Friday, 9 December 2016

Why BigCommerce Experts Advise you to switch to Stencil?


Have you heard about Stencil? If you are on BigCommerce, there are high chances that you have. In case you haven’t, it is BigCommerce’s new approach to front-end and theme development. At DIT Interactive,our Experts team work extensively with BigCommerce and have already tried our hands at Stencil. We have been blown away by it. Here are some reasons why

1. Flexibility :

BigCommerce designers and developers always strive for flexibility. By doing away with ‘Global Variable,’ Stencil offers just that. Global Variable used to be a block of code in an email or product page that couldn’t be altered. How frustrating is that? Stencil, instead, uses handlebar templating language. It gives you the freedom and the flexibility to manipulate the code any time.

2. Time Saving :

Time is Money. How many times have you heard that? As a BigCommerce development company, we constantly run into customers who desire speed. Stencil lends speed to BigCommerce developers and designers by letting them make changes to the dummy site using current data. A preview of that can also be shared with the client, and all of this happens without impacting the live site. If the client needs custom design for their Bigcommerce website, this method can help save time. Moreover, Stencil also supports local development which is another way of conserving time.

3. Webpage Speed :

Site speed is extremely crucial to success. Despite a great store design, your BigCommerce site might falter if it takes too long to load. Our experience suggests that delays in site can lead to a massive decrease in conversion rate. Would you ever want your conversion rate to fall? Not really, right? Stencil makes use of modern standards in order to speed up your web page. If you use Stencil’s default sample images and its master theme, you can derive a Google Page Score of 89 on Desktop. That is incredible!

4. Multi – Device Performance :

Clients, these days, are especially concerned about their site’s performance on different devices. Our BigCommerce design and development process involves the creation of a synchronized site performance across all devices. Stencil helps you view your changes in real time on all devices. In other words; when you make changes, they will reflect simultaneously on mobile, desktop, and phone. How does this help? Previously, you could make a change to your desktop site and unknowingly upset your site’s phone version. It could be the other way around too. Stencil eliminates those inefficiencies.

5. Efficiency :


Stencil uses YAML Formatting – a modern Javascript language that helps make your site efficient. Let us take an example. If you previously wanted to load 10 items from a catalog collection, the entire catalog will be loaded and you will need to hide what wasn’t necessary. As you can guess, that process was laced with inefficiencies. In Stencil, though, you can show just the desired portion of your catalog grid without slowing down the page.These are some of the many reasons that make Stencil appealing to any BigCommerce developer and BigCommerce designer.

Step-by- Step Guide to Installing & Configuring SMSBump


Various BigCommerce experts have been talking about SMSBump recently. Obviously, that helps with automating customer service and marketing for a BigCommerce store. Do you want to have SMSBump for your BigCommerce store too? The good news is that you do it all by yourself. You don’t need help from any BigCommerce designer and developer to do the job for you. Here’s a step-by- step guide to installing and configuring SMSBump for your store :

Installation :
  1. The first step that you need to take is to access the marketplace and search for SMSBump there. That should be straightforward.
  1. You go to your online store’s dashboard. In your dashboard, you need to click on the ‘Apps’ button. This will open up the menu that encompasses all your installed applications.
  1. At the top of that window, there is a link to ‘BigCommerce Marketplace’ that you need to click.
  1. Once you are in the marketplace, you will notice a search box towards the top right. You can type SMSBump there to find the app.
  1. Once the app comes up, you can open it in order to see the app’s details as well as description. It’s good to read through some of the features of the app as well as other details.
  1. Once you have read through all the information, you can click on the ‘Install’ button.
  1. A new window comes up that asks you to ‘Confirm’ the app’s access to some BigCommerce store features. You need to click on the ‘Confirm’ button to move forward.
  1. Next up, you will asked to input your email i.d. as well as phone number in order to connect your BigCommerce store with the app.
  1. The app will ask for a confirmation to ensure there are no mistakes in inputting the email address and/or phone number.
  1. Once you confirm, you will receive a text message with the validation code for the installation.
You can type this code into the installation screen to confirm the installation.
This completes the installation process. Once you have SMSBump for your BigCommerce store, you also need to properly configure the app. This is where you make complete use of the app’s various features.

Configuration :

There are various tabs in the configuration window. Here’s what information you need to put in:
  1. General : This tab provides basic information about your app. Here you can make SMSbump enabled or otherwise. You can also view your unique API key. On the top right, you have your existing balance.
  1. Bulk Messaging : Here’s where you decide which group from your database receives SMS. Is it all the people in your database or certain people? This SMS could be about updates or just a marketing message.
  1. Transactional SMS : This is where you decide if you want SMS’s to go out after a transaction has taken place on your BigCommerce store. This message can go out when the order has been placed so the customer knows. It can also go out when the customer has signed up with the store or when the order status has changed.a.If you set it to sending an SMS when an order status has changed, you can configure which change has to be considered for sending such SMS’s. It could be when the order has been completed, shipped, cancelled, or more).
  1. Setting : In this setting section, you can specify more information about preferences. For example, you might want your SMS’s to be sent out to a selected few countries only. There are more settings to be explored.
  1. Help : Finally, the help tab guides you through various stages of the installation, configuration, and using of SMSBump. This completes the installation and configuration of SMSBump.
About DIT INTERACTIVE


We, at DIT Intreactive, are a BigCommerce development company that offers high quality results with proven processes. We have an adept team of experienced BigCommerce designers as well as trained BigCommerce developers to manage any challenging project with absolute ease. More about our BigCommerce design and development prowess can be found on our website : http://ditinteractive.com

Thursday, 26 May 2016

ARE YOU READY TO LAUNCH YOUR OWN HOSTED WORDPRESS BLOG IN FIVE STEPS ?



WordPress is currently the globally preferred platform for creating blogs for circulation of information or sharing of news. In this article, we shall be dealing with some of the basic steps to host your blog and launch it within minimum time possible.

WordPress serves as the host to more than 50 million blogs and also holds the credit of being a publishing platform. The blogs on WordPress account for around 40 % of the total number of blogs available on the internet. The exact number of blogs cannot be exactly determined. However the audience of blogs amounts to a whopping 400 million, and this is only a singular method through which users interact with each other on the internet.

Now you know what the importance of a blog is. Without wasting any more time, we shall jump straight into the procedure of launching a self-hosted blog within 20 minutes.

1. HOSTING

Any WordPress development company would advise you to select a host or the residence of your blog.

Some of the good hosting companies are http://godaddy.com and http://hostgator.com Chose hosting at your own will, after comparing plans that suits you best.

The price for hosting is paid as a tax to government agencies for running a business.
Search for viable recommendations on various online forums and get a popular web hosting service to get started.

2. DOMAIN REGISTRATION

You need to have an address on the internet, and your domain means the same for your blog.
This service can be availed free of cost from the web hosting service provider.

3. WORDPRESS SETUP

The popular software for blog creation is WordPress, and there is no doubt in that since WordPress web developers have been tasting success in all their ventures recently.
Installation of WordPress is completely free of cost and any doubts in the installation process can be cleared through easily understandable manuals.

WordPress can be set up via the hosting service provider, or you can manually download it from the website wordpress.org.

To set up via the hosting provider follow these instructions. You need to have cPanel as your hosting control panel for these instructions.

Step 1: Login into your control panel and click on Softaculous icon.




Step 2: Find wordpress on Softaculous screen and hover over that icon. You’ll see Install, Demo and Overview options there. Click on Install.




Step 3: Follow the instruction on installation page and your blog will be ready in no-time. If you want to install blog on your root folder (i.e. http://yourdomain.com/) than leave In directory empty.




Once installed you can than access your blog admin panel on http://yourdomain/wp-admin using your admin logins that you just provided while installation.

Keep in mind that installing WordPress in your system and signing up for a blog on WordPress.com are completely different.

4. THEMES

Remember to keep your theme compliant with the subject you are dealing with on your blog.

For example, if you are writing a blog on wildlife and natural flora then the theme of your blog must be something similar to forests, depicting greenery with animals in the background. Just don’t cram up the blog’s manifestation with superfluous graphics.

You can find many free themes by going into wordpress admin and under Appearance, click on Themes. You will see the default theme attached to your blog.




And if you want to install new themes, you’ll need to click on Add New. Where you will find hundreds of free themes. You can preview and choose the theme you like and then click on Upload Theme.




If you’re looking to custom design the wordpress theme, any good WordPress Theme Developer can help you with that.

5. YOU ARE DONE

Finishing the above steps gives you access to a promising platform to show your writing expertise to internet users all around the world.
Login And Let Your Writing Do The Rest!
Blogs not only satiate our writing urges but also take information and messages around the world. You would never know if any random person in any corner of the world is reading your WordPress blog and that has quite a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Self-hosted blogs offer freedom from the heckling in the case of writing blogs on other platforms without any control on published content and editing privileges. The overall idea of crafting your blog may be deemed as an exercise in vain by many due to the technical repercussions associated with it.

But on a general basis, reading this article would rebuff such suggestions and provide you with a stunning and informative blog.

NEED HELP?


We’re WordPress website developer and can help you if you need a hand. Please contact us here.