Tech News - CMS and E-Commerce

At Drupal Europe 2018, Dries Buytaert, the founder and lead developer of the Drupal content management system announced that Drupal 9 will be released in 2020. Yesterday, he shared a much detailed timeline for Drupal 9, according to which it is planned to release on June 3, 2020. One of the biggest dependency of Drupal 8 is Symfony 3 and it is scheduled to reach its end-of-life by November 21. This means that no security bugs in Symfony 3 will be fixed and people have to move to Drupal 9 for better support and security. Going by the plan, the site owners will have at least one year to upgrade from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. Drupal 9 will not have a separate code base, rather the team is adding new functionalities in Drupal 8 as backward-compatible code and experimental features. Once they are sure that these features are stable, any old functionalities will be deprecated. One of the most notable update will be, support for Symfony 4 or 5 in Drupal 9. Since, Symfony 5 is not yet released the scope of its changes will not be clear to the Drupal team. They are focusing on running Drupal 8 with Symfony 4. The final goal is to make Drupal 8 work with Symfony 3, 4 or 5 so that any issues encountered can be fixed before they start requiring Symfony 4 or 5 in Drupal 9. As Drupal 9 is being build in Drupal 8, this will make things much easier for every stakeholder. Drupal core contributors will just have to remove the deprecated functionalities and upgrade the dependencies. For site owners it will be much easier to upgrade to Drupal 9 than it was to upgrade to Drupal 8. Dries Buytaert in his post said, “Drupal 9 will simply be the last version of Drupal 8, with its deprecations removed. This means we will not introduce new, backwards-compatibility breaking APIs or features in Drupal 9 except for our dependency updates. As long as modules and themes stay up-to-date with the latest Drupal 8 APIs, the upgrade to Drupal 9 should be easy. Therefore, we believe that a 12- to 18-month upgrade period should suffice.” You can read the full announcement on Drupal's website. WordPress 5.0 (Bebo) released with improvements in design, theme and more 5 things to consider when developing an eCommerce website Introduction to WordPress Plugin

Yesterday, the team at WordPress released WordPress 5.0 (also known as Bebo) to give a seamless experience to users in building a website, revamping a blog or writing a code. Major improvements in WordPress 5.0 Blocks make it easier to work with WordPress This new release will let the users insert any type of multimedia in a snap and rearrange as per the content. The content pieces will be arranged in the blocks which makes the process of uploading easy. Design WordPress 5.0 brings improvements to design and content. While building client sites, users can create reusable blocks which lets the clients add new content anytime. Source: Wordpress Theme WordPress 5.0 comes with the new Twenty Nineteen theme that features custom styles for the blocks.The editor styles are used in the themes to enhance them. Twenty Nineteen features ample whitespace, and modern sans-serif headlines along with serif body text. It also uses the system fonts for increasing loading speed.Twenty Nineteen can work for a wide variety of use cases, be it a photo blog, launching a new business, or supporting a non-profit cause. Classic editor plugin The classic editor plugin is very useful as it restores the previous WordPress editor and the Edit Post screen. WordPress 5.0 for developers Blocks let the users to change the content directly but also ensures that the content structure doesn’t get disturbed by accidental code edits. This lets the developer control the output and build polished and semantic markup that could be preserved through edits. WordPress 5.0 offers wide collection of APIs and interface components that creates blocks with intuitive controls for the clients. These APIs speeds up the entire development work but also provides a usable, consistent, and accessible interface to all users. [box type="info" align="" class="" width=""] WordPress 5.0 is named Bebo in homage to the pioneering Cuban jazz musician Bebo Valdés.[/box] This new release has got some negative reactions from the users. Few think that the blocks won’t make things easier but would make the entire process complicated. Also, the release has received heat for having been announced on the wrong timing, as Christmas is almost around and retailers won’t be able to support the process of teaching the process of the new editor to the staff. Also developers will have to fix client sites broken by the new editor on an immediate basis and this might definitely create chaos. One of the users said, “Okay, I've now tested it on my main site, and I can definitely confirm that it's not a good fit for blog posts/news articles. Took me forever to post a simple 300 word article, in part because of all the random spaces it kept removing when I copied in paragraphs from my text editor.” https://twitter.com/MyFunkyTravel/status/1070848742738276352 https://twitter.com/anandnU/status/1070947019735425025 https://twitter.com/niall_flynn/status/1070762641700937728 The new editor is also causing troubles to existing sites and breaking them down. Few of the businesses have planned to move away from WordPress as they are not finding the change convincing. The users also are unhappy with the UI. Gutenberg: A disappointment? Last month’s Gutenberg release was met with disappointment and many ended up- uninstalling it,  with major issue being the lack of Markdown support. Usually before posting an article, a user writes it on Google docs or Microsoft word and then copies it to WordPress. Gutenberg makes it difficult for users to copy paste content as they must create the blocks multiple times given that every element is considered as a block. Also, it is still somewhere  between a post editor and a site builder plugin. One has to rewrite everything on Gutenberg as the blocks are complex. It could work best for large publishers who are comfortable with complicated layouts. Those working on HTML and CSS might find this jump to Gutenberg which is based on Javascript and React framework, very complicated. The idea of Gutenberg getting integrated with Core won’t be accomplished any day sooner as it has to go under a lot of documentation and work is still pending. https://twitter.com/_l3m35_/status/1070768052202033159 But there is still hope for Gutenberg, as the page builder market might appreciate the efforts taken for this editor. It could work well for the ones aiming for static content. Read more about this news on WordPress. Introduction to WordPress Plugin WordPress as a Web Application Framework WordPress Management with WP-CLI  

Adobe has been searching for a missing piece in its marketing and eCommerce puzzle: an eCommerce platform. Fortunately for Adobe, they seem to have now found that piece, and it comes in the form of Magento. The company announced yesterday that it would be acquiring the popular eCommerce platform for $1.68 billion. That might sound like a weighty sum, but for Adobe - and Magento - it makes sense, especially when you consider just how competitive the marketing, eCommerce and analytics market place is at the moment. Adobe is facing stiff competition from the likes of Salesforce and Oracle. Magento, while still a popular eCommerce platform, is also seeing competition from eCommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. Adobe and Magento: working together to create a fully integrated marketing solution The result of this move could be a fully integrated marketing platform. The eCommerce and content management aspects would come from Magento, while Adobe would add an extra analytics dimension. This could prove very attractive to both B2C and B2B organizations, who have been faced with choice but repeatedly have to compromise or pick and choose the components they need in their platform strategy. A number of different outlets have remarked on the impressive rise of Magento's value. The company was bought by eBay in 2011 for just $180 million, then went private back in 2015 with help of VC investor Primera Funds. Although this amount was never officially disclosed, it is reported that Primera Funds stumped up $200 million. That's a pretty good return on investment. Although Magento might loos a little dated and maybe even a little small scale for Adobe, who appear more interested in tackling the enterprise and huge B2B organizations than SMEs, with more than 300,000 developers working with Magento the move isn't as outrageous as some might claim. When you consider that some of the largest organizations on the planet - like Coca-Cola - use Magento, it's more than unfair to write the eCommerce platform off. Here's what Brad Rechner, executive VP and General Manager of Digital Experience at Adobe, has to say: “Adobe is the only company with leadership in content creation, marketing, advertising, analytics and now commerce – enabling real-time experiences across the entire customer journey... Embedding commerce into the Adobe Experience Cloud with Magento enables Adobe to make every moment personal and every experience shoppable.” On the Magento side, CEO Mark Lavelle spoke of the combination of "Adobe’s strength in content and data with Magento’s open commerce innovation." Lavelle will remain the head of Magento, but will perform his role from inside Adobe's Digital Experience business. Find out more here. [news.adobe.com] Read next: Introduction to Magento 2

Scrivito, a SaaS-based Content Management Service, launched a new breed of cloud-based serverless JavaScript CMS which is specifically targeted towards medium to large sized businesses. While the world is shifting to cutting-edge cloud technology, web CMS platforms are still stuck in the past. Thomas Witt, Co-Founder, and CTO of Scrivito said that “We’re at a tipping point. Agencies and dev teams that stick with Wordpress and the like are doomed to be overtaken by the inevitable shift to serverless computing and JavaScript development.” Scrivito checks the boxes for key trending tech innovations in the web development space. Serverless? Yes. Cloud native? Yes. So what’s unique about this cutting-edge content management interface and how exactly does it differentiate itself from the other traditional CMS? Scrivito requires zero maintenance thanks to the cloud This is the most unique feature of Scrivito. Since it is a cloud-based service, it allows developers to spin up a CMS instance without having to re-install anything or reconfigure databases, search engine indexing, backups or metadata. This leads to no downtime, no software patches, and minimal maintenance efforts. Component reusability powered by ReactJS Scrivito is powered by Facebook’s popular frontend framework-React. Thanks to its reusable UI components and its flexibility, developers can create complex and interactive functionalities such as configurators or multi-page forms with ease. Not only built for developers, it also makes it easier for agencies and marketing teams to build, edit and manage secure, reliable and cost-effective sites, microsites, and landing pages. Scrivito is extendable Scrivito is easily extendable because it doesn’t require any infrastructure. Developers and editors can create their own widgets and data structures on the fly. Due to its unique working copies technology, it brings version control technologies from software development to the CMS world, thus eliminating the need for a staging server and allowing parallel editing of content across teams. Plus, its API-driven approach provides the benefits of a serverless and a headless CMS together with WYSIWYG editing in a single solution. Scrivito has certainly ignited a revolution in the web development space by introducing serverless technologies to CMS applications. It is available at different price points for personal and enterprise users. To know more about other features and pricing options, check out the project's official webpage.

Coinbase announced the launch of their Coinbase Commerce API on April 3rd. This represents an interesting step in the cryptocurrency world as it will allow eCommerce merchants to accept multiple cryptocurrencies in a "user controlled wallet". This means that those stores that want to accept cryptocurrencies will no longer have to expend energy developing their own payment platform. With platforms like Stripe recently ending its support for Bitcoin payments, it'ss a chance for Coinbase to position itself as an essential component in the continued growth of cryptocurrency. A number of well-established eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, will have Coinbase Commerce integration. The Coinbase team explained in a post on Medium: Starting today, instead of manually creating payment buttons or hosted pages to accept cryptocurrency payments, you can dynamically generate them using our API... Coinbase Commerce and Reddit However, this product launch hasn't been straightforward for Coinbase. The social media platform Reddit announced at the end of March that it would cease using Bitcoin as a means of paying for premium membership. This was revealed to be, in part, due to the launch of the new product. On Reddit, admin emoney04 said: "Yup that’s right. The upcoming Coinbase change, combined with some bugs around the Bitcoin payment option that were affecting purchases for certain users, led us to remove Bitcoin as a payment option." However, while this news may be frustrating for Coinbase, Reddit is open to accepting bitcoin payments again. emoney04 went on to say that "we're going to take a look at demand and watch the progression of Coinbase Commerce before making a decision on whether to reenable". Community misgivings about Coinbase Commerce However, as an article on BTCManager notes, there are some misgivings within the community that Coinbase Commerce represents a move away from the original peer to peer philosophy behind cryptocurrency. BTCManager quoted Reddit user Bitcoin-Yoda: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Any intermediary between your BTC payment and the merchant is violating the definition of Bitcoin and your privacy." How to get started with Coinbase Commerce You can learn more about Coinbase Commerce here. There's also developer documentation provided if you want to take a look a bit more closely at how you can get started.