MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks

Elgg, Free Open Source Social Networking Software has Released Version 1.7 beta

Srikanth AD — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:20:36 +0000

Elgg, a popular free and open source web software for social networking, which we have mentioned here, has released its new version 1.7 beta. Access control is one of the most powerful features of Elgg. Everything created in Elgg, be it a blog post, an uploaded file, an element of your profile, etc., can be restricted to as many or few people you want. It’s a prolific open source web software for social networking.

Some of the key changes in Elgg 1.7 include:

Full UTF-8 support in the database
Full text search, as a joint effort between Curverider and the MITRE corporation
More manageable user data directories
A new entity-fetching API
Working and re-written REST API
Many bugfixes have also been made in this release

Elgg 1.7 enhances security by requiring security tokens on all actions. Plugins that have not been updated to use security tokens will produce a “Form is missing __token or __ts fields” error.

Download Elgg 1.7 beta

WordPress for BlackBerry: With VideoPress Support, Improved Comments, and App World

Srikanth AD — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:00:29 +0000

WordPress for BlackBerry app version 1.0 has been released. It allows you to write posts, upload photos and videos, edit pages, and manage comments. Both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.7 or higher) web sites are supported by this application. You can download the application and start blogging on the go! This application works with most recent BlackBerry devices starting with the 8700, Curve, Pearl, Bold, Storm, Storm2 and Tour.

New features in this version:

Ability to record and upload videos from your phone. We now support both 3gp and 3g2 formats on older generation BlackBerry devices.
Introducing support for the HD video service VideoPress.
Streamlined UI and functionality relating to comment moderation.
Overall enhancements to the speed and stability of the application.

You might want to check out a quick video overview of the app with all the latest features. This version of WordPress is also available for download on the BlackBerry App World.

Download WordPress for BlackBerry

Winners of the Premium WordPress Themes Giveaway Contest Sponsored by Panda WordPress Themes

Srikanth AD — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:10:58 +0000

Recently we reviewed some of the cool WordPress themes at Panda Themes and we also announced a giveaway of three premium themes from Panda Themes to three lucky winners.

And here are the three lucky winners chosen out of the all the entries.

Congratulations! to the lucky winners. We will contact you soon by email and provide you with further details.

We, MyTestBox team, would like to thank Panda Themes for giving us this opportunity to review and giveaway the premium themes.

We are planning for more giveaways soon! So, keep track of the latest updates on MyTestBox.

ocPortal, Content Management System, Version 4.3 RC3 Released

Srikanth AD — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:08:36 +0000

ocPortal, one of the upcoming web content management systems has released its new version 4.3 RC 3. This version introduces some new features and a number of bug fixes have been made since the last release. If you haven’t tried ocPortal yet, you might want to check a personal demo here.

New features

WordPress, Joomla and HTML web site importer
iCal exporter and quiz responses CSV exporter
New ‘importer redirects’, which lets you easily redirect to the appropriate place in ocPortal, for cases when import is done natively through modules
Added submit-URLs to the side_news block, main_forum_news block and side_forum_news block
Reply counts have been added to the side_forum_news block
New Comcode ‘pulse’ tag which is configurable with parameters
New parameter to main_leader_board block has been added to filter out staff from the points leaderboard
CAPTCHA support has been added to the main_contact_simple block and main_contact_us block
Auto search capability for expanded day selection
Allowed the download A-Z index to support ocFilter notation

New features for developers:

Generalised shared-installs support so it is more flexible for people
Improved shared-install functionality, so that theme files and Comcode pages may be shared between sites also, if desired
Added memory debugging functions for developers
ocPortal can now run without a database as the inbuilt database is now a bundled feature
New developer feature has been added for the quick addition of language strings, written (temporarily) in-line into the code
Added support for running a server behind a proxy server

MyTestBox Interviews the CEO of Feng Office, an Open Source Online Collaboration Platform

Srikanth AD — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:55:33 +0000

Feng Office is one of the prolific web office software available that, allows a group of people to collaborate by sharing information over the Internet in an effective way. It’s a complete solution for every organization to create, collaborate, share and publish all its internal and external documents. You can plan and manage all your projects, easily following the status of every task, set milestones, pending tasks, personal notes etc.,

We got an opportunity to interview the CEO of Feng Office to share some thoughts about this intriguing web software.

Following is the interview,

How did it all start, a brief history of Feng Office

Feng Office (under the name OpenGoo) started as a degree project at the faculty of Engineering of the University of the Republic, Uruguay. The project was presented and championed by Software Engineer Conrado Viña. Software Engineers Marcos Saiz and Ignacio de Soto developed the first prototype as their thesis. Professors Eduardo Fernández and Tomás Laurenzo served as tutors. Conrado, Ignacio and Marcos founded the OpenGoo community and remain active members and core developers. The thesis was approved with the highest score.

Why Feng Office – the key features?

Although the technology for many applications needed by Small Businesses (Document Managment, Project Management, Customer Management) was mature enough, we realized businesses still couldn’t access it, because of one main factor: total cost of ownership. Total cost of ownership was comprised by the individual cost of each software package (licenses), installation and set-up fees, and support and maintenance for each package. Not only that, but the business would en up with un-integrated solutions, which in itselfs adds integration costs (wether the integration is manual work, or custom software integration).

Integration among CRM, Project Management, and Document Management applications is a natural business need. We solved the problem by developing a standard package that integrates those applications into a single one. We also got rid of licensing costs and most of the installation costs.

How has been the feedback so far for Feng Office

The feedback has been tremendous and most inspiring. We have received, literally, thousands of positive reviews. There have been a few negative reviews, from which we strive to learn and to improve.

The climate at the community is of great enthusiasm. Almost daily people thanks and congratulates the team at the forum. That makes us very proud and cheers us up a lot.

Hardest challenge the Feng Office team had to face so far

Marketing and finance management. The founders’ original background is strongly on Engineering. We have been very lucky to have professionals with these backgrounds join the team, but we still have to learn a lot of this stuff on a daily basis.

If you could start over again from scratch, what would you do differently

Hum. Very good question. Right now I am thinking we should have done an effort to position OpenGoo -not Feng Office- differently. But those thoughts change frequently. In terms of the technology used and the vision for the solution, we are very confident on the choices we have made.

Would you mind sharing some pictures of your work place?

Not at all. Above is the team picture is taken at the meeting/board room.

We would like to thank the Feng Office team for the valuable time and sharing thoughts about Feng Office.

Don’t Forget About the Panda Premium Themes and PACKT Book Giveaways

Srikanth AD — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:51:39 +0000

We are currently running two giveaways, Don’t forget to take part in these giveaways. Try and make the most of these giveaways to get hands on a prolific Joomla based book from PACKT and high-quality premium WordPress themes from Panda Themes.

Book Giveaway: Joomla! with Flash

Premium WordPress Themes Giveaway from Panda WordPress Themes

Very soon we are giving away more intriguing stuff, so do subscribe to our email updates and get notified via email.

ImpressPages Open Source Content Management System Review

Srikanth AD — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:05:29 +0000

ImpressPages is an open source content management system which lets you build functional and effective websites in quick time. It’s interface is user friendly and can be adapted to your needs. It’s multilingual, absolutely free and open source.

If you spend lot of time on editing font type, re-sizing pictures, regulating spaces between elements etc., then ImpressPages could be a real time saver for you. It is based on the idea that most functions of CMS could be performed automatically. With ImpressPages, all the information could be administered directly in the website without the need to perform sequential tasks.

System Requirements

To run ImpressPages Content Management System, you need:

Apache server
Apache ”mod_rewrite” extension
PHP 5.3 and higher
PHP GD library
MySql 5 and higher
30+ Mb free disk space

ImpressPages is SEO friendly and it caters to your SEO needs.

Specific SEO features of ImpressPages:

Automatic generation of SEO friendly URLs.
Setting of title, keywords, description and URL values for each page.
Automatic sitemap generations.

Built-in Features

It has built-in features like sitemap, RSS, smart search, newsletter etc., ImpressPages automatically creates sitemaps for you and provides you with custom templates for newsletters so that you can collect and manage your subscriber details.

Administrator Interface

ImpressPages has an easy-to-use back-end interface. It lets you quickly make changes to your site. Each block on the site is provided with options to move it up or down, edit, delete or hide it. This allows you to quickly change the appearance and position of the blocks and elements on your site.

Menu Management

The order of pages and sub pages can be changed quickly. They are made available as a tree structure. So, you can drag and drop the pages and sub-pages to change their order. It also provides you with options to set ‘page properties’ which include meta keywords, description, URL, visibility, date modified etc.,

Configuration

The built-in features like sitemap, RSS, search and newsletter can be configured with just a few clicks from the admin interface. It’s currently available in English and Latin languages.

Conclusion

ImpressPages is an open source, fully functional and light weight content management system. Without much technical skills like CSS or HTML you can quickly get started with it and create your site in no time. It’s back-end is easy to use and gives you full control to make changes to the site. It loads with built-in features like sitemap, newsletters, search etc., which can be used without having to install any further plugins.

It’s new, but seems to be a promising web software to create fantastic websites in short time.

You might want to check out a quick demo of ImpressPages CMS here.

Download ImpressPages CMS

Premium WordPress Themes Giveaway from Panda WordPress Themes

Srikanth AD — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:45:56 +0000

We are pleased to inform you that Panda Themes has given us the opportunity to giveaway the following three premium WordPress themes to three lucky winners.

A brief introduction about Panda Themes

Panda Themes specializes in creating WordPress themes for web developers, designers, and other freelancers who would like to have a professional design without having to pay thousands of dollars for an elegant custom web design. All WordPress themes available at Panda Themes for purchase individually in standard service, advanced service and in developer packages.

The three premium themes we are giving away are,

Portfolius v.7

Portfolio v.7 is an elegant, light and compact WordPress theme with a powerful theme panel and options to customize the style as per your needs.

This theme provides you with many other options to style the theme according to your preferences. It’s powerful and easy-to-use theme panel allows you to,

Setup texture and image for background
Change color of background, buttons of menu and sub-menu, titles, links and footer.
You can also specify the size of thickbox window that fits your needs and create additional full width pages.

For setting thumbnails, you need not resize the images. The images will be automatically resized according to the specified dimensions. You can also setup a custom thumbnail if need be. To know more about this theme, you might want to check out some screencasts.

Live Demo: Portfolius v.7

Portfolius v.4

Portfolius v.4 is a 3-column WordPress theme feasible for developers and designers who would like to have a portfolio along with a blog.

The additional homepage template allows you to use this theme as a portfolio for the design studio. Switchable layout blocks will enhance the tuning ability of the theme.

This theme sports 10 color schemes and two homepage templates: ‘Blog’ and ‘Business’. It provides you with options to switch layout’s blocks (e.g. Footer) and widgets. Thumbnails for the homepage are created automatically with a built-in script. Other features include, advertisement blocks to display ads with ease, a widget-ready sidebar and built-in lightbox effect to overlay images on the current page.

Live Demo: Portfolius v.4

Businessus v.2

This theme is built specifically for designers and artists (individuals or agencies). Businessus v.2 is a stylish WordPress theme which can be installed with ease to showcase your artworks, photographs and designs with content.

This theme has a script that allows you to showcase your recent works on your home page. The theme is bundled with a built-in options page to control many features of the theme and is available in 3 color schemes.

Live Demo: Businessus v.2

Contest Rules

Three simple rules to be eligible,

Subscribe to our Email newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and reviews related to web software’s.
Re Tweet this post using the Re-Tweet button (optional).
Leave a comment on this post with your Name and email id used for subscription.

Anyone can participate in the contest and each of the three lucky winners will be rewarded with one of the three premium WordPress themes listed above.

Entries will be accepted till February 10th, 2010.

Book Giveaway: Joomla! with Flash

Srikanth AD — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:03:48 +0000

Recently we reviewed the book, Joomla with Flash, build stunning, content-rich, and interactive websites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

As indicated in the review, the book, Joomla! with Flash, is aimed at explaining how to use Flash objects with Joomla! content with minimal efforts and maximum output.

We are pleased to inform you that we are giving away an exclusive copy of this book to a lucky winner.

Contest Rules

Three simple rules to be eligible,

Subscribe to our Email newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and reviews related to web software’s.
Re Tweet this post using the Re-Tweet button (optional).
Leave a comment on this post with your Name and email id used for subscription.

The contest is open for anyone in the United States and one lucky winner will be rewarded with an exclusive copy of Joomla! with Flash book sponsored by PACKT Publishing Ltd.

Entries will be accepted till February 1st, 2010.

Book Details

Language English
Paperback 260 pages [191mm x 235mm]
Release date October 2009
ISBN 1847198244
ISBN 13 978-1-847198-24-2
Author(s) Suhreed Sarkar
Topics and Technologies Content Management, PHP/MySQL, Open Source, Joomla!

Highlights

This book enables you to build interactive and content-rich web sites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

You can build stunning web site(s) and integrate Flash objects into Joomla!
Joomla! with Flash gives you step-by-step guidelines on how to create stunning photo galleries with Flash transition and animation effects
The books also includes explanation on, how to use interactive Flash-based maps, animations, videos, charts, MP3 players, logos, headers, and banners in Joomla!-based web sites
Contains easy to follow guides with enriched screenshots for better understanding.
After going through the book, you can renovate your Joomla! based web site into an interactive, feature-rich multimedia site

Book Review: Joomla! with Flash

Srikanth AD — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:44:39 +0000

Joomla! is an award winning Content Management System(CMS) with a wide range of features. It’s a prolific CMS which is suitable for designing and maintaining any type of websites. Joomla has a modular architecture, providing the users with lots of options for extensibility. Apart from the fabulous modules, it is also well known for strong security, templating system, extensive community support and the authorization framework.

There are many extensions available for Joomla! like plug-ins and modules to extend the functionality of Joomla!. These extensions provide – further options for customization, enhancing the functionality as well as ease of administration.

You might want to integrate technologies such as Flash into Joomla!, as it provides great features for creating stunning graphics, interactive games, animated objects and alike to add a new flavor to your site.

The book, Joomla! with Flash, is aimed at explaining how to use Flash objects with Joomla! content with minimal efforts and maximum output.

Book Details

Highlights

This book enables you to build interactive and content-rich web sites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4.

You can build stunning web site(s) and integrate Flash objects into Joomla!
Joomla! with Flash gives you step-by-step guidelines on how to create stunning photo galleries with Flash transition and animation effects
The books also includes explanation on, how to use interactive Flash-based maps, animations, videos, charts, MP3 players, logos, headers, and banners in Joomla!-based web sites
Contains easy to follow guides with enriched screenshots for better understanding.
After going through the book, you can renovate your Joomla! based web site into an interactive, feature-rich multimedia site

A Brief Walk Through

The book starts with introducing the reader to the different types of Flash objects and various tools that will be helpful for developing web sites based on Flash and Joomla!. Then, the author gives a detailed explanation on how to use Flash-based image slide shows in Joomla and display them at different positions on the site.

By using the ‘random image’ module, you can implement a slide show in no time. The explanation is easily understandable. As, each step is enriched by screenshots, comprehending the text becomes much easier.

Simialarly, you will learn to use the RokSlideShow, one of the popular slideshow modules for Joomla!

This extensions helps you in integrating a slide show with options for dynamic image resizing, captions, loading progressbar, titles and more. Apart from these, you will also be able to set transition and other eye catching effects to further customize your slide show. Chapter 2 also focuses on showing Flash based movies in Joomla! articles/content.

Chapter 3 gives you an introduction to the built-in menus and navigation in Joomla! and then illustrates the use of two extensions, Flash Floating Menu and Super Web Flash for using Flash based menus in Joomla!

The book also covers other related extensions for customizing the flash menus based on your need.

Other intriguing stuff like building photo galleries using Flash into Joomla! based sites, building interactive Flash based maps, and charts, tickers, logos, headers is clearly explained in the book to meet the needs of all kinds of audience. This book also focuses mainly on how to embed Joomla! content into a Flash sites and how to troubleshoot your applications to overcome the most common problems in Joomla!.

What you will learn from this book

Create Flash objects and choose some popular flash tools for working with them

Improve the overall design of your site by learning to use Flash templates and tickers in Joomla!

Build stunning photo galleries with Flash animation effects and display photos on your Joomla! web site from a Flickr account using third-party extensions for Joomla!

Embed and display flash movies inside Joomla! contents using a simple video flash player

Create attractive Flash-based menus for your Joomla! web site

Display interactive Flash maps on a Joomla! web site using YOS amMap extension

Transform your Joomla! site into a streaming media site using Jvideo! extension to embed videos in Joomla! contents

Create mind maps based on your Joomla! site’s structure with the help of Joom!FreeMind component

Customize your Joomla! template to display Flash logo, header, and banners

Display Joomla! contents in Flash objects using amfPHP and J-AMFPHP extension for Joomla!

Maintain and troubleshoot your Joomla! and Flash web site

Approach

This book is a fast-paced step-by step-guide. It is loaded with examples and lots of illustrations showing configurations and their results on the screen.

Who this book is written for

If you are a Joomla! web developer who wants to integrate Flash into your web sites, then this book is for you. Knowledge of Joomla! and basic knowledge of Flash is assumed.

Joomla with Flash, build stunning, content-rich, and interactive websites with Joomla! 1.5 and Flash CS4 is definitely a must have if, you are planning to build and enhance you Joomla! based web site with Flash.

Check out Joomla! with Flash at PACKT Publishing

Note: Keep track of this blog to get a chance to grab an exclusive copy of this book.