Nisha Oommen

Learn the benefits and challenges of building an e-commerce site with Drupal.

Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of everyday life. The tremendous advancements in mobile technology are transforming lives, helping to create new businesses and changing the way we communicate, work, earn, and spend. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have taken advantage of the Internet, resulting in an enormous increase in sales and business activities. Today, sales made over the internet represent a massive proportion of overall commercial sales. The key to creating the best mobile commerce or m-commerce experience is to innovate and provide consistent, connected experiences over the smartphone that give customers sufficient information to make a purchase decision.

Painting a picture or composing music is something we associate with creativity instead of website development. Even the job titles such as 'UX analyst', 'software developer' and 'Drupal developer' does not give readers an inkling of an idea that it is creative work. However, building websites and applications is a lot like a work of art; the final product should be a harmonious collection of information that not only appeals to but also captivates the viewers. It should appeal to the viewer’s aesthetic sense so that they will enjoy browsing through the website. It is also an art of getting into the mind of the user to place content in such a way that even a first time user can easily find what they want rather than being cumbersome to use the application.

Dries Buytaert, Founder and lead developer of Drupal CMS, set the tone for Drupal 8 in his Chicago Keynote back in 2011 when he said, “If I were to start Drupal from scratch today, I’d built it for mobile experiences first, and desktop experience second.” His vision has come true with the Drupal’s latest version, Drupal 8.0.0 RC (release candidate) due to be released on 19 November 2015.

The global media and entertainment sector is at the heart of a rapid transformation where current business models continue to coexist alongside the new emerging models. An analysis of the global media trends gives us a deeper insight into the ever-expanding possibilities of connecting with consumers in new and innovative ways.

The surge in the use of mobile devices and the ease of accessing the Internet through various devices such as tablets, smartphones and smart watches (rather than the traditional desktop and laptops) have changed the way websites are being built and accessed.

Agile is to project management what OOPs (Object Oriented Programming) concept is to programming languages (like PHP, Java, C). It divides the complexity of large projects into bite-sized chunks. Compared to a traditional sequential process like Waterfall, Agile promotes a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation. It encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability.

The surge in the use of mobile devices and the ease of accessing the Internet through various devices such as tablets, smartphones and smartwatches (rather than the traditional desktop and laptops) have changed the way websites are being built and accessed.