Content Management System (CMS) Suitable for Blogging | PHP Based:

Check Out the best programming languages for beginners in 2017. Click Here.

1. WordPress:

When it comes to blogs, one of the best CMS that comes in bloggers mind is WordPress.

• This is an open source CMS, which is easily available and can be installed within few clicks.
• Its simplicity with simple admin panel makes you manage your content and publish it online with no stress.
• When it comes to flexibility of WordPress, you can make any type of website be it a personal blogging website, Photo blog, Professional business website or even a network of websites.
• WordPress is rich of plugins for every feature, from social networking to forums, social media widgets, spam protection, calendars, plugins are available for almost every feature.
• SEO plays an important part for any writing, WordPress is already search engine optimized, with so many SEO plugins also available to handle the optimization at higher level.
• For Developers:
  • It has latest script libraries like jQuery, pl-upload etc.
  • Developer can even create their own plugins and theme, WordPress provides repository even to host them.
  • WordPress under hood WordPress helps developers to build an applications, it provides all the features that an app needs.
• It is supported by a vast community, there are forums available where you can question regarding your query related to WordPress and you will get great answers.

Thus, WordPress can be a true friend for your blogging journey.

Official WordPress Website. Click Here.

Check how to move your WordPress website from local to live. Click here.

2. Drupal:

Drupal is a free and open source CMS. It is a customizable platform used by many business and technology leaders to create real world enterprise.

• When it comes to high traffic and big content sites, Drupal’s scalability comes in role. It can handle high traffic sites easily. Site like grammy.com, which experience high load of traffic is uses Drupal.
• Mobile Friendly: With Drupal you can create a responsive blogging site and web application. It ensures to provide a seamless content experience on every device.
• You can create multilingual sites and manage many sites across your organization, geographies etc., on a single platform .
• There are tools available with Drupal which you can use to create solutions for your business according to the requirement and with no limitations.
• Easy content authoring is available with Drupal. With content creation, content structuring is also available which helps content writer to ease their tasks.
• It is supported by a worldwide community and they help to keep your sites secure by keeping their eyes to identify and solve any vulnerability.

Thus, Drupal’s vast features and extendibility makes it a best platform for settling business and also for personal blogging websites. Official Drupal Website. Click Here.

3. Joomla:

Check some of the best Open Source CRM platforms. Click Here.

Joomla is an open source CMS written in PHP, which helps to publish web content and create web application. Here we will focus on core features of Joomla:

• Multilingual: With Joomla you can create multilingual site, it supports over 65 languages. This makes the market of Joomla wide and which makes your website to server larger audiences.
• Content Management: Its features make content management very easy. With WYSIWYG editor content creation and editing become very easy. It provides various features with which adding any image or any module article is a one click task.
• Front End Editing: Joomla provides front end editing, where if you want to make any changes to your content, there is no need to logging into admin panel, changes can be made directly from front end.
• Extensions: You can customize Joomla with extensions available to extend website and broaden its functionality.
• It has a supported community which helps to solve any of your problem and also helps in marketing your projects.

There are so many features for developers and designers also available with Joomla which makes it a full package for your project.

Official Joomla Website. Click Here.

4. PHP-Fusion:

PHP-Fusion is an open source content management platform, implemented in PHP and uses MYSQL database to store content of your websites. It has all basic features which every CMS generally contains with a simple admin panel to manage your site. It is very easy to be used by new blogging aspires.

• Easy Customization: You can create custom functionality for your site which makes an easy upgrade to the system without making major core changes.
• Fast and light weight: Standard installation of PHP-Fusion includes features that makes it a light weight CMS.
• It allows you to make dynamic content and also ease of publishing it.
• Localization makes it easy for you to have your site serving wide audience of over 35 languages.
• It is highly customizable and easy to modify.
• Its focus on security at every post and input with support of vast community makes it more popular.

Official PHP-Fusion Website. Click Here.

5. Silver Stripe:

Silver stripe is a freely available CMS framework implemented in PHP and loved by developers and editors. Its main features are:

• It is super flexible and extensible. You can customize it according to your requirement.
• It is very easy to use, you can simply install it and you are ready to use and can publish your content in no while.
• It’s secure and support system lets you have a relax sleep.
• Its coding structure is very easy to understand and maintain.
• Front-end template engine is very powerful.

Official Silver Stripe Website. Click Here.

So these were some of our top picks PHP based Content Management System CMS platforms suitable for blogs, bloggers and blogging. Do let us know if we have missed any CMS system which you think should be included in this list.

The post Top PHP Based CMS Platforms Suitable For Blogging appeared first on Omniceps.

Here is what Wikipedia says about Tower of Hanoi. Read Here ->
This is a mathematical puzzle, which consists of a set of three towers (pegs) and n number of disks, with each disk of different size. The puzzle starts with all disks present in a stack in descending order from top to bottom i.e. smallest disc at the top. Here how the problem looks with n=3 disks.

There are certain rules to solve this problem:

1. You can move only one disk at a time.
2. Only the disk present at the top can be removed (FIFO method).
3. You cannot put larger disk on top of smaller disk. Example: Considering the above image,you cannot put number 3 disk on top of number 2 disk.

With n=3, this problem can be solved in total 7 moves.  The minimal number of moves required to solve a Tower of Hanoi puzzle is 2 n  − 1, where n is the number of disks.

Now we will look at the Algorithm to solve this problem:

In order to write the algorithm we mark three towers (pegs) as P1, P2, P3 and number of disks as n and our task is to move all the disks present at P1 to P2.

First Condition: If there is only one disk i.e. if n=1, then it can be simply moved from P1 to P2.

Second Condition: If two disks are available i.e. if n=2, then:

1. Move the smaller (top) disk to P3.
2. Then, move the larger (bottom) disk to P2.
3. Finally, move the smaller disk from P3 to P2.

Now, The Algorithm for n number of disks can be designed as:

START
Procedure Hanoi(n,P1,P2,P3)

IF n == 1, THEN
move disk from P1 to P2
ELSE
Hanoi(n - 1, P1, P3, P2)
move disk from P1 to P2
Hanoi(n - 1, P3, P2, P1)
END IF

END Procedure
STOP

PHP code for Tower of Hanoi Problem:

function move($n,$P1,$P2,$P3) {
    if ($n === 1) {
       print("Move disk from pole $P1 to pole $P2");
    } else {
       move($n-1,$P1,$P3,$P2);
       move(1,$P1,$P2,$P3);
       move($n-1,$P3,$P2,$P1);
    }

}

Check our more about our quiz section here->.

The post Solution of Tower Of Hanoi Problem with PHP appeared first on Omniceps.

Ways to Improve Programming Skills, Practice for Beginners, Learn to Code

We will look at some of the pointers which will help you improve your programming skills. Beginners can easily apply these in their day to day life along with their job. Please read on if you wish to learn to code.

1. Choose your Weapon, Pick the Programming Language You would like to learn:

Well this question that how you choose a programming language as a beginner may seem very straightforward but it can be the one with very complex answer. You may end up finding this as the biggest hurdle before starting.

Before we even start discussing this important point you may wish to read our full post on this specific subject. After reading this post you will have a broader view on all programming languages in market.

Check best programming languages for beginners. Click Here. ->

Once you have gone through the above post you will have answers to a lot of questions. Like what are the programming languages and skills of utter importance in coming future. It is also important that you choose a programming language which has a huge community so that you can get answers to your doubts or questions immediately. The bigger the community the sooner you will find answers to your problems.

This doesn’t mean that languages with relatively smaller communities are not important. They are equally important but as a beginner you must always choose a direction where you can get more help. Once you have a good command on one programming language you will be able to switch between languages very easily.

2. Read About Basics and Core Concepts:

Its very important to read the basics of any programming languages while you learn to code. The core concepts although you don’t see them visually while looking at code but they are present in each and every line. And that makes it very important that your programming skills have understanding of core concepts as the first skill.

Some of the most common and basic core concepts of any programming language are:

a. Variables

Variables as their name suggests can have a varying value. They are basically symbols used to point a storage location. These storage locations can have different values and they can be assigned by using variable symbolic notation. Please check wiki definition of a variable below:

b. Control Structures

According to Wikipedia control structures in programming have below definition.

So basically all conditional structures in a programming can be called as Control Structure. Examples are If/Else conditionals, Try/Catch blocks, While/For loops, Switch Case blocks, etc.

c. Data Structures

The Wikipedia definition of a a data structure in computer programming is shown below:

As the definition suggests data structures are basically a more organized way to store essentially same type of data. For example a list of cars in your inventory can be stored in an array or ArrayList instead of having separate variables for each car which would be highly unmanageable.

After you have data in your data structures you can basically apply all type of operations on this data. For example sorting, searching, etc.

d. Syntax

See below the definition of syntax in computer programming from Wikipedia:

In general English we have a lot of rules defined by grammar, same is the case of programming languages. You must write your lines of program which are defined by some rules and those rules are known as syntax. As you speak wrong English the person listening to you will not understand what you are saying. Similarly if you write syntactically wrong programs the computer software/hardware is not going to understand what you want to achieve. Instead the system throws errors.

Using a good IDE for programming will save you from a lot of syntax errors as they will be highlighted while you type.

e. Tools

Just like we have hardware tools to get a job done easily and in a better way programming languages also have various tools to make programming easier and accurate. When you use these tools a lot of boring part called boilerplate code is already taken care of by the tools. So you can focus more on the behavioral aspects of your program.

These tools can be any additional packages, frameworks, connectors etc. For example using a database connector will save you from handling all the database connection related parts like opening ports, closing ports, sending data etc.

Similarly using a framework which is one of the most important tool of a programming language will save you from writing a lot of boilerplate code. You will start with a well written set of code which then you will extend.

3. Read, Write and Run:

Try to create small programs or applications while reading so that you gain practical info as well and the reading won’t seem boring. It will also help you test your skills immediately, learn to code and you can correct yourself at the same time.

There are many tools even to test your code online and see it running. For ex – https://jsfiddle.net/, helps you run JavaScript code online. You can even write HTML and CSS at the same time and your results will be displayed on the same screen. Its particularly great for beginner designers. Similarly you can run PHP code on this fiddle – http://phpfiddle.org/. Like these you can find various tools where you will be able to execute your code immediately.

While this technique makes learning more fun it also helps you learn the syntax of your programming language more easily.

4. Try to Solve Mathematical Problems/Quizzes with Programming:

This is very straightforward. You cannot just keep on creating random applications without the vision of arriving somewhere. Its better to solve a particular problem and during that you learn skills. Also you learn to code while the activity being fun and competitive.

In programming solving a problem is not enough. Your solution must be highly optimized as well. The time and space complexity comes in picture when you move to a broader level. They may not seem a hurdle in the beginning but any piece of code which is assumed to have high load is expected to be highly optimized.

When you try to solve a particular quiz or mathematical problem with your programming you end up with a solution. But to have the best solution you must optimize your program. It must execute faster, use less memory and still be accurate.

5. Improve Programming skills by facing Online Challenges and coding Questions:

This one is a fun activity while you learn to code. Participate in online challenges and coding quizzes. This will help you gain more knowledge and insights from what is happening around you. You will meet competitors and also friends who can help you learn better. It is always better to participate in a race with competitors instead of running all alone.

There are many sources where you can start practicing online questions, quizzes and challenges. Some of them are really intriguing and interesting. A list of such sources is provided below which are top picks according to us. You will find even more if you will google this topic.

CoderByte: https://coderbyte.com/
Codility: https://codility.com/programmers/
TopCoder: https://www.topcoder.com/
HackerEarth: https://www.hackerearth.com/

We also have a software wizard section where we provide you some problems and you can submit your solutions to us. We also reward top solutions from time to time. Check our section here ->

6. Participate in Various Online Coding Communities:

This point is again a major requirement if you are trying to improve your programming skills. Beginners will find these communities a bit ahead of them but believe us, you will soon catch up with their flow. You will gain quality knowledge on these platforms.

Also, beginners are always posting their newly developed tools and programs on these communities to receive feedback from real humans. You can even discuss whats in your mind and may be something better is already present. So instead of starting from 0 you start from 80% and than take it up from there. You will always be more than welcome on such communities and you will really have a good time while you learn to code.

Some of the top picks from us are listed below. But again you can always google and find more options.

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ (programming subreddit of the huge reddit platform)
Github: https://github.com/ (Its a repository platform but you will find a lot of cool stuff shared by other programmers here)
Geeks For Geeks: http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/
Codechef: https://www.codechef.com/
Project Euler: https://projecteuler.net/
CodeAcademy: https://www.codecademy.com/
CodeMonk: https://www.hackerearth.com/practice/codemonk/ (from HackerEarth)

7. Share Your Problems:

Whenever you face a particular problem or you solve a particular problem in a better way always Share. You can share with your friends on social media like Facebook, twitter, etc. Or you can even share them on dedicated communities for such things.

This will help you get answers to your problems quickly without wasting a lot of your time and effort. A lot of times while learning new features you will find yourself stuck with some problem or issue. May be someone else has already faced the same problem as yours and they were able to find solution. And now when you ask on community these experienced people will come to your rescue.

This will help you come out of your problem loophole so that you keep moving forward. Also, you can check problems posted by other fellow programmers and help them solve those problems. This will increase your reputation on such platforms and eventually will lead to improve your programming skills and you can help other learn to code.

Some of these communities are listed below which are our top picks:

StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/ (biggest community for asking programming or computer science related questions)
Quora: https://www.quora.com/ (ask any type of questions here)
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/ (Again you can ask questions related to various topics on various sub-reddits)
Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/

8. Keep Learning One New Concept Everyday:

Ideally you must learn a new programming concept everyday so that you can keep filling your programming skills bucket. This will enable you to increase your reach and prepare you for future so that you can use your skill-set to solve problems.

Some concepts which you learn right away are listed below:

a. Boolean Operators
b. Comparison Operators
c. Tree or Graph data structures.
d. Number systems like binary, hexadecimal, octal, etc.
d. Hashing Functions

When you learn a new concept try to implement it in your programming activities. See how you can fit it in what you are developing at that time. Not only this will make a new concept stick to your memory for a longer period but it will also help you to check how well you have learned this concept. When you learn to code a new concept everyday you gradually increase your hold on that programming language.

As discussed in the topics above you can use various online mediums to achieve this goal. Give yourself small tasks on the new concepts you uncover.

9. Move on to advanced programming gradually:

Do not go to advanced programming immediately or you will find yourself in the middle of a lot of unknown stuff. Slide into advanced programming with ease. Get your basics solid and then learn 1 new advanced technique each day.

Some advanced programming skills are listed below. These are only to point you in a direction on advanced programming. There are a lot more advanced skills out there which you need to continuously improve on.

a. Program designing Principles.
b. Code Commenting and Maintaining Guides.
c. Throttling and Rate Limiting.
d. Load handling, etc.

Read more as you continue advancing to the higher concepts. Try to think from an architecture point of view the necessity of this advanced technique which you are learning and prove it back to yourself by implementing it in your next solution.

You will surprised that before you know you will be an advanced programmer instead of a beginner.

There are many books written on different programming languages which explain the advanced programming skills. These books will help you understand the advanced concepts and eventually you will learn to code in a much better way.

10. Join an Online Course:

If it all sounds confusing to you then you can always join online courses. The online courses will help you gain knowledge quickly and improve in a more professional way. Choose the online course which fits your budget as almost all the good course providers are paid services. There will be many courses and depending on your expertise you can choose from beginners in order to improve towards advanced levels.

We have listed below some of our top picks for this category which will help you improve your programming skills and become a better programmer.

a. Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/
b. Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/
c. FutureLearn: https://www.futurelearn.com/

So these were some of the tips for you to become a better programmer and improve your programming skills as a beginner. Let us know in the comments section if we were able to help you learn to code. We always value your important feedback.

The post How to Improve Programming Skills For Beginners | Learn to Code appeared first on Omniceps.

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How to Fix SEO Traffic Drop After Website Redesign

Here are some points that you need to know what causes drop in traffic for your new sparkling site, how you can handle the loss and how to fix SEO traffic drop after a website redsign.

Causes and Solutions to traffic drops for a newly designed website:

If you have redesigned you website and analytics start showing a drop in traffic. You should not panic in this case as it is very common phenomena a redesigned website experiences, Google bots will again crawl all your pages and index them along with the new version of your website to your users.

If it’s been more days for a continuous traffic drop, then it is definitely a thing of worry and its more horrific if you have done a website redesign. But still there are fixes available, which you can take to fix SEO traffic drops and boost your site’s organic traffic.

1. Outdated Sitemap:

When Google crawls your site pages, Sitemap is one of the important factors which help Google in crawling all your website pages and index them. Sitemap contains list of all important pages on your website and you can submit it to search console to speed up the crawling and indexing process and restore the traffic levels.

When you do a website redesign the sitemap also changes and if you have not updated the sitemap for your redesigned website, Google won’t be able to properly crawl all the pages and this eventually leads to traffic drops.

Solution:

Always create a new Sitemap before launching your newly designed website. Sitemap should contain all the important pages. Generally a sitemap should have a maximum of 100 pages. If your website is huge and you have more than 100 pages than crawlers will consider a general overview rather than complete listing.

This is one of the main things to look while you fix SEO and traffic drop after you have done a website redesign.

2. Improper Redirects:

Redirects play a very important role and if they are not set correctly after a website redesign, it cause traffic drop, unless you keep all the URL’s same. When Google starts to crawl your new designed pages , redirects tells the search engine and browser where the new version of pages are located, without that Google will think the page is not present and won’t be able to crawl.

You can check the pages without redirects by logging into Google’s Search console -> go to crawl->Crawl Errors-> Select “Not Found” tab.

Google webmasters tools can be accessed here ->

Solution:

Setting up 301 redirects will help you to fix this problem.

If URL’s of your site has changed, you will need to setup new URL’s before launching the website. By making all the URL’s as 301 Redirect will tell search engine bots that the old URL’s have been moved to a new URL.

If you have not set 301 Redirect than search engine crawler will go to the old URL and will abandon trying to index that page which will lead to drop in traffic.

3. Changed Content:

Some times when you do a website redesign or revamp, you may even end up changing content of pages on your website. Search engines like freshly written content and according to your content your pages are ranked.

But suppose that you forgot which content and key words were bringing traffic to your site and you might eliminate priority keywords for which you were ranked. This leads to a traffic drop. One should consider all the keywords and pages which were bringing most of the traffic to the site before changing any content. This will fix SEO on a keyword level and also take care of traffic drop in organic searches.

Solution:

Make SEO an integral part. A proper SEO technique should be used to make any changes to your website. SEO expertise should be consulted every time, so that they can advise on how traffic and ranking can be increased. Content should be fresh and engaging. Contact us to get help on SEO and all the things related to ranking.

4. Robots.txt File is Blocked:

Robots.txt is a file which tells search engines which pages they should index and which one they should not. Disable the indexing by search engines until all the pages are developed completely when you are in the process of redesigning your website and you work is still in progress.

Sometimes you forget to update the Robots.txt file after your site goes live, which continue to restrict search engine bots for indexing.

Solution:

Always update the Robots.txt file on the server before launching your site. You can check your site’s Robots.txt file by opening a browser-> In the address bar enter your domain followed by /robots.txt. This will open robots file. Now you can check what all pages are allowed for indexing and which ones are made disabled.

Check which programming languages beginners should start with in 2017.

So these tips will help you fix SEO traffic drop after your have had a website redesign. Please let us know if you have something to add in this list.

The post Fix SEO Traffic Drop After Website Redesign | SEO Optimization Tips appeared first on Omniceps.

Best Programming Languages For Beginners in 2017 | Learn Programming in 2017

In this post we are going to see some statistics about top ranked and voted programming languages by users on some of the highly used public platforms which will give us an idea about the most popular programming languages to learn in 2017. We will also discuss some of the programming languages with highest job probabilities in the coming time as of 2017. Beginners will love this write up as it will give them an idea about in which direction they should move forward to enjoy a bright future in the world of programming.

First of all lets see some statistics for the last year by some of the biggest tech platforms.

Survey Done on Stack Overflow in 2016 by Developers:

According to more than ~56k developers based out in 175 different countries provided below is a list of technologies which they prefer the most:

Developers were also asked about their favorite programming language and below are the results for this survey:

Also Developers voted about the language they have great respect for and as per them these languages are very close to being a perfect solution. This list also includes some platforms used by teams to develop their applications:

Developers also rated the highest anticipated programming languages they would love to learn in the coming time. This is perhaps more useful for our readers as these are the languages developers want to learn programming:

Top Technologies Discussed as per Stack Overflow:

Stack overflow generated below data according to the most questions asked, most answers provided and most votes gained by discussions on these technologies. This also gives an idea about best programming languages for developers to learn so as to have a higher hand in the upcoming time:

Official Stack Overflow website -> Click Here.

Popularity of Programming Languages Index Released from Google Trends

This PYPL index is created from the most searched tutorials on google for particular technologies or languages by users. Provided below is the stats for PYPL done in beginning of 2017 for the year 2016. This index is also a proof that Java and JavaScript are currently ruling the list of best programming languages for beginners in 2017. Also, it validates that which language is currently on top when it comes for beginners to learn programming.

TIOBE Index 2017, August

According to TIOBE index generated in August 2017, below are the languages coming in the top results of popular search engines, which means that most beginners want to learn programming from these languages:

Official TIOBE index site. Click Here.

Introduction of the top contenders:

We will try to throw some light now on the top programming languages for beginners in 2017. New developers can start to learn programming with these languages in 2017.

JavaScript:

JavaScript should not be confused with JAVA, JavaScript is primarily a client-side languages while Java is a server side/hardware side programming language. JavaScript is mainly used for front-end scripting. Its compatible with all the browsers out there in the market.

Since the launch of Node.js platform JavaScript can now also be used as a server-side programming language. Due to this there is a huge inclination of developers seen for JavaScript. Which is also self-explainable as now you will need only 1 developer who knows JavaScript and can work on both front-end and back-end. This also gives definition to a perfect full stack developer.

JavaScript is currently the top ranked best programming languages for beginners to learn on all stats.

Ruby:

Ruby was developed being a dynamic language and also so that developers can have fun while being highly productive at the same time. The Ruby on Rails Framework made Ruby language very famous and developers started to enjoy the ease of learning and developing in Ruby.

Popular websites like AirBnb, Shopify, Bloomberg, Hulu, SlideShare, etc. are completed written in Ruby language and they are still very much relying on the powerful Ruby on Rails Framework.

Python:

Python is one of the most anticipated language for developer and beginners to learn. It is also one of the highest popular introductory language at various universities in U.S. and these are some of the top universities we are talking about.

Python is widely used in a variety of applications like desktop based apps, web-apps, and other solutions for data mining.

A lot of companies including Google, Dropbox, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, BitTorrent, Civilization IV, and more, are still using Python happily.

PHP:

PHP is becoming more popular day by day because of its ease of learning. Read about best PHP programming books for a software developer. Click Here. It is a server-side dynamic scripting language and Facebook is still running many of its components in PHP. Other websites which were developed in PHP are Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Tumblr, WordPress, and more.

PHP is considered as one of the best programming languages for beginners to learn programming due to its ease of learning and understanding. Also you can setup your first project in PHP quickly and easily.

Java:

Java is a statically typed language and hence it is considered to be more stable, maintainable and scalable. Java is basically a lot more strict in catching errors as it will find out all programming based errors in the compilation phase. It is said that almost 450 (out of 500) Fortune 500 companies are using Java as their server-side programming language. But this is also majorly because Java has a very old history when compared to other programming languages.

Hadoop which is a big data processing tool, is also created in Java framework and is currently used by some of the giants like Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon etc.

C and C++:

C can be considered to be a father of nearly all programming languages, its successor C++ which is C with an Object Oriented Programming approach is even more popular and successful than C.

It is generally said that if someone understands and can create apps in C/C++ it would be very easy for that person to shift on some of the other programming languages. Basically C/C++ creates a foundation for a future web developer as they focus on all fundamentals of the programming world. So we can say that when it comes to learn programming beginners should start with C and C++ if they want their core concepts stronger. Later on when they have good command on C and C++ they can move on to other languages to learn programming further.

Compare PHP development frameworks Symfony and Laravel. Click Here ->

JOB Opportunities for Various Programming Languages:

Lastly you will be interested in knowing that which programming platforms/languages attracts highest jobs in the software world. Based on data from indeed.com analysis 2016 and 2 quarters of 2017 provided below is a highlight of salaries of developers in U.S on an average:

Its conclusive to say that if a newbie has to learn web development than JavaScript, HTML, jQuery, CSS are some of the must technologies. The choice of back-end development tool depends on the project requirements and environment of deployment.

So these were some of the best programming languages for beginners in 2017. Do let us know what you think about this write up and if we were able to help you at a certain point.

See the top questions a freelancer must ask to their potential clients. Click Here. ->

The post Best Programming Languages For Beginners in 2017 | Learn Programming in 2017 appeared first on Omniceps.

Questions Freelancers should ask Before Initiating a New Project:

So you are a freelancer trying to get a new project. On your choice of platforms you land on to a project which looks interesting to you and you think that you will be able to work on that project. You start bidding and the client replies you with affirmation of a meeting or an email. Now you would want to get more details about the project you are going to work on for the next 3-6-12 months. But you need to be careful at this step so that you can get all information about the project beforehand. This will help you plan about your next steps before you even start working on this project.

We have seen a lot of freelancers just accept the project straightaway and start working on. But this will lead to a failure in delivery most of the times as you are not aware about a whole lot of stuff which goes through your client’s mind.

So we will look today at some of the top initial questions you must ask as a freelancer to the client before starting the project.

1. Project Timelines and expected delivery date:

This can be your very first question as you must be aware of what the client thinks about delivery date. It will also give you an idea of how complex or easy the client thinks about this project.

On the other hand getting answer of this question will help you break down the whole project in small bits which you can deliver as specific milestones. Majority of the times the client’s are non-technical and they expect a very small timeline. Knowing this beforehand will help you communicate about the timeline to the client and come up with a mutually possible delivery date.

Do not promise the client an unrealistic delivery like 3-4 days if you think its not possible as it will damage your future relationship. This is one of most important questions freelancers should ask their clients.

2. Personal Image or Corporate Brand of the Client:

This question will help you get answer on the vision of your client. What they expect from their end product. What is the brand image they are trying to create by their product etc. It will help you have a vision about the design of the product and eventually you can figure about the behavior of the product, tone and intent.

If you do not have answer to this question you might end up with a product not meeting client’s vision which will be useless.

Read about the best guidelines for integrating API’s. Click Here.

3. What are the Deliverables of the Project (Project Goals):

Does your client wish to have more visitors, does your client wish to have more presence on social media, does your client wish to sell more products from their eCommerce or they just want to showcase products and sell offline. Knowing these details beforehand will enable you to visualize your end goal and focus on achieving that instead of wasting your time on non-important stuff.

4. What is the Expected Audience of the Product:

It is not advisable to start developing a product unless you know who will be end users of the product. Understanding the demographics and end users in advance help you develop a more focused and smashing product. For ex. if you know that the majority of the end users will be from a MENA country then localization to Arabic language will be a plus point for your product.

So basically this information will enable you develop a product which is more focused and has a higher impact on your intended audience. This is also one of the important questions freelancers should ask their clients before initiating the project.

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5. Additional Requirements, Concerns, Questions or Clarifications from the client’s end:

Ask client’s feedback on each step, this is important because it is important to know what is in client’s mind before you starting working on the product. This will help you fulfill the requirements more accurately. Ask questions and clarifications from your end as well.

Ask for more clarifications on points which the client think are left for assumptions. Assumptions are definitely hazardous because for a single feature there can be multiple assumptions and agreeing onto one solid approach will remove the confusion created.

6. Overheads and Standardize Communication:

Let your client know about all the extra overheads and any additional researches which will be required from your end. A lot of time the effort spent in researching for a particular feature is more time consuming than implementing the feature itself. This research time should also be considered as you productive time.

Don’t let bad communication destroy your relationship with the client. Do not hesitate to have a call from time to time with the client as it makes the client more involved in the development.

Also, make sure all the communication you are doing with the client is using standard features like emails, google drive shared documents. This will help you track the history of development and also check from time to time if you are heading in the right way at the right time.

So these were some of the questions freelancers should ask their client before initiating the project.

Check out 9 best open source tools for developers in 2017. Click Here.

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For example consider an integer 9 which can be represented as 1001 in binary digits. So here the Binary Gap of 9 will be said to be 2 as there are two consecutive zeros which are surrounded by 1’s at both ends. Similarly the number 41 can be represented in Binary as 101001, so it has two binary gaps but the bigger gap is of length 2. So the binary gap of 41 will be 2.

Another example is decimal number 4 which can be represented as 100 in binary. Although it has 2 consecutive zeros but they are not surrounded by 1’s. Due to this the Binary Gap of 4 is 0 or none.

So the problem is to write a function:

int binaryGap(int N)

such that when an integer N is passed to it the function returns the Binary Gap in its decimal representation. The function should return 0 in case no binary gap is present.

For example, given N = 41 the function should return 2.

Assumptions are listed Below:

1. N is a positive integer with higher limit 2,147,483,647.

Expected complexities:

1. Worst-case time complexity should be O(log(N));
2. Worst-case space complexity is O(1).

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Laravel 5.5 release took place yesterday with a lot of updates and improvements along with various new features. We are listing here some of the new Laravel 5.5 features which you should take a look on.

Introduction of Laravel Horizon:

Laravel Horizon is a dashboard tool to monitor and keep a track of you queues system. You can see all the jobs, their throughput, execution times and also track failed jobs.

To read more about Laravel Horizon click here.

Automatic Discovery of Package:

In the earlier versions of Laravel there were a number of steps required to install a package but starting Laravel 5.5 packages will be discovered automatically by Laravel and also facades and service providers will be detected and registered.

API Resource Classes:

API resource classes will help you transform your Eloquent models objects to their counter JSON representation. This will help you develop APIs easily as you will not need to write transformation for model to JSON.

Read the security features of Laravel 5. Click Here ->

Console Commands Will now be Registered Automatically:

Using load method you can easily scan a directory, detect and register if any console commands are present there. This load method should be called in commands method of your Kernel.

/**
* Shows below how to detect and register commands
*
* @return void
*/
protected function commands()
{
$this->load(__DIR__.'/Commands');

// ...
}

Job Chaining with Queues:

With Job Chaining you can specify which jobs that are queued should be executed in what sequence. If any one job in the sequence will fail the execution will be stopped there and no job after than will be executed from the chain.

MyServer::withChain([
     new NginxInstall,
     new PhpInstall
])->dispatch();

There are many other new features and updates done in this version like Time Based Job Attempts, Validation Rule Objects, Trusted Proxy Integration, On-Demand Notifications, etc. For more information on Laravel 5.5 release please visit the official Laravel website. -> https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/releases

The post Laravel 5.5 Release Notes, Updates, New Features and Improvements appeared first on Omniceps.

When we think of starting a new project, first decision that one have to make is to pick the right framework. When we talk about PHP and web applications, it would be unreal to code them from scratch. So, our web developer uses various frameworks and tools to speed up their work. Today we will be comparing two major PHP frameworks, symfony vs Laravel.

There are some factors that help you choose a right framework for you:

1. First most, features and functionality of the framework.

2. Scalability of the framework.

3. How the framework is developed and maintained.

4. Does the framework provide Long term support.

5. Does it have a strong community.

Generally both symfony and Laravel uses PHP still there are many features that sets them apart. Here we will compare them on the basis of some factors:

1. Installation:

There are different installation procedures available for both the frameworks. symfony uses symfony installer or composer. Connections to database are also configured during its installation which is an advantage for symfony. While for Laravel is documentation offer several ways: Laravel Installer, Composer, and also a simple cloning from the github repository.

The installing is quite easy. Also we need to say that Laravel has such useful thing as Laravel Homestead, it lets you run ready environment for development. Homestead – is a simple virtual machine, made specially for Laravel. It includes all required tools: Ubuntu, PHP, nginx, mysql, even redis and memcached. If you want to run all this stuff you need also to install VirtualBox and Vagrant.

Laravel Installation Read Here.

symfony Installation Read Here.

2. Programming Language:

symfony uses common PHP, that means it’s written using universal code, so that can be changed to any other language and still they will work well. Whereas Laravel uses traits and magic methods (present in PHP), which not only makes the code precise and short but much easily understandable. Not using some pre-built constructs is a disadvantage for symfony.

3. Template Engines:

The task of template engines is to minimize the developer effort and provides better functionality for the front end coding. symfony uses Twig and Laravel is using Blade template engine. Twig is a modern templating system which helps to write nicer looking code, have good community and variety of keywords. On the other hand, Blade has an advantage of code re-usability.

If you are working on small project you will find Laravel more suitable and for complex ones you can use symfony.

Read more about Latte, templating engine. Click Here.

4. Performance and Cache:

Caching is generally considered very important. Both symfony and Laravel cache their views but symfony caches the source code also. Still, Laravel works faster than symfony. Generally performance are measured with real time applications so, While loading same sized website, Laravel uses 60ms whereas symfony uses 250ms.

This shows the performance of Laravel is faster than symfony and it wins in this context.

5. Database:

When we talk about database, symfony wins the race. As symfony supports majorly all the databases available, whereas Laravel supports some of them.

6. Extendibility:

Frameworks are supporting structures which may require extendibility in order to increase their functionality as per the requirement.

When it come comes to extendibility of Laravel, it has more than 9000 packages available, on the other hand symfony has approx. 2830 bundles. This makes Laravel become better in the race of extendibility.

See top security features of Laravel. Click Here.

7. Documentation and Learning Curve:

In regards to documentation and learning, Laravel documentation is written very clearly, its tutorials covers everything and it is simple to understand for new users. Whereas for symfony, documentation is written very poorly, which make it difficult to understand for beginner.

While finalizing a framework, it should never be only about features but focus should be on the functionality it provides and how you can use that functionality in your project, in order to save time, money and have great outcome.

So now you can understand the differences between symfony vs Laravel which will in turn help you choose a better framework.

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Why you should read about API Integration Tips:

Although integration looks like a straightforward job because you have integration documents explaining everything clearly but still there is much more to integration than what meets the eye. Today we will look at some of the best API integration tips and guidelines when integrating with any API or 3rd party services. If you are a developer than this is a must to check list.

1. Read the documentation carefully:

This is the first step when starting integration with an API. You must read the documentation at least 2-3 times before starting out the integration. This is one of the most important API integration tips in the lot. Benefits of this exercise are:

• This will help you collect questions if you have so you can get answers before starting which will save you development time.
• Ask the team to provide a best practices document if exists, it will help you implement the best flow.
• Pay close attention to the errors manual.
• Clarify on every field returned in the response and its type.

2. Make sure to handle errors and edge cases:

When you expect response from someone there are for sure going to be error responses and edge cases. You must be able to handle all the documented errors and any other responses as well. For example timeouts, connection errors, empty responses, invalid responses etc.

3. Write proper test cases:

When implementing API’s you can even write test cases to make sure the connection and other parts related to the API connection are working correctly. For most part of the test cases you will not need a real API connection and can mock the response from API using pre-built responses in JSON or XML depending on the way your API communicates.

Writing tests help you to get confidence in your changes. Whenever you do some changes in your communication code the test cases can test the new stuff immediately and make sure nothing from the sibling part is broken.

4. Try to get Best practices and problems faced by current consumers of that API:

Contact your API provider and ask them to give a list of FAQs which their current consumers have done in the past. This will already answer a lot of questions you might have. Also, if allowed ask them to connect you with one of their current partner so that you can gain valuable insights from their implementation.

This basically helps in implementing via the correct direction from the start, instead of implementing something and then coming back to improve it. Some API providers also provide a best practices document. If not provided, ask for it, as it will save you a lot of effort.

Wonder how to keep your Laravel application secured ? Click here.

5. Consider handling timeouts and action taken in such cases:

Another one of the important API integration tips is handling errors generated from timeouts. Every API response is supposed to arrive within a specified time limit. If the response doesn’t arrive in that time it is considered as an error. But this may not mean that the request had no effect on the receptor side. This might mean that depending on the request action was taken on receiver’s end but this action was not acknowledged to the generator of this request.

That’s why the timeout issues become more frustrating for the developers. Due to timeouts you have all sorts of issues like difference in data on both sides, states out of sync, etc. So you must implement special handling for such cases depending on what is provided from your API provider.

One solution can be to generate an email notification in all cases of timeouts to a special team which will manually make sure everything on both sides is okay.
Other solution can be implementing a sync call after a timeout which will sync anything which is not communicated. But then you will have to add something to handle the sync call timeout :-).

Side Note: Keep timeouts for your requests always 10-20% more than specified by your API partner considering network times into account.

6. Implementation should be kept as stateless as possible to support Scaling:

Micro-services mean it may be possible that you implementation which provides your end-user a way of communicating to an API may have been implemented as a micro-service. This means that at some point it may require scaling. If this is the case than you must make your implementation as stateless as possible.

A stateless application is one in which data is not saved between multiple requests. Which means that if first request saves some data in your application, then second request which might need data from response of first request should also be sent to this particular instance. Otherwise there will be no data. This causes an issue while scaling your application horizontally.

Because horizontal scaling will send requests to different instances based on the load on others, in this way your second request might not get data received in first request at all. For this reason you must make the implementation stateless.

• No file based data persistence at any point.
• Use a database application which can be connected by all instances and which is persisted across all instances.
• Make sure at no point your request is dependent on any other sessions data until or unless that data resides in a shared memory.

7. Consider implementing a ESB or messaging queue:

To make communications swift and error free make sure you use a messaging queue. A messaging queue also enables you application to go stateless as all the messages which needs to be sent to other micro-services are immediately dumped in the queue and any duplicate message is ignored.

You can check this link to give you a better picture on how to choose an ESB for your integration -> https://www.infoq.com/articles/ESB-Integration

Laravel just launched one feature called Laravel Horizon which is a queues monitoring dashboard. Check it out.

8. Consider implementing a Scheduler to finish anything which is not done real-time:

You can consider implementing a scheduler for anything which is not done real-time. What you will do is that log a request if it fails due to an error and have a scheduler picking up such logs after a specified interval.

This scheduler will pick this job log and try to finish this job. After this job is finished it will add a message to notify the system that job no. 1 is finished and the system can now carry on the process further from there.

A scheduler will also help you generate notifications and even it can help you build or refresh your dashboard reports.

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9. Use tools like Postman:

When you start to implement an API make sure you start with sending raw requests to bare endpoints. This helps you to see the responses quickly without wasting any time. And if you have a raw working request then it becomes easier to generate its counterpart code.

Other benefit is that with raw request there are more chances of you generating errors due to invalid requests. It will help you see the error response beforehand so that you will be ready to handle such errors in your code.

There are many tools in the market available to test raw requests. Postman is one such solution. -> https://www.getpostman.com/

10. Keep it Simple Silly:

At the end the most important factor is to keep your implementation yet one which is stable enough. These API integration tips and guidelines should help you achieve a good start on integrating that new API.

Please leave your comments and let us know your views.

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