Evolved CMS Auto Upgrades itself…
This is a huge one for everyone here at Evolved Websites, finally our Evolved CMS can auto-update itself to the latest version, with just 1 click.
We made a little video to celebrate:
From v9.6 upwards.
Blog Category: The Evolved CMS
Video manuals for eNewsletters
Our eNewsletters area of the online manual for Evolved CMS has had an overhaul, we’ve added 5 new video tutorials on Creating, Editing, Sending and Reports for eNewsletters, view here (or click on the image below):
Facebook integration with Evolved CMS v9
Seems like everyone is on Facebook these days, so we’ve decided to make it so much easier to share your website updates on your Facebook Page.
If, like us, you have a Website, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account it can be a nightmare to keep all three updated, with our new ‘Share on Facebook / Twitter’ feature its a simple 3 step process:
1. Add new information on your website:
2. ‘Share on Facebook’
3. Review what’s about to be shared (above)
..and edit as you please, then press Save, and its instantly sent to your Facebook Page:
A lovely new feature, give us a shout if you want to upgrade…
Next up, Twitter integration in a week or so.
(available for CMS v9)
New Feature: Top Weekly Searches
Not only can you now see what your customers are searching for, right in the CMS Admin and on the public website as Top Weekly Searches, these searches also become new, highly focussed pages in Google and other search engines for the search terms.
E.g. a search on Ask A Naturopath for ‘tea tree‘ shows a range of treatments for blackheads, candida and others.
Here’s a little video we made explaining how it work:
New Feature: Revamped Media Area
We’ve completed a radical overhaul of the Media Area in Evolved CMS v8, something long overdue and we are very happy with the results.
Just some of the benefits of our Media Area are:
- drag n drop uploading saves oodles of time, right from your desktop or even iPhoto
- you don’t have to resize any images before uploading (as long as they are under 5Mb they will be fine), as we resize all uploaded images
- you can delete images from The Media Library and they will still show on the website
- better organisation by categorising images into folders
And a few technical, but important, additions:
- PNG, BMP and TIFF files are converted to JPG to make them smaller and web-safe
- CMRK print-ready images are converted to JPG making them web-safe
- 300dpi images (or anything bigger than 72dpi) will be converted to smaller, faster 72dpi images
We are thrilled with this update, and are sure you will be too.
Available now in CMS v6, v7 & v8.
Yari McGauley
New Features: Customer & Order Stats
New in CMS v6 & v8, for websites with eCommerce we now show some really insightful stats:
- Top Selling products
- Most valuable customer
- On each order, the customers purchase history and value
- On each customer profile, the full order history, customer value over the years & most bought products
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- Customer Stats in Profile area
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- Customer Value shown on each Order
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- Order Stats summary
Why Do People Hack Websites?
Why do people hack into websites? Well according to Web Hacking Incident Database (WHID), in the second half of 2010 the top reasons for hacking were:
- website downtime 33%
- defacements of websites 15%
- leakage of information 13%
Not upgrading security of open-source software can lead to serious hacking, the Evolved CMS is NOT open-source, some common hacks we’ve witnessed include:
1. Pornographic Content (website defacing)
The hacker inserts pornographic material on the website, usually in blog comments (also called comment spam) linking it to their own website in an attempt to lure visitors away. They may also setup redirects to their own website, so visitors are automatically sent to their own website.
2. Illegal Back Links (search engine optimisation)
Hackers insert links to their own websites on as many pages as they can, often hiding them with Javascript or CSS so they are undetectable to visitors, however Google and other search engines then count these links as ‘votes’ for the hacker’s website, boosting their position in the search engines. This may also lead to the hacked-website being black-listed by search engines.
3. Political / Fun Hacks (website defacing / mischief)
Illegal political groups or simply kids may hack into websites as a test of skill and post anti-government statements / images or just their pseudonyms as proof of their hacking skill.
4. Stealing Emails & Passwords (stealing information)
Potentially the worst kind of hack is when someone gains access to the Administration area and can steal usernames, emails and passwords for all customers, email subscribers etc.
NOTE: The Evolved CMS has never been successfully hacked into.
Open Source vs Closed Software
Open Source software is freely available to download, edit and use as you please. Many website companies use popular, cheap open source CMS platforms such as WordPress and Joomla for their clients.
Closed or proprietary software is custom-build to ensure quality, security and ease of upgrades for the future.
Open Source
Great for simple blogs and personal websites, built and maintained by a large community of software enthusiasts.
Pros
- free, including free plugins
- easy to setup for programmers
- many web developers are familiar with the code / programming
Cons
- easily hacked into, weekly security upgrades needed (partly due to the number of programmers who know how to use it)
- can be overly technical and difficult to use (tries to be everything to everyone)
- costly to maintain, upgrades require expert assistance, plugins often do not work with latest security upgrades
For businesses we believe open source software is too insecure, costly to maintain and difficult to keep up with the constant upgrades required. As it is maintained for free, there is little incentive or accountability to fix issues as they arise, especially for the free plugins which are required to customise the website to suit a clients needs.
Proprietary Software
Flexible, customised software which is professionally maintained and held accountable by Evolved Websites.
Pros
- flexible, we custom-build each feature required, making it fast & tailed just to your project
- stable & easy to use, tried-and-tested over 8 years with real businesses to produce a simple, fool-proof website
- secure, only Evolved Websites and our team know the website code used, preventing hacking attempts
- support, we have a vested interest in keeping your site up and running, offering exceptional customer support for over 12 years to 100+ clients
Cons
- costs more than open source initially, however no maintenance costs as any bugs are fixed free of charge
- longer setup as each feature is custom-built for speed and security
- Evolved CMS is owned by Evolved Websites, however the entire public website and all design files belong to the client, we also offer a severance clause for peace of mind:
“Severance, in the case of Evolved Websites not being able to provide reasonable support and future upgrades to the website (at market prices), the entire website including design, content, hosting, Evolved CMS Admin and all related materials will be returned to the Client, who may contract another web developer to work on the website.”
By building a closed (not open source) website, Evolved Websites significantly reduces the risk, and success, of our website being hacked into and exploited.
Evolved CMS can now handle 1,200 simultaneous users
Our most recent (and as yet un-launched) projects asked us to make sure the website would hold up under enormous pressure, up to 1,200 concurrent users filling out a series of survey forms over SSL.
We were delighted to discover our Evolved CMS handled this all very very well, the only changes we made to handle the load (apart from hosting with RackSpace CloudSites) was to compress the CSS and Javascript files in static files.
We used the excellent LoadStorm.com load testing service to run our tests, we can highly recommend them and their personalised support (thanks Scott).
The Evolved CMS is now certified to handle up to 1,200 concurrent users at a time, that’s over 100,000 visitors a day.
Here are a few geeky screenshots:
Test Summary
30 minute duration, ramping to 1,200 concurrent users.
Test Volume
All without a single error!
New feature: Smaller, faster images for all Evolved CMS websites (300dpi to 72dpi / CMYK to RGB)
We’ve just completed a small update to the Evolved CMS which converted high DPI images to 72dpi, so if you accidentally upload ready-for-print images at 300dpi they will be automatically resized to 72dpi, saving tons of space and making the image much much faster to view for your website visitors.
At the same time we decided to introduce another small, but big, update which converts CMYK (again, print-ready images) to RGB. Some browsers like Safari show CMYK images as very black, dark images, see images below. This fix will show those images how they were intended in full-colour, on the web.
Applies to the Evolved CMS v6.7 and Evolved CMS v8.1, if you are interested in an upgrade please contact us.
CMYK images show in dark black:
