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A Look at The New Developer Certification for .NET Content Management System Experts

gracechen — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:41:37 +0000

There are many different developer certifications available. To add to the long list is a .NET web content management system certificate offered by Kentico. This will certify its graduates as CMS technology experts.

While there are many vendors that offer CMS certifications, Kentico is the most recent. The basics of the course include:

Upon completion, the result is a Kentico Certified Developer
One year of Kentico CMS development experience is required or completion of Kentico CMS 5 Certified Developer Training
Demonstration of the understanding of ASP.NET, the .NET framework, web interfaces, CSS and website deployment are scrutinized

The exam for the certification is 50 questions an available anytime online for $199. The long debate over whether certifications immediately make someone an expert continues. There are plenty of good developers that didn’t pass certification exams. They are still experts; they just don’t have a certification document proving this fact.

Many believe that time and money is better spent on Microsoft certifications as their courses tend to cover more information and different types of vendors. Unfortunately most experts believe that a non-committed or poor developer that obtains a certification will weaken the whole system.

Kentico is adding to the certification list to provide a quick and easy method to recognize highly-skilled developers. They claim the return on investment is maximized and time to market is reduced through their certification course.

The Kentico CMS certification course is a partner of Microsoft. This proves their conformance with Microsoft testing protocols such as Microsoft Platform Test for Windows Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Test and Microsoft Managed Code Test.

There are two types of courses offered by Kentico: the Certified Content Administrator Training and the Certified Developer Training. The administrative training instructs students on how to use Kentico CMS 5 to create and publish content. It also teaches users how to perform their daily tasks utilizing this software. The developer training focuses on speedy website deployments, best programming and design practices, as well as showcasing the capabilities of the Kentico CMS.

Kentico is providing another addition to the list of vendor certifications by offering an administrative and developer training. These courses teach all aspects of the Kentico Content Management System to the users. This is helpful with daily tasks as well as following good design and practices. Any additional courses do add credibility to your workplace experience and this is no exception.

Viable Alternatives for Your TLD

gracechen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:35:03 +0000

Many people have the belief that a .com TLD is the only extension worth purchasing because it is the one most internet users assume when entering URLs into their browsers. It is true that .com is very popular and makes the best first choice, but there are many individuals and businesses using other TLDs with great success. What you have to do is think about how potential visitors and customers are going to access your website. If you believe that most of them will type the nane of your company into their browser bar, obtaining a .com extension is a must. On the other hand, if you can brand your website with .us or .net domain, it really will not matter how users go about finding you. To prove that .com isn’t necessarily the holy grail, we will introduce you to some of the other options you have for TLDs.

.Org and .Net TLDs

When your preferred domain name is not available in .com, .org and .net make the next best options. At one point in time, .org extensions where limited to non-profit organizations while .net was intended for internet and IT companies. However, because there is no regulation, those intentions flew out of the window very quickly. These days, anyone can obtain a .org or .net domain name to use for virtually any purpose. The only real downside to these extensions is that some domain registrars charge a bit extra for them.

Country-Specific TLDs

Country-specific domains are supposedly designed for a website that markets products or services available in a particular country. Examples of these extensions are .us (United States) .ca (Canada) and .de (Germany). Some of these domains can only be registered by companies that operate in those specific countries. Others are freely available to anyone who wants to pay the cost of registration. For instance, most people don’t really that .tv is actually a country-specific extension because several television networks use it for their domains. You should keep in mind that using such an extension may not be a good idea depending on where you are located. Some might assume that your business is only available in that particular area, when it is in fact a global outlet.

Niche TLDs

There have been numerous TLDs introduced and proposed for various reasons. Two examples are .biz and .info. The .biz extension was designed for business purposes while .info is intended for sites that provide information on a varying topics. Just like the TLDs mentioned above, there is really no regulation on how these are to be used. Domains with these extensions can be quite tempting as they are often available when the more popular options are no longer around. Even though they can still be used effectively, you may want to consider these extensions as a last resort.

Conclusion

Slowly but surely, other TLDs are making a name for themselves and serving great purpose to the fast growing community of internet users. While .com remains the most desirable, these alternatives could become far more prevalent over the next few years.

Graffiti: The .NET-Friendly CMS

gracechen — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:54:17 +0000

Microsoft is making its presence felt in the ongoing development of the web. Its proprietary technologies are being increasingly used to create everything from blogs and e-commerce sites to dynamic business applications and large corporate portals. One development tool that has Microsoft written all over is a little software package known as Graffiti.

What is Graffiti?

Graffiti is a simply built CMS used to create and manage various types of websites. In this instance, the CMS abbreviation stands for content made simple. Some refer to Graffiti as a blogging platform, even though it offers features and functionality that you commonly find in more robust content management systems. To put it simple, Graffiti offers the power to create a blog or perform basic web content management. It’s all about what you need the software to do.

Core Technologies

Graffiti is built on the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. The package is very Microsoft friendly as it supports databases that include MS SQL, MS Access and VistaDB. A major advantage of its database configuration is that it allows you to easily switch to any of the supported databases without making adjustments to the code itself. Being scripted in ASP.NET makes Graffiti incredibly easy to install. Simply copy the code into the IIS virtual directory, tweak a few system settings and you’re done.

Content Management

Graffiti is a simple CMS. Therefore, it does have some administrative features, but they are not as extensive as what you would find in other systems. Nevertheless, there are a number of useful features that allow you to easily manage your site and content items.

Site Settings - This lets you set site wide default settings for your website title, tagline, metadata, header and Feedburner links among other elements.

Comments - This lets you set site wide settings for your comments based on criteria such as the Askiment ID, the time period an entry can be commented on and who is allowed to comment on what post. Even if comments are allowed on a site wide basis, they can still be disabled for specific content entries.

Plugins - Allows you to view, enable and disable the extensions currently incorporated into your site.

Packages – In the world of Graffitti, packages are a collection of components such as plugins, themes, widgets and alert filters. This setting allows you to manage these elements from a centralized area.

Utilities – This represents a toolkit that allows you to manage your site in various ways. You can rebuild pages, view log files and access a web-based file browser.

License – Allows you to view and manage the licenses for your relative software.

Keep An Eye on Graffiti

According to Telligent, the software’s developer, Graffiti will undergo major improvements in the very near future. The company plans to leverage cloud storage as well as a more advanced spam filtering solution. Look for this CMS to become more extendable as it is made to support a wider variety of themes, widgets and plugins from the developer community. If you want an easy to use platform that favors the Microsoft .NET stack, Graffiti could be the solution.