web application development – K2B SOLUTIONS – Web Design & Mobile Apps Developement

How to Customize Your WordPress Admin Panel?

k2B Admin — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 11:18:45 +0000

Introduction:

If you are using a WordPress website then this post could help you with managing your website stuff in a better way. Being a WordPress user you might have come across a very common problem. It is “How do you get the insight of all your website content at one glance?”

There is no possible way of getting your entire content about your pages, Articles and user comments. This makes checking all associated fields complicated. You might find it more difficult if you are going to check this for a specific page.
In this post let us discuss on customizing solutions and about a plugin that is all set to overpower this problem.

The modern WordPress website is good at the content than just holding titles or chunks of texts. The plugins have functionalities that WooCommerce introduced. It performs well in storing contents like prices, subtitles, additional images and henceforth. But how do you track information when you are able to view only the title, date and author, in your admin panel?

It is obvious that you cannot overview any other information, yet you could get rid of these problems. If you lack coding knowledge then I can explain to you, “how to configure using admin column plugin”. The post also explains you the following,

Adding columns to post overviews,
Create filter forms to find content,
Sort post using columns,
Edit content inline using admin columns

Inspiring use case:
Let’s start with an example, say you are given a task to manage a website which deals with real-estate agency portfolio. On your website, you display locations, images, addresses and many other attributes. Whereas, on the admin screen, you can manage a portfolio and even control existing real estates.

The columns on WordPress appears by default and are barely relevant to your real-estate website. Find the following image which is the current strategy of a WordPress Blog. On the admin panel, you could find the portfolios with no information in it.

The same happens in case of car dealerships, creative portfolios, web shops and so on. So let us work on the real-estate portfolio which has an overview like the one in the below image.

When you go through this image you find a lot of insight in the portfolio. It is much easier to find, validate and even edit as you see them. I would provide you instructions on adding custom columns on WordPress that you might sort them and add custom filters. I would also guide you on how to make use of the plugin to handle with Admin Panel.

How to handle columns with code?:
Adding columns and editing them according to your content is required. To perform this, WordPress offers a column application. Yet, you could perform these tasks using certain WordPress Hooks.

To alter or add columns make use of manage_[post_type]_posts_columns and manage_[post_type]_posts_custom_column.
At [post type], enter the post type that you wish to point. For example, for pages, you could make use of manage_page_posts_columns and manage_page_posts_custom_column.

You need to use this hook manage_posts_columns as a filter that handles an array of columns. The standard array of filter you need to use is as follows,

[
  [cb]          => 
  [title]       => Title
  [author]      => Author
  [categories]  => Categories
  [tags]        => Tags
  [comments]    => [..] Comments [..]
  [date]        => Date
]

You can remove a few columns in order to add a few. To do so you need to add a call back to the manage_posts_columns filter and add custom columns to columns array. You are about to use the manage_realestate_posts_columns hook. Here the post type is represented as “real estate”, which is passed as the first argument to register_post_type function for registering custom post types. We use it in place of post type in manage_[post_type]_posts_columns filter.

add_filter( 'manage_realestate_posts_columns', 'smashing_filter_posts_columns' );
function smashing_filter_posts_columns( $columns ) {
  $columns['image'] = __( 'Image' );
  $columns['price'] = __( 'Price', 'smashing' );
  $columns['area'] = __( 'Area', 'smashing' );
  return $columns;
}

The first line includes a function smashing_filter_posts_columns which is the callback filter that handles columns displayed. The next line defines the callback function. Lines 2 to 4 add custom columns to the list of columns. At last, line 6 returns to resulting column. The ultimate purpose of adding columns is to display image, price, area, and array with the new columns that have returned.

There are two more things to be reviewed:

You need to remove the irrelevant columns.
Rearrange the columns that the image appears first.

We are not definite about removing the above-mentioned columns rather construct an entirely new array of columns precisely as needed.

add_filter( 'manage_realestate_posts_columns', 'smashing_realestate_columns' );
function smashing_realestate_columns( $columns ) {
  
  
    $columns = array(
      'cb' => $columns['cb'],
      'image' => __( 'Image' ),
      'title' => __( 'Title' ),
      'price' => __( 'Price', 'smashing' ),
      'area' => __( 'Area', 'smashing' ),
    );
  
  
  return $columns;
}

Finally, the overview screen looks the way it is shown below. Unnecessary columns are removed and the new ones are added to the exact position where it has to be.

Populating columns:
The next step is to populate columns. WordPress can also help you with it using a Hook, which is the manage_[post_type]_posts_column action. As stated above this is not a filter and this can help you add content and does not allow you to change it. Thus, we are going to echo column content that we wish to display. Let’s get started with the column content.

add_action( 'manage_realestate_posts_custom_column', 'smashing_realestate_column', 10, 2);
function smashing_realestate_column( $column, $post_id ) {
  // Image column
  if ( 'image' === $column ) {
    echo get_the_post_thumbnail( $post_id, array(80, 80) );
  }
}

I have added a callback function smashing_realestate_column to ‘manage_realestate_posts_custom_column’ fetching two parameters which are the column name and the post ID. It is indicated in the fourth parameter add action. This indicates the number of arguments expected for a callback function.

The third parameter which is the priority hook determines the order of callback functions registered to the hook, must be accomplished. The callback function populates the “Image” Column.

The other two columns “Price” and “Area” are stored as the function fields with price_per_month and area. The implementation process is quite similar to both columns.

add_action( 'manage_realestate_posts_custom_column', 'smashing_realestate_column', 10, 2);
function smashing_realestate_column( $column, $post_id ) {
  // Image column
  if ( $column == 'image' ) {
    echo get_the_post_thumbnail( $post_id, array( 80, 80 ) );
  }

  
  
  // Monthly price column
  if ( 'price' === $column ) {
    $price = get_post_meta( $post_id, 'price_per_month', true );

    if ( ! $price ) {
      _e( 'n/a' );  
    } else {
      echo '$ ' . number_format( $price, 0, '.', ',' ) . ' p/m';
    }
  }
}

The same is done for the ‘Area’ column except for the unit. Otherwise, the code is the same for ‘Area’ column.

add_action( 'manage_realestate_posts_custom_column', 'smashing_realestate_column', 10, 2 );
function smashing_realestate_column( $column, $post_id ) {
  [...]

  
  
  // Surface area column
  if ( 'area' === $column ) {
    $area = get_post_meta( $post_id, 'area', true );

    if ( ! $area ) {
      _e( 'n/a' );
    } else {
      echo number_format( $area, 0, '.', ',' ) . ' m2';
    }
  }
 
}

Finally, the overview of real estate page looks good with the relevant information that you wish to display.

Managing using admin column plugins:
Now let us have a look at how to manage columns using Admin Columns plugin. In this plugin, there is no requirement for codes and just use drags and clicks to manage columns. There are optional fields that help you to customize for naming a column and its behavior.
Let us dive in deeper to know how the plugin works. Before getting started install admin columns as you install the plugin and get it activated.

Adding, altering and removing columns:
Remove the unwanted columns that appear in the overview.

Isn’t that easy? Let us proceed by adding a column. To add a column click on the “Add Column” button and choose the “Featured Image” column type from the dropdown and fill the appropriate settings.

If you have followed me very closely, you would have noticed that we have missed adding the “City” column while using codes. That is a hectic task with coding but that really turns to be simple when done with a plugin. Select the “Taxonomy” column and choose the “City” Taxonomy.

The result is done. Isn’t that simple either?

Editing using admin columns:
In order to edit your content, you need to visit the edit page. Look out for the fields that you wish to change, update them using the update option and view them on the overview screen. You could get the entire process done in just three simple steps. Make use of Admin Columns Pro.

The above image helps you to better understand how it works. On the admin panel, you can switch inline editing from columns setting screen. The panel automatically detects the content and adds editability. The example involves the advanced custom fields add-on for admin columns. It detects the ACF files and adds the possible columns. The columns are sorted, filtered and edited automatically.

The final result looks really neat as you can make the process really simple with the admin columns pro. I have enabled editing for all custom columns and am going to make use of the functionality to edit all content. You can also perform the same and the changes are saved instantly.
Direct edit is upheld for all segments. With the Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce add-ons, Admin Columns gives you a local altering background as if you were altering from the points of the details page.

Final verdict:
Admin Columns on WordPress could do much better than any other plugins. There are few more WordPress plugins that you need to have a look at. Why not try them either? Hope this post about Admin column would assist you much better. Now make aligning an easier task on Admin panel.
If I have missed any of the valuable points do let me know. If you have really liked the post then come back to tell me about your success stories.

An Open Letter To Developers Struggling For A Progressive Web Application

k2B Admin — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 10:48:47 +0000

Hey! Developers out there, did you know that progressive web apps also known as PWAs can help you all to make the best responsive and fast loading web application. These PWAs are website that makes use of recent web standards, permitting installation on the user’s device. This could present an app like experience. Also provides business transformation to your clients through custom web application.

A PWA launched by twitter built with the help of React JS and Node.JS. This helped to prove the advancement of technology and that the technology is ready for a huge crowd out there.

You could gather further information on PWA in this blog,

What actually PWA is?

PWA is a web app that can be installed and which can perform even on offline. A cluster of data cached on interaction with the app. On visiting the site from the chrome browser with corresponding flags turned ON, you will be prompted to install the app.

Why is it necessary got a PWA?

The foremost cause to build a PWA is to improve the loading speed of your web app. For a secure usage, it is best to load with HTTPS. The easiest and the simplest strategy that could help you work offline is through having a cache-first service worker strategy. A smart web application which helps out much better than ever. This might even resolve the biggest issues on web applications.The following are the recommendations that can be implemented in your web application which is not necessarily required for PWAs.

Recommended for implementing PRPL pattern,

Push basic assets in the underlying URL course.
Render introductory route.
Pre-Cache initial route
Lazy-load make remaining route on request.

Progressive Web Application Relational Apps and Statistics:

PWA Statistic provides the statistical information about cost saving and better performance obtained in implementing progressive web apps. Some good examples are as follows.

On recent analysis Google has found that PWA installed banner converts 5-6x more often than native banners.

To our surprise the Forbes PWA home page loads in .8 seconds

An improvement seen in weather forecasting channels which shipped PWAs in 62 languages to 178 countries which was absolutely 80% of improvement chart. Further helps small and medium enterprises to build advanced web applications.

Framework assistance on Angular, React JS:

Most popular Java Scripts framework application generators already support the PWA. You can add it on to your existing application rather than creating a new one. HTTPS is getting better with free certifications from the Let’s Encrypt and AWS Certificate Manager. Expanding static web apps, the dynamic data are far simplified by CDNs, Cloud Foundry and AWS. In case of online/offline data synchronization, it is good to make use of IndexedDB, PouchDB. To your notice this feature is already available in Chrome and Android since V49.

Angular JS:

By adding service worker support and app shell for offline Angular 2+ applications. Progressive Web Apps with Angular Mobile Toolkit workshop from Angular summit 2017 best explains the new support looks with Angular CLI. You will have to enter a command to proceed.

Ionic is also a framework that gathers Angular to create native apps with web technologies. It combines Cordova to support the app on mobile phones.

React JS:

On creating a React application with the help of React App, an evidence is created along with offline-first caching strategy service worker. If you already have a React application, you can proceed further with the help of create React App’s 1.0, which provides you notes on how to turn your app into PWA.

There is another smaller library which is also an alternate implementation that was built for speed. It is the Preact. It implements the same ES6 API, components and virtual DOM support as React.

Final Word:

Everyone loves when an app works offline, it becomes more enjoyable if the app is still working on a travel or fly. Though internet is irregular, that is not going to worry you any more. Native apps is caching data and providing offline access in the long run. And now most of the web applications have similar features. PWA has a huge impact on all these apps which indeed grabs the interest of the user as well as the developer.

Slim framework – The best micro-framework to easily create small web applications

k2B Admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 07:52:13 +0000

PHP Is Ruling The Web Industry

In this digital age, various types of programming languages are used to develop a website or a web application. Of all the computer languages, PHP is considered to be the best. It not only has a large user base, but is also very popular in the programming industry. Being the best server scripting language, it is preferred by most coders. Here are five reasons why PHP is still the best even there are many advancements in similar programming languages:

PHP is easy to learn, and apply
Most of the new CMS platforms are built using PHP
PHP has the best-in-the-industry documentation and friendly community
With top security features, PHP is secured from threats and vulnerabilities
PHP is said to have all the modern features that a web developer needs

Rise Of Micro-frameworks

PHP’s full stack frameworks help developers find everything easily as all the libraries are provided in one package. This makes it easy for the coders to work on any project. Moreover, Ruby On Rails and Django available in PHP are recognized as the best full stack frameworks used for creating web applications. With more programmers using this computing language, these frameworks got better updates, offering better techniques to handle large and complex website development projects. The downside of these constant updates is that it completely reduced the speed of the development. Plus, the updates made it tad too hard to develop simple applications and websites.

To overcome these challenges, micro-frameworks were created to quickly develop smaller applications. Also in few cases, these micro frameworks ensured faster testing and easier deployment. PHP has a large number of micro-frameworks such as:

Slim
Silex
Phalcon
Lumen
Wave

Slim Framework

All the above-listed frameworks are popular among developers, but Slim is said to the favorite of most small application developers. Slim is a micro framework mostly used for coding simple APIs and web applications. It is popular because of its special features such as:

Fast and powerful HTTP routing for designing SEO-friendly URLs
HTTP caching for improved website performance and using less cache
Secured cookies for improving the security of the system
Error handling and debugging for easy testing
Dependency injection for controlling external tools

Slim has more than 960,000 downloads and is ranked in the top 15 of the SitePoint survey for top PHP frameworks of 2015. Josh Lockhart, who is the author of popular books like “PHP the Right Way” and “Modern PHP”, created SLIM. Since its first stable release in 2010, Slim is one of the top performers in the PHP framework category. A team of well-qualified and like-minded programmers keep the Slim framework up to date.

Advantages Of Opting Slim Framework

Slim framework is popular because of the following advantages:

Slim is the fastest micro RESTful framework
It is full PSR-7 complaint
It comes with useful classes for managing requests, responses, cookies, etc.
Slim framework has good documentation
It has excellent scalability
Is easy to learn
Slim uses easy and straightforward concept for its middleware
It supports code hooks

Comparing Slim With Other Micro-frameworks

Getting Started With Slim Framework

Ranked top among the best PHP frameworks, Slim has a well organized and detailed documentations in which every concept is well explained. Get started with Slim using the following steps:

Download Slim framework and extract it in the project directory
Login to MySQL and create a database for SLIM to interact
Start your first application

Which Ecommerce System is Best for Your Business? Prestashop vs. Magento vs. OpenCart vs. VirtueMart

k2B Admin — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 11:34:31 +0000

Which is the best CMS for Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solutions? The below mentioned detailed comparison of the four most popular Ecommerce systems helps you to find out the best one for your online store. Always keep your business goal in mind when selecting relevant CMS for your website application development.

	Prestashop	Magento	OpenCart	VirtueMart
CMS Release Date	August 2007	March 2008	May 1999	September 2009
Started By	Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Leveque	Varien	Daniel Kerr	jenkinhill
Number of versions	7	15	28	27
Latest Version	1.5.4.1	1.8.0.0	1.5.6	2.0.24c
Number of Plugins and Extension	Around 25000	Around 1500	Around 9000	Around 3500
Number of Online Stores	Over 1,25,000+	Over 100,000+	NA	Over 269,000
Popular Websites Using this Platform	Vusion Glasses, eGolf-Balls, Archiduchesse	NorthFace, Behr, Nike AU & UK	Aight Shop, Anycart-Elegant, Alpha Shop	Shogren, Envirocon, Digital DJ
Number of Twitter Followers	11,268	33,776	421	937
Number of Facebook Likes	27,915	6939	2009	2493
Type of Software	Open Source	Open Source	Open Source	Open Source
Most Popular in which Countries	France, Spain, Indonesia, Czech Republic	India, Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine	Ukraine, Indonesia, Russia, Czech Republic	USA, Russia, Germany, Italy, India
Monthly Maintenance Cost(Average)	Low	Medium	Low	Low
Global Monthly Google Searches (Exact)	165,000	201,000	90,500	50,000
Total number of Searches on Google	16,700,000	43,100,000	10,800,000	3,20,000
SEO Friendly	4.5/5	5/5	4.5/5	3.7/5
Ease of Installation	Easy	Moderate	Easy	Difficult
Ease of Customization	Easy	Moderate	Easy	Difficult
Number of Features	Over 300	Over 350	Over 100	Over 500
Suitable Hosting Solution	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated	Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated
PCI Compliance Support	yes	yes	yes	No
Recommended For	Store owners, Developers, Designers	Store owners, Developers, Enterprises	Store owners, Developers, Designers	Store owners, Developers, Designers

Are You Planning Your Website? Who Is Your Audience? Any Ideas in Your Mind?

k2B Admin — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:56:57 +0000

The famous quote “The most prepared are the most dedicated” rings true in web design and development field. If you are a dedicated business owner seeking a best strategy to augment your customer base, first you need to do the best preparation before designing your business website.

Before setting up your new business website, do effective research, which is one of the crucial factors for building a good website. However, knowing who your audience is must to create a website that attracts more customers.

As there are so many types of art and literature, you can able to build different styles of websites. However, building a different style website plays a major role in drawing the attention of your particular audience.

To create such website for your business, you need to seek help from a good web design company that gives you more ideas that assist you to accomplish your website vision.

It is obvious that website planning takes long time; however, it will help you to save more time in the long run. This means that you will also save money if you pay someone to build your website.

First, get a clear vision on what you want in your website and how the website should appear. This precision signifies that the website shows unerringly what it is all about and how it will pay off in the long run. Next, decide on what kind of audiences you want to appeal to.

For example, if your target audiences are youths, then create your website with funkier and jazzier style that attracts more youths towards your website. Moreover, you can also build your website with a sense of humor that helps you to make your website appealing to youthful audiences.

In case, if you are more business oriented, then you must build your website that looks more professional. Before building your website, discuss all your requirements with your web designer.

Have a look at various websites relevant to your business; this will give you more ideas about how your website should look like and what you must aim for. In recent days, even low-cost web designs assist you to meet all your requirements in this particular field.

What you need to do is just draft a rough sketch of your website. Then, clearly mention that what headings and subheadings must be added to your website and how well your website must be organized.

By doing this, you can have a clearer idea about your website, not only in mind but also on paper. You can also include links between web pages and assist to direct your website users migrate to the pages, where you want the users to go, when your website is up and running.

Then, make a plan about how the content must be placed in each of the web pages in your website. Also, make a plan about the graphics and animations that have to be included in your website. All these plans give you a clearer idea on how to build an excellent web design layout for your website.

By doing all these and discussing with a proficient web designer, you can get what you want in your website. You just have a clear idea on want you want to achieve at the end.

Suppose, if you have any problem with your web design, then you can change ideas based on your web designer’s suggestion. This helps you to save time as well as money as you are not paying the superfluous amount of time for building your web design.

Building Advanced Web Applications for Small and Medium Enterprises

k2B Admin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:34:49 +0000

The Internet epoch is in full swing. In today’s highly competitive business world, every business needs a website to increase its brand awareness, web visibility and revenue generation. Generally, a business without a website looks ephemeral.

Therefore, even a small or medium-sized enterprise has started using its own websites for business growth for the past few years. As enterprises have increased their interactivity through the Internet, the popularity of web applications has also become eminent.

Nowadays, a large number of small and medium-sized businesses manage all their affairs with web applications. Web applications enable the accessibility of their websites on all web browsers and hand-held devices like mobile phones and tablets. Due to the emergence of new technologies, it has become easy for them to create web applications that support their business activities.

As web applications increase the functionality and the business value of an organization, the dependency on web applications for both small and medium-sized enterprises has also increased terrifically. Using web applications, they can able to fine tune their business strategy and thus obtain success on the Internet.

Web applications have evolved from easy publishing and transactional applications to the highly rich interactive Web 2.0 applications in the present day. This ensures their availability, performance and security become more complex and important.

Currently, J2EE, MySQL and .NET are the advanced web application development technologies that have accepted by the developers and business owners worldwide. Many open source content management systems are available in the market including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, used to develop advanced web applications.

An advanced web application adds value to a business and ensures that it provides web presence with excellent online customer service. It replaces the inefficient and expensive IT processes with custom-made applications that enable better business results. That’s why the advanced web applications are mostly preferred by small and medium size organization.

Why advanced web applications are essential for small and medium enterprises?

Enhance productivity
Better access
Improved data security
Collaborative data sharing
Compatibility with web browsers
Cost advantages

The most important advantage of using an advanced web application is that it doesn’t require you to install the application on your computer. This helps you to save space on your hard disk.

As the entire web application data is usually saved online, you can easily access them whenever you want. Hence, the advanced web applications assist you to expand the scope of your online business.

Advanced web applications also help the small and medium size enterprises to carry out their business transactions in a secure and trustworthy manner. Using the advanced web applications, they can reach their clients in determining their faithfulness and loyalty towards their company products and services.

K2B Solutions is a web application development company has highly skilled professionals, who have enough experience in providing corporate-centric web application development solutions for enterprises, to grab our clients’ target audience and corporate market.

Our advanced web development ensures genuine service quality for small, medium and large-sized web application development project. We help both small and medium size enterprises to achieve the competitive edge in their business environment.

Custom Mobile Website!

k2B Admin — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 08:29:21 +0000

Online Web surfing is becoming increasingly popular, however, studies have shown that 50 percent of Smartphone users leave the website if the page does not load within 5 seconds and three of five users will not return to the website. Hiring an industry-leading mobile Web technology platform provider will help you create a top-of-the-line mobile website that draws traffic and drives sales.

Seventy-five percent of Smartphone users access their email or link to online content on their phones daily. This is one of the main ways Smartphone users are directed to website content or mobile deals – their inbox. Emails have one chance to make an impression before being opened or deleted.

A catchy or insightful headline will entice the occasional visitor, but delivering a mobile optimized email on a daily basis highlighting the latest news in your industry or the daily deals for your company is a great way to make consumers want to be part of your email list as they will look forward to seeing it daily, but the effort to run the show might even required to be continued after the completion and handover of the application which is commonly known as the maintenance phase.

K2B Solutions offers the business intelligence and technical expertise required for each of these phases of application right from the experienced business analysts, and not limited with the technical intelligence to frame it to a solution, but to the continuous support towards the smooth functioning of the business as per the contract with complete dedication and expertise.

Our expert team will do all the hard work and knowledge sharing to accomplish various levels of web application development. We are experienced professionals to develop complete solution with complex business logic dealing with large amounts of data and transactions. We can provide the most desirable, trustworthy, innovative web application for your business. We specially take care for customized web application development, which I required for your precious business requirements. We deliver rich internet applications combining the technological expertise, latest trends and our solid cross-vertical experience. This is easier said than done.

So your website needs to be able to cater to this segment, otherwise, you lose out on significant web traffic and potential customers. I don’t think there is much of a choice really. In the coming years K2B Solutions would become more of a necessity rather than a luxury.