Our Ideas | VerticalWave Web & Mobile Development

Drupal is one of the most reliable and scalable content management systems today, but its capabilities are way beyond that. It is not just a simple CMS, as it can be used as the framework for native mobile application development. The app can be the front end that talks to Drupal using the Services module, while the Drupal itself is the backend that contains content, business logic, user management and other functionalities.

There are advantages of building a native mobile application compared to designing a mobile web application. You can distribute the app through mobile app stores and gain access to native functionality. And building the app with Drupal ensures reliability. You don’t have to worry about developing future updates, about how the content is rendered on different devices or about restructuring the code. Drupal keeps everything clean and neat.

There are lots of features you can benefit from when having a native mobile application. You can stick it into Google Play or App Store and get paid, you get app purchase and subscriptions through the App Store, Google Play, or other app stores, you can implement app advertising from native mobile app networks; you can access the device’s camera for images or video, the device’s file system for caching, the device’s contacts, map functionality and much more.

These above mentioned features will probably be available for mobile web applications in the future, but for now, only native mobile applications incorporate the full package.

At this point we all know that Drupal is a powerful and easy adjustable content management system. It is easy to integrate with existing technologies, fast and user friendly. When it comes to rendering content on desktop based browsers, Drupal works like a charm. But what about mobile-based websites? Is Drupal still efficient?

The answer is YES, without the shadow of a doubt. Drupal is perfect for designing mobile-specific websites that render beautifully on any mobile device or browser. Let’s say that you’re not interested in responsive sites (although Drupal is perfect for responsive design too) and you need a dedicated mobile website or app for your business. A website that features different markup and layout compared to the traditional desktop site and uses a mobile web framework like jQuery Mobile or Sensa Touch for mobile users.

Well, Drupal comes with the Mobile Tools module which includes extremely useful features such as Web Browser detection, Mobile domain redirection, Mobile specific themes, Mobile site availability, Mobile context, plus other useful tools that make mobile site development fast and easy.

So, Drupal is very capable and versatile when it comes to designing mobile-specific websites. Mobile sites designed with Drupal provide the user with enhanced experience and are very easy to manage by administrators.

Drupal is easy to administrate by anyone and that’s a fact. You don’t have to be a tech savvy person to keep a Drupal based website or app up to date and in perfect running conditions. The Drupal CMS is built with a clear focus on ease of use and that is why it is one of the most appreciated CMSs today by worldwide admins.

It doesn’t matter how simple or complicated a Drupal application is, the administration menu is intuitive and easy to use. For instance, all of the applications built by our team are administered mostly by people who are not at all related to web programming and don’t need any coding skills. And of course that the applications we develop come with extensive technical documentation and we also provide training sessions for our clients, so they can discover the full potential of the Drupal CMS.

Even if you or your team don’t really know your way around a content management system, the Drupal admin menu is so easy to use and provides you with many tools to keep your site on top of the competition without any hassle. From presentation websites to complex corporate websites and networks, the Drupal CMS can handle it all lexapro 10 mg.

Using the Drupal admin menu you can configure your application just the way you want. You can easily create and publish or update content such as articles, videos, photo galleries, etc, you can set up calendars and events, add new users and manage their roles, configure menus, integrate your content with social media, set SEO parameters and much more, all of it using an intuitive web interface.

VerticalWave Solutions encourages everyone to try the Drupal CMS. It brings new life to web applications and makes them shine like never before.

The Homeless Hub is a web-based research library and information center, a platform which offers information about homelessness from across Canada. It provides easy access to information for services providers, researchers, government representatives, students, and readers and it hosts a large number of contributors to its information database.

By using the powerful features of the Drupal CMS, VerticalWave put the latest technology to good use in order to enhance knowledge mobilization and networking. Homeless Hub represents a new interactive platform, which provides users with simplified and fast access to information. Users now can easy access and share the wealth of information on homelessness.

The Homeless Hub also features an advanced and highly efficient search engine based on the powerful Apache Solr, which allows users to search for all the Hubs content such as: reports, papers, e-books, summaries, studies, multimedia and more. The Hub is also integrated with all the large social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, etc. and it features a user-friendly blog section.

The Canadian Housing First Toolkit is a complementary resource site for the Homeless Hub funded by The Mental Health Commission of Canada. The Housing First Toolkit represents an informational hub and resource site which helps Canadians get more involved in the housing aspect of homelessness.This website main’s audience are the doctors, planners, government-policy makers, researchers, as well as general audience.

Just like in the case of the Homeless Hub, the information and resources of this site are easy to manage by the editorial team using the custom back-end Drupal administration interface. The Canadian Housing First Toolkit is also available in French.

VerticalWave is proud to be a part of the team behind the Homeless Hub and Canadian Housing First Toolkit projects and help with such a pressing and yet misunderstood social issue like homelessness.

The Drupal community is ready to welcome Drupal 8, the latest installment of the popular content management system. Drupal has proven to be one of the most scalable and user friendly, modern, open source, content management systems on the market.

And the guys at Drupal.org are proud to announce the new Drupal 8. As they say, Drupal 8 will have something for everyone to love. And they couldn’t be more right. Drupal 8 comes with more than 200 new features, a set a new standard for ease of use and many ways to configure and deploy your content on the web. Drupal 8 presents itself with new capabilities for displaying data on mobile devices, building APIs, and adapting to multilingual needs.

Drupal 8 has mobile it its DNA. You can display and render content on virtually any device and browser. It looks and feels great whether it’s on mobile devices or PC monitors. This comes in handy particularly if we take into consideration the new responsive web design trend.

It also boasts a new configuration management system that allows you transport configuration changes and manage versions with ease. You can also leverage jQuery UI’s autocomplete and modal dialogs to serve your visitors a better experience. Editors can create formatted content and make quick changes with the new WYSIWYG editor. And the front page, listing blocks and other features can be customized on the fly.

If you need multilingual capabilities, you should know that Drupal 8 provides a simple and efficient translation system with a friendly built-in user interface. And theming is now faster and easier than ever before.

And you should also know that the page markup in Drupal 8 is now HTML 5-based. This means that it provides simplified elements and classes with native input tools for mobile fields, better video and image integration and more.

The advantages of Drupal 8 are many, whether we talk about simple presentation sites, corporate sites or complex web applications. It’s easier to use by the developer and by the back end editor and provides the common user with an enhanced experience. There’s no reason not to use it.

When it comes to open source CMS, the best and most popular solutions on the market today are Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. All three are very good systems and have been used in building numerous websites for different purposes, but which one should you use for your next project?

Well, that’s not the easiest question to answer. From my experience, it all depends on your scope/requirements and who’s going to be administering and maintaining your website in the long run.

For example, if you’re looking to build a complex website with lots of features and functionality, your best bet would be Drupal. No question about that. Drupal can handle whatever you throw at it. It’s flexible, scalable and feature-rich. Look at it more as a framework, than a CMS.

Joomla on the other hand is a good system, but not nearly as scalable and flexible as Drupal. I see it more as a compromise not really worth making.
It has some great modules, that work flawlessly out of the box and a good, intuitive administration interface. But it lacks performance, themeing and SEO.

And there’s WordPress, a great, simple, blogging CMS. For any presentation or fairly simple website, there is no better solutions than WordPress. Even though it can accommodate more complex websites, even e-commerce/product catalog sites, it’s best use is for simple, straight to the point solutions.
It features a very easy to use administration interface, thousands of plugins and themes. You can get a website up and running litterally in just a few hours.

Here’s a couple of very interesting reads for anyone interested to find out more.

Article 1 | Article 2 | Article 3

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Drupal being adopted by governments around the world for a variety of projects of different seizes and scope. Words such as openness, transparency and visibility are redefining the ways in which governments are structuring their administrations.
The Open Source social publishing platform Drupal is turning these concepts into reality with successful government projects popping up all over the place. Drupal’s modular framework allows for scallable and collaborative environments while maintaining the security and reliability governments are used to.
Here’s a list of recently launched government related website using Drupal.

Here at VerticalWave, we’ve just started helping government related agencies and organizations such as Echo Ontario: Improving Women’s Health In Ontario adopt Drupal painlessly and successfully. We’re looking forward to working with others in the near future lexapro 20 mg.

We’re excited to announce the release of the new <a title="Echo Ontario" href="http://www a fantastic read.echo-ontario.ca” target=”_blank”>Echo Ontario website & directory on Drupal CMS. Our team has worked tirelessly to deliver this new project on time and budget. Great job guys!
On this project we’ve also managed to integrate Drupal with Microsoft Dynamics CRM online. Real time communication and updating of Echo’s CRM with researcher and health professional profiles from Drupal. Another first for our team.
We’re becoming experts at integrating Drupal with SalesForce and Dynamics. Good times! ?

The whole team welcomes and is excited about the newly released Drupal 7.
Drupal 7 comes with a variety of framework improvements and opens new possiblities in terms of development and what can be achieved with the Drupal platform.

Drupal 7 is a truly revolutionary release that saw both the size and diversity of our contributor community grow exponentially. Through the formation of and strong coordination among the Usability, Accessibility, and Design teams, Drupal 7 addresses a number of our project’s longest-standing limitations and opens up access for more people to enjoy the strong web publishing framework we have all come to love.