Tips for choosing Open Source Solution

Open source solutions have been a blessing for the global web community. These solutions allow the users to use, change, and improve software code and then redistribute it. It can be downloaded by anyone and then it can be customized to suit the unique business requirements.

A large number of people are involved in Open Source Software Development. This means there are minimum chances of errors as opposed to traditional source code wherein there is a possibility of developers overlooking problems.

However, there are certain important things to be considered while selecting an open source solution.

Performance and reliability are extremely important when it comes to choosing open source software. Word of mouth from trusted people can help a lot. One should always take an opinion from experience people in this field before going for open source software. Choosing software that can work with other software is also important. One can get the best out of investment.

Open source software is as much about the license as it is about development methodology. Read the license properly. Recognized open source licenses have well defined conditions for your contribution of code to the ongoing development of the software or the incorporation of the code into other packages.

An open source project should have a very clear development process that describes how contributions are made and how they are evaluated for inclusion.

You should also consider ones capability to maintain this software. If not, will you employ third party contractors or will you implement a training plan to match your skills to the task?

One should also look out that whether there is an active support community of whatever the web development company ready to answer your questions concerning deployment? Look at the project's mailing list archive, if available. If you post a message to the list and receive a reasonable reply, this may be a sign that there is an active community of users out there ready to help.

Revolution brought by E-commerce

Internet has truly been a revolution. Through its power, it has changed the world around us. E-commerce has been one of the greatest developments in the history of mankind. It has fundamentally changed the world around us. This century has witnessed a meteoric rise in the number of e-commerce businesses.

Never ever we would have imagined purchasing a book or an airline ticket through internet. Well, that’s what e-commerce has brought with itself. We can now shop 24x7 online. The web, today, is flooded with Web Development Company providing innovative e-commerce development services. A wide array of services is provided by them such as e-commerce website development, e-commerce shopping cart development, e-commerce online shopping cart development and lot more.   

The greatest advantage that e-commerce brings with itself is that it businesses to reach to a global audience. It caters to the demands of both the national and the international market, as business activities are no longer restricted by boundaries. There is no time constraint, as e-commerce empowers one to conduct business 24x7. This in turn brings immense gains to businesses. Even small enterprises can access global markets for buying and selling goods and services.

With E-commerce, customers have the opportunity to compare various products and services. They can, thereby, make a good purchase decision.

Today we live in an era of online shopping. It certainly saves time, money and energy. E-commerce has been a blessing for the consumer community as it empowers them. People also come across reviews posted by other customers, about the products purchased from a particular e-commerce site, which can help make purchasing decisions.

For business concerns, e-commerce significantly cuts down the costs of marketing, customer care, processing, and information storage and inventory management. It reduces the time involved in business process re-engineering, and customization of products. It greatly increases the productivity and quality of customer care services.

The burden of infrastructure to conduct businesses is reduced substantially. Thereby the amount of funds available for profitable investment is more. Further, e-commerce helps in collecting and managing information related to consumer behavior, which in turn helps in developing an effective marketing strategy.

Choosing Open Source Solutions

Open Source Business Solutions have been a blessing for the global web community. These solutions allow the users to use, change, and improve software code and then redistribute it. It can be downloaded by anyone and then it can be customized to suit the unique business requirements.

A large number of people are involved in Open Source Software Development. This means there are minimum chances of errors as opposed to traditional source code wherein there is a possibility of developers overlooking problems.

However, there are certain important things to be considered while selecting an open source solution.

Performance and reliability are extremely important when it comes to choosing an open source software. Word of mouth from trusted people can help a lot. One should always take an opinion from experience people in this field before going for open source software. Choosing a software that can work with other software is also important. One can get the best out of investment.

Open source software is as much about the license as it is about development methodology. Read the license properlyy. Recognized open source licenses have well defined conditions for your contribution of code to the ongoing development of the software or the incorporation of the code into other packages.

An open source project should have a very clear development process that describes how contributions are made and how they are evaluated for inclusion.

You should also consider ones capability to maintain this software. If not, will you employ third party contractors or will you implement a training plan to match your skills to the task?

One should also look out that whether there is an active support community ready to answer your questions concerning deployment? Look at the project's mailing list archive, if available. If you post a message to the list and receive a reasonable reply, this may be a sign that there is an active community of users out there ready to help.

Hire Php Developers for Open Source Customization

Php is the favourite child of the global web community. Since its launch in 1994, Php has been highly acclaimed world over as the best server side scripting language. PHP is mostly used in conjunction with MySQL Database for web development services like Open Source Ecommerce Websites, Open Source CMS based Websites, & Custom PHP based web applications.

PHP also has a lot of server interfaces, database interfaces. In the server interfaces, PHP can load into Apache, IIS, Roxen, THTTPD and AOLserver. Moreover, it can also be run as a CGI module. Database interfaces are available for MySQL, MS SQL, Informix, Oracle and plenty of others.

The biggest advantage of Php is that it is open source and that is the reason why Php Development has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. We, at Biztech Consutlancy are one of the leading Php Development Services providers based in India. We offer the facility of hiring our talented Php Developers.

Our team excels in open source customization. We specialise in Oscommerce customization, Magento customization, Joomla customization, Drupal customization, CMS customization, CRM customization, X cart customization and typo 3 customization.

The benefits of hiring our Php Developers for open source customization –

• Experienced and well qualified developers
• Quality services at welcome rates
• Customized open source solutions in the shortest possible time
• Unique and innovative solutions
• Profound knowledge of open source development
• Our developers are well versed with the latest technology

We also provide services like Php Web Development, Php Shopping Cart Development, Php Content Management System, Php Application Development and database driven web development. Our Customized PHP development services include defining the site, developing the site structure, production and quality assurance, visual design and testing.

Hire Open Source Developers from India

India, today, is known as the IT hub of the world. It is one of the leading destinations for outsourcing IT services. A plethora of web companies exist in India which provide all kinds of web development and Website design services. The Indian web companies have not remained far behind in providing open source development services.

Companies from across the world are coming to India because of the cost advantage here. Also, India has well qualified manpower. Further the web companies have excellent infrastructure in place for providing software development services. Hiring open source developers has become common because it saves a lot of time. Also, in India these services are available on hourly basis also.

Biztech Consultancy is a leading Open source development services provider based in India. Our team has years of experience in customizing the popular open source platforms. We provide client centric solutions at welcome rates.

Our area of expertise

·        Joomla Development

·        Drupal Development

·        Magento Shopping Cart Development

·        Magento CMS Development

·        Oscommerce Development

·        WordPress Development

·        Magento WordPress Integration

·        Zen Cart Development

·        X-Cart Development

·        Drupal CMS Development

·        Php Development

·        Cakephp Development

Benefits of hiring open source developers from Biztech

·        Experienced and well qualified developers

·        Quality services at welcome rates

·        Customized open source solutions in the shortest possible time

·        Unique and innovative solutions

·        Profound knowledge of open source development

We constantly keep ourselves updated with the latest technology. Our experts provide the best advisory services to our clients.

Getting customized web solutions with Open Source Development

With the advent of open source development, the web community across has witnessed a revolution. Conducting business over the internet has now become easy with open source development. It is now possible for you to get a website that can be maintained and managed by yourself. Open source web application development is one of the best ways to save cost and time.

By means of open source, one can access a code generated by others. Since open source software is available for free re-distribution, any one can use the same for development purpose. It is necessary to have a source code for open source software.

It is possible to get best content management solutions through open source tools like Drupal and Joomla. Also, various open source shopping cart solutions are available. These include Magento, Zen Cart, Oscommerce and a host of others. With open source software one can get best quality services at affordable rates.

Nowadays, forum customization has become easier with open source software. Forums are one of the best ways to reach a global audience. Well designed and developed forums enable users to discuss and write on diverse topics. By using open source software, one can get a full fledged website that meets all specific needs. Some of the widely used open source forums are phpBB, IceBB, Vanilla, YaBB, bbPress and others.

Some open source development services which have become highly popular are Joomla development, WordPress Development, Drupal Development, Magento Shopping Cart Development, X-Cart Development, and Zen Cart Development.

Biztech Consultancy is a leading Web Development Company in India providing an array of open source development services. Our core competency lies in Joomla Customization, WordPress Integration, Drupal Customization, and Magento Development. We have the best manpower with us.

Open Source E-commerce Solutions

Open source solutions have been a blessing for the web development world. Here are some of the most effective open source e-commerce solutions-

FishCart

Launched in 1998, Fish Cart is a well known open source e-commerce solution for products, services, online payment and online donation management. It is written in PHP4 and tested on Windows NT, Linux, and various UNIX platforms. This system supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Solid, Oracle and MSSQL. Advantages include multiple parallel catalogs, multiple languages, timed sales, Associate ID tracking, and web based catalog maintenance.

Oscommerce

This is another open source e-commerce solution. It has an object oriented Php backend. This system supports multiple payment gateways such as 2Checkout.com, Authorize.Net, ChronoPay, iPayment, PayNova, Paypal, PSIGate, SecPay and TrustCommerce.Oscommerce supports unlimited products and categories. It supports multiple currencies. Also, it supports physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products.

Zen Cart

ZenCart is similar to Oscommerce. Its user front end is validated to XHTML 1.0 transitional. Any PHP coding changes can be protected during upgrades by using the built-in override protection system. Zen Cart can be integrated with phpBB. The meta tags keywords and descriptions can be controlled at the per-product level.  

VirtueMart

VirtueMart is a renowned open source e-commerce application used in combination with Joomla. It is a highly advanced and customizable e-commerce platform meant for Joomla websites. VirtueMart can also be used as a Shopping Cart. It is written in PHP and requires the MySQL database environment for data storage. Virtuemart-Joomla integration is best suited for low to medium level traffic web-sites.

Shopify

It is built on Ruby on Rails technology. The online shop built with it is standards-compliant, fully customizable and requires little technical know-how. Shopify charges 3.75% commission on all sales. It is faster and easier to setup and has in-built SEO capabilities.  Shopify has discount codes with fine-grained options. It has an XML Sitemap automatically generated for search engine indexing. Also, it has a full featured asset system which lets use and re-uses stock photography, logos and product PDF. New order notifications via email, RSS, and on mobile phone with SMS messaging facilities are also available.

Magento

This is the most widely used e-commerce platform around the world. It has advanced features that make e-commerce easy and simple. It was founded by Varien, a web development firm. Magento Development supports multiple languages and multiple currencies. It is integrated with google analytics and has one page checkout process.  

DashCommerce

It is one of the only open source .NET e-commerce platforms available. Its features include - Single Page Checkout, Partial Refunds, Configurable Shipping Rates and Drop-In Themes / Skinning.

Cube Cart

Its main strength lies with its variety of different payment merchant vendor. Its features include - Professionally Security Audited, 100% Template Driven, Customer Order History and Multi Currency Support.

Tomato Cart

This is a unique open source ecommerce solution which aims at creating the best online shopping platform. It is devoted to blending all flexible functionalities for users even with the basic software knowledge. Features include - RIA based Administration Pane , Search Engine Optimization, Web Analytics (Piwik), Lightweight Framework and Content Management System.  

Prestashop

It is an open source e-commerce software for Web 2.0.  It is written in Php and MySQL. Many websites worldwide are created using Prestashop. It is absolutely modular and offers customizable solutions. It supports payment gateways such as Google checkout, paypal or payments pro via APIs. Further payment modules are offered commercially. The software makes extensive use of AJAX in the admin panel, while module blocks can be easily added to the store to provide extra functionality.

The Best Open Source Social Bookmarking Platforms

Social bookmarking has become highly popular in this tech era. It is tagging a website and saving it for later. Instead of saving them to web browser, one saves them to the web. And, because bookmarks are online, one can easily share them with friends.

One can not only save favorite websites and send them to friends, but can also look at what other people have found interesting enough to tag. Most social bookmarking sites allow browsing through the items based on most popular, recently added, or belonging to a certain category like shopping, technology, politics, blogging, news, sports, and others. In fact, social bookmarking sites are being used as  surrogate search engines.

There are some useful social bookmarking platforms available over the web. They are ---

Scuttle

Scuttle is an open source software for creating social bookmarking sites like One can create a social bookmarking site within minutes using scuttle for personal or community use. Scuttle has several AJAX features and it generates an RSS feeds.

Pligg

Pligg was created as a social networking CMS. While most content management systems are designed for only a handful of authors, Pligg CMS was designed to manage a site with an unlimited number of authors. All of these registered users are in control of the website's content. It is a user driven CMS that relies on independent authors' content and participation to manage news articles. 

The user interface gives visitors a reason to come back to a website by making them decide on the site’s content and giving them the chance to build a social network. Pligg is very similar to Digg. 

Laicos

Laicos is a social bookmarking website development application. It uses asp.net and MySQL.

ContARTE     

ContARTE is a social bookmarking multi-user engine which is used to build social bookmarking sites.

GetBoo

It is an uncomplicated Web 2.0 social bookmarking system with tags and folders. One can import and export bookmarks from Firefox, IE, Mozilla, and Netscape. It has brilliant admin section, translations, groups, book marklets, firefox extension and RSS feeds. Users can keep links to their favorite news, blogs, music, games, and more on GetBoo-powered sites and access them from any computer on the web.

Community News

This uses social marking and Bayesian techniques to provide periodic postings to blogs. Users can vote for or against RSS sources to increase the chances that the source is used again. 

Akarru

Akarru is a social bookmarking engine wherein users posts links and promote links to front page using voting system. 

Bookmark4U
Bookmark4U is a web-server application based on Apache, Php and MySQL. It provides a smooth bookmarking facility. 

Taggly

Taggly is written with usability and scalability. 

Unalog

This bookmarking software is written Python programming language. One can get an account and add links, create and join groups.

The Best Open Source Forums

Forums are the latest buzzword in the world of internet. They have truly been a revolution. An Internet forum is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Companies have started to inlcude forums in their websites. Forums serve as a good platform for consumers to interact. They have been helpful in empowering customers.

Some of the best open source forums are:

Vanilla

It is an open source forum developed by Mark O’Sullivan. Vanilla was developed using Php and MySQL. It can customized to suit one’s unique requirements by add-ons. Fully loaded with extensions, Vanilla is multilingual and fully extensible discussion forum. It is released under the GNU License. It is an excellent multi-lingual community building solution. Administrators can create sticky posts, locked posts, categories, and all the things you would expect from a web forum. Vanilla Forums are also built with integration at the forefront, so that it can seamlessly integrate with existing websites, blogs, and customized applications.

bbPress

This is an excellent forum which comes from the creators of WordPress. It is simple forum software. Speed and security are its pillars. It is easy to use and administer. This is a template driven Php/MySQL forrum.

IceBB

IceBB is a forum script based on Php and MySQL.  Its code output is extremely clean. IceBB has an RSS feed. IceBB is lightweight and easy to use. One of its advantages is that this script can scale very well. So if one has an ever increasing number of users, then one should give this script a serious consideration. IceBB has a very active community to turn to for help. One’s webhost should support PHP4.3 or above.

YaBB

This is the first open source perl forum software. YaBB runs very fast. This forum is writteh in Perl. It allows users to setup and control a "bulletin board" that can become a vital addition to website or even a stand alone as a website. YaBB can be used as communication tool 24 hours a day. It provides a real-time chat and support system for visitors.

Simple Machines Forum

This, too, uses PHP and MySQL, PostgreSQL. It has an advance permission and user management options. SMF is designed for optimal performance and scalability. It also has a template system which makes it easier for custom edits. This forum, too, has a multi lingual support. SMF actually is free professional grade forum software and not open source. It has an excellent Package Manager that automatically installs and uninstalls mods.

miniBB

It is a standalone program to build internet forums. It is developed with the purpose of posting and getting messages, answering questions, spreading opinions, providing support, and other kind of the online public communication between website visitors and maintainers. minibb is written in Php. It is light weight and search engine optimized. miniBB is a good alternative to phpBB.

WP – Forum

This is a simple discussion forum plug-in for WordPress blog. WP – Forum is the perfect solution if one has WordPress powered website. It supports three different skins which are changeable from the WP admin interface.

phpBB

phpBB stands for Php Bulletin Board. It is a highly customizable open source forum. One can customize mods with it. phpBB has an extensive database of user-created modifications and styles database containing hundreds of style and image packages to customise board. One can create a very unique forum in minutes with the help of phpBB.

Yet Another Forum

It is the most established open source forum or bulletin board for web sites running ASP.NET. YetAnotherForum.NET is fully coded in C# ASP.Net and uses Microsoft SQL Server. It comes with all standard forum features and even WYSIWYG editors.

Dantobb

It is an open source forum based on UseBB. It is developed in Php 4. Dantobb uses MySQL database to store data. It was released under the GNU General Public License version 3. Dantobb has options like private messages, polls and attachments.

FluxBB

It is a fast, light, user friendly forum application. FluxBB supports Php 4 and Php 5 and databases such as MySQL, SQLite and Postgre SQL. It produces valid HTML 1.0 strict pages.

PunBB

This is also a Php based discussion board. It is extremely light weight. PunBB version 1.3.5 offers a lot of fixes for bugs in CSS. It has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages.

MyBB

This is a free PhP and MySQL based forum. MyBB uses a standard discussion board structure, so visitors will feel familiar with the way MyBB works. It has an easily extendible forum functionality.

SEO Board

It is popular forum software that is search engine friendly. It is absolutely free and fast. SEO Board is written in Php and uses MySQL as back end. It provides full moderator support. It requires PHP 4.3.0 and MYSQL 3.23.23. SEO Board has anti spam protection. 

Phorum

This is an open source PhP forum software which is extremely fast. Phorum has a flexible hook and module system.

Open Source CRM Solution with SugarCRM

Customers undoubtedly rule the market place. They are the life blood of business. And maintaining healthy relationships with them is fruitful for businesses. They can make and mar your business. A number of customer relationship management solutions exist over the web. But, one open source has clearly notched the top position and that is SugarCRM. 

SugarCRM is a web based CRM solution written in PHP. SugarCRM is available in different "Editions" ("Community" (free), "Professional", and "Enterprise"). Sugar CRM is very powerful & popular customer relationship management software. It is very flexible and hence, provides a perfect platform for Sugar The software is available in four versions such as SugarCRM Community Edition, Sugar Express, Sugar Professional and Sugar Enterprise.

 It provides basic CRM functionality such as lead tracking, sales management, project management, issue tracking and other interesting features.

Its powerful functionality and intuitive user interface provides a gateway to all CRM applications thereby enabling organizations to migrate to SugarCRM for expanding their customer base. Sugar CRM takes business to a new level by integrating the enterprise server software sales model with that of a software-as-a-service model.  


SugarCRM can be easily adapted to all types business environment. Since its launch is 2004, SugarCRM has become one of the favorites among businesses across the globe. It has easy to user browser based interfaces that can be easily customized to meet the unique requirements of individual organizations. Being an open source off-the-shelf-application, a wide variety of plug-ins and module are available, which can be integrated with the basic SugarCRM application to enhance its functionalities. 

The plug-ins is available through the SugarCRM support group, the Sugar Network. They can be can be easily integrated with the Sugar Open Source and Professional editions enabling them to be upgraded to the Sugar Enterprise edition. SugarCRM Development has become the favourite of web developers across the world due to its rich features and advanced functionalities.

The Best Open Source Solutions

Websites, now, have become an integral of businesses all around the world. In order to succeed in the cut throat competitive tech era, it is very important for businesses to have well structured websites. Managing content of websites is not an easy task, especially for complex websites. Open source content management systems like Drupal and Joomla have proved to be a blessing for the web industry. A CMS is used for organizing, categorizing, and structuring of information resources (text, images, documents etc.) so that they can be stored, published, and edited with easily.

One such content management system which has made its niche, is Drupal. If one is looking for a quick and easy web development, then Drupal CMS Development is the ultimate solution. Drupal was originally written by Dries Buytaert. It is written in Php and is distributed under the General Public License. Drupal offers enhanced SEO capabilities and can be used for creating forums, blogs, websites and social networking platforms. Also, it is highly flexible in its configuration. 

Drupal runs on any computing platform that supports both a web server capable of running PHP including Apache, IIS, Lighttpd, and nginx and a database such as MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB or Microsoft SQL Server to store content and settings. Drupal 6 requires PHP 4.4.0+ while Drupal 7 requires PHP 5.2 or higher.

Web developers across the world have acknowledged the well designed code of Drupal. This makes it highly efficient, robust and trustworthy. Another benefit which Drupal offers is less programming efforts than other CMS. One can easily add new features and reshape a Drupal based website from a simple presentation website to a web application. Also, it has a solid templating system. Drupal based websites are extremely user friendly as well as browser compatible.

There is another CMS which has also won the hearts of developers across the globe. It is none other than Joomla. This is also an open source CMS which offers customized features. Joomla is an award winning CMS. If one wants to build a dynamic and interactive corporate website, then Joomla is the answer to your problems. 

Joomla! is written in PHP and uses object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques. It stores data in a MySQL database, and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization. It also comprises a model–view–controller (MVC) Web application framework that can be used independently.

It is suitable for both large and small organizations. Joomla has excellent advanced functionalities. It has various plug-ins which allow you to add shopping carts, image galleries, videos, bulletin boards and various other features.

And last but not the least, WordPress is another world renowed open source CMS. It is widely used as a blogging tool. WordPress has brilliant features like plug-in architecture and template system. It allows users to re-arrange widgets without editing PHP or HTML code. One can also install and switch between themes. The best thing about WordPress Development is that one need not be tech savvy to use it.

When it comes to optimizing the search engine results, WordPress makes this job easier. It increases your website's chances of landing on the first page of Google results.

 Open Source CMS solutions have been a dream come true for the web community across the planet.