to make them out, and even more so to reproduce them. This also affects the perception of content by search engines, whose algorithms are aimed at bringing the most informative and user-friendly pages to the top positions.

You can change machine addresses to CNC manually when publishing. But this is quite a painful task, and practice shows that users constantly forget to rewrite the URL. Automation of aliases creation helps to solve the problem, which can be implemented through a combination of modules Token, CTool and Pathauto. In addition to installation, you will have to customize the template, but in any case it requires less effort than manual editing of each address.

For proper indexing of pages under the editor window there should also be fields with metadata, in which the title, description and key phrases are specified. The standard Drupal functionality does not provide this feature. Modules are also used to add metadata – especially common is a pair of Metatag and Real-time SEO. Each of these applications has its own settings, through which you can fine-tune their work.

Another important part of optimization is the formation of the page map. This also requires a module called XML Setup. After its installation, the main page will be automatically added to the map. You will have to manually specify other sections created before the installation of the module. However, after the module is installed, the addition process will become automated.

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It takes time to get used to the Drupal interface. It is logical enough, but the abundance of functions and settings complicates the task for novice webmasters.

When installing Drupal already has a standard set of modules with which you can manage the site. These include:

• Tracker for tracking new products;
• Block for displaying content on pages;
• Color for changing the color scheme of the site, if the theme provides such an opportunity;
• Image for image processing;
• Node for adding new content.;
• Search for organizing site search;
• System to manage system settings;
• User to manage registered users;
• Locale to select language packs;
• Path to rename links;
• Update Manager for checking for updates.

These modules form the core of the system. However, their functionality will not be enough to, for example, launch a store. This requires add-ons, which can be downloaded from the engine’s official website. Applications offer different tools, so you need not only to read their descriptions, but also to study forums and various guides to customize sites on Drupal.

For example, here is what store modules offer:

• convenient shopping cart and checkout page;
• buyer’s profile with information about his actions;
• order tracking system;
• online payment of goods;
• automatic change in the cost of goods depending on the selected currency.

You can search for modules suitable in terms of functionality or immediately download a ready-made assembly, which contains a standard set of tools. For example, a company website is built on Open Atrium. If you need a corporate portal with elements of a social network, then look at the Commons distribution. For a store you can use OpenStore, and for a news site – Drigg.

The main thing to remember is that the modules on Drupal act in conjunction, complementing each other’s capabilities. Therefore, when changing the functionality of the assembly you will have to check which modules are compatible with the set that was pre-installed. Similarly, the work on customization of the system based on the Drupal core. An example of how it looks like, you will see in the section about search engine promotion – all optimization tools are added by bundles of 2-3 modules.

It is impossible to refuse to use add-ons, because they solve tasks without which the site cannot function. For example, to manage pages and publications on Drupal there is an editor CKEditor. But for comfortable work with it requires a module ICME, which adds editing tools. To display content, you need the Taxonomy module – and so on for everything. This provides flexibility to the engine and at the same time creates a headache for novice webmasters.

Design

Immediately after installing the engine, you choose one of the standard templates, which will determine the appearance of the user part of the site. Other themes can be downloaded from the official CMS website. The catalog has several thousand templates of different levels of performance: some themes are so far behind in life that they do not even have adaptive layout, but there are still quite a lot of worthy options.

You should pay attention not only to the adaptability of the interface, but also to the structure of the layout. What number of blocks offers the page, how they are located, whether you can change their places without editing the template files.

The theme you like is first downloaded from the catalog, and then uploaded to the server through the Appearance section in the admin panel. After the operation is completed, the template will appear in the list of pre-installed design options. It’s not very convenient, but it makes you choose a theme more carefully – here you can’t switch between templates in one click like on WordPress, viewing them at once in practice.

Editing a theme is done with two main tools:

• Block Layout is a visual editor that offers the same tools as the designers. You get access to ready-made elements that can be freely dragged and dropped. These are used to form the interface of each page;
• Theme Settings – basic theme settings, where you can change the color scheme, adjust the display of pictures, set the logo and favicon;
• The third way to change the appearance is to edit the template files.

If you know how to handle HTML files, stylesheets and scripts, you will be able to customize the theme as you want. This task can also be entrusted to specialists, with the search for which is not difficult – orders for site development on Drupal is on any freelance exchange, as well as their performers.

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