Much like web development, there is something deeply sublime about gardening this time of year. Warm, bright, wet, and idyllic. We think about what grows well now, whether it’s herbs, veggies, fruit, flowers, succulents, ferns, bushes, or other plants. Then there is a dual consideration:
which soil mix works best for what we're growing;
and what can we add to help each thing we're growing reach their full potential
To avoid getting too far in the weeds (pun intended), let’s imagine or pretend that your company is a plant you want to grow. Success will be shown during periodic blooms or harvests, based on the season. You start by planting the seeds you want to grow, in the best soil. For the purposes of this simile, the soil is your content management system (CMS).
Next, you add minerals (plugins), add content (plant food), draw water (traffic), attract pollinators (referrer links), and make sure there is the right amount of light for photosynthesis to happen (SEO). By applying the right measures, your seeds have the ideal environment to prosper.
Because DiscoverTec is a Microsoft partner who specializes in the .NET framework, it’s only natural that the preferred “soil” where we build our client websites is Umbraco. Umbraco is fully featured, scalable, and has a great support community. From sandbox to garden, it's proven to be an ideal "soil" for just about every type of cultivar. Plus, expansion is a breeze.
To keep our green thumbs strong for the latest and greatest, we’ve started exploring the free and open-source .NET Core. It uses pre-existing architecture to provide access to a larger population of coders and enables the system to be offered as a service option. Our team is also testing other tools for better out-of-the-box site management, including Igloo and Uskinned to provide a widget layer on .NET Core, and Shopify Optimizly to provide easier integrated point-of-sale. This makes Umbraco a great replacement for WordPress.
3 KINDS OF WEB DEVELOPMENT: FRONT-END, BACK-END AND FULL-STACK
BY ROBERT GLENN
Modern websites are ultimately a gathering of interconnected software technologies, running across a mix of server and host hardware. Front-end, back-end and full-stack web development teams each have their own specific priorities, but all must work together effectively to produce functional, optimally performing websites that fulfill certain goals. As each team works towards its own specific goals, they exchange information over an agreed upon set of rules. This is known as the data contract, and there are several considerations involved with effectively negotiating that exchange together.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY PROTECT VALUABLE DATA AND SERVICES WITH MULTI-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION (MFA)
BY JASON KILLINGSWORTH
Many companies are now grappling with the long-term implications of a distributed workforce. Some employers are fully and permanently remote. Others are bringing team members back to the office, to regain some of the creativity and camaraderie that was lost during the pandemic. Still others have adopted a hybrid model, with remote employees “touching down” at common times and places when in-person collaboration is necessary. In all these cases, remote and hybrid staff need access to sensitive and valuable company data, wherever they are located. Here are the considerations, as well as the steps you can take, to successfully protect valuable data and services with multi-factor authentication (MFA).
