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Web engineer certification and Bysoft’s certified engineers

Florence SONG — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:35:44 +0000

In the web technical industry, the engineers are the crucial part for the domain, and the certified engineers become more and more important for a web construction company. Here we will introduce the main international web technical certifications; they represent a symbol of high level web engineer.

Zend PHP 5:

Becoming PHP certified is a measure of your experience in the world of PHP. The goal of the Zend PHP Certification program is to allow PHP professionals to attain the “Zend Certified Engineer” designation. This is identical in concept to other well know certification programs such as “Microsoft’s Certified Professionals (MCP)” and the “Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP)” programs. The Zend PHP Certification program aims at creating a measure of distinction that employers can use to evaluate prospective employees. Becoming a Zend Certified Engineer will help you to be a better programmer, and it will most likely improve the chances of your resume standing out from among other applicants vying for the same position.
The exam is created by an Advisory Board made up of thought leaders in the PHP community. Because the exam is created with specific skills, knowledge and competencies that are matched to real-world job functions, Zend Certifications provide a measure of technical distinction that employers use to evaluate prospective employees.

Flex certification:

An Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) is a person who has demonstrated a professional level in proficiency with one or more Adobe software products. To become an ACE, you must pass one or more product-specific proficiency exams and agree to the ACE terms and conditions.

Zend Framework certification:

The Zend Framework Certification is an industry-wide standard that recognizes the attainment of a professional level of expertise in using Zend Framework . This certification is also a measure of distinction that employers use to evaluate prospective employees.
The exam is created by an Advisory Board made up of thought leaders in the PHP community. Because the exam is created with specific skills, knowledge and competencies that are matched to real-world job functions, Zend Certifications provide a measure of technical distinction that employers use to evaluate prospective employees.

eZ Publish certification:

The eZ certification program expands the services offered by eZ Systems by providing a suite of exams that can be taken by individuals to verify their skills with various aspects of eZ Publish.

My SQL certification:

MySQL certification lays the foundation for becoming a trusted and valuable resource for your company and customers. MySQL certifications are available for Developers, DBAs and for those specializing in MySQL Cluster technologies.

Bysoft is very proud to announce that more than half of its engineers are certified in Bysoft key technologies, we have until now more than 20 Zend PHP 5 certified engineers, and 3 eZ Publish certified engineers and 1 for each of Flex certification, Zend Framework and My SQL certifications, only in month of August, we have 8 more new certified colleagues:

Zend PHP 5?Lincoln, Tony, Jachie, Dean, Mickael, Joshua
EZ Publish: Cavin
My SQL: Chad

With the talent and professional skill of our technical team, Bysoft’s products stand out in the market, and Bysoft grow strongly with the engineers’ growth. We realized the management, operations, and technology’s improvement finally achieved a higher service quality.

eZ publish: Custom root node

Florence SONG — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:02:33 +0000

One of many key features of eZ publish is flexibility. You can customize almost anything from content structure to output presentation. In this short tutorial I will show how to specify a custom default root node class.
By default, eZ publish uses a root node ID 2 in content structure (“Content structure” tab) tree based on the folder class, and in many cases that is sufficient. However, sometimes we want to use our own custom class as the site’s front page. A custom class allows us to build a complex front page that uses a different layout than the rest of the site. Rather than extending the default folder class with attributes that are only used on the front page, creating a custom class gives us the flexibility to build a custom front page without impacting the rest of the site.
First we need to create new content class. You can define your new content class in the Administration Interface. Click the Setup tab, then select the Classes option from the left menu. I will not describe this process as it is very well explained in the eZ publish technical manual.
Note that your custom class must be marked as a ?container? in order to display content from within the content structure tree.
Once the content class is ready to use, create a new content object as an instance of your new class somewhere under the root node. Now we can swap the eZ publish root node with the newly created object. Click the left mouse button on the folder icon beside the root node folder name and select “Advanced->Swap with another node” from the context menu.

In browse mode choose the newly created object and click the “Select” button.

Done. Now you can edit your root node and populate the attributes of your custom class with content.
Next we need to configure the content structure tree.
Edit the file “settings/siteaccess/(your_admin_siteaccess)/contentstructuremenu.ini.append.php” and add your class to the list. Your configuration file should contain the following data:
[TreeMenu]
ShowClasses[]
ShowClasses[]=folder
ShowClasses[]=user_group
ShowClasses[]=custom_class
*/ ?>
Save your settings and clear the cache. After the page reloads, you should see your custom front page in the content structure, similar to the picture below:

Now you can assign a template to your custom class or make a node override for node ID 2 and make nice front page for your site.

How to make your B2C website stand out in China?

Florence SONG — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:48:08 +0000

To make a good B2C website that can stand out in China, we must to pay attention to two aspects: one is to make sure that your website uses correctly the basic technique for the web marketing, another is to choose an efficient supportive website platform for your business.

Maintain and change Key words, matching your website’s content, on time.
We all know that the higher ranking your e-commerce platform will have from a search engine, the more visitors your e-commerce platform will have. But the traffic is not our ultimate goal, our ultimate goal is to convert prospect into customer. If your key words and website’s content present a large difference, the prospects will be disappointed. They will visit your website without consuming, but you will still pay for a useless promotion.

Choose a good eCommerce (e-commerce) platform
Nowadays, we can find many types of online service development for your eCommerce platform. However, not all the methods can solve your problem. To ensure that your online business does the best exhibition of your products, the Magento platform is one of the most professional and most efficient solutions. Many successful entrepreneurs begin to use Magento platform to develop their online business, because Magento really brings them the advantages which cannot be ignored.
You can check the advantages of Magento in our blog of July 15th, 2010:

http://blogen.bysoftchina.com/technologies/magento/web-application-development-magento-ecommerce/161

Edit simply your website’s content to make it understandable
We may encounter such a situation: we chose to go to the one website and decided to buy something, but due to the website’s content structure, it was difficult to find out the payment procedure, so we gave it up. This loss of conversion is really regrettable. Therefore, make your website be attractive and simple. This is one of the most common drawbacks of Chinese websites. So, if your website in China did this point well, it will be fresh air.

Update in time your website
The update process is required to increase the dynamic of your website. This work can not only allow your customers to see your latest news, but also give you more chance for your search engines ranking.

Do not display excessive information
Sometimes we see some online shopping platform displaying some very attractive advertising, especially about prices, such as “From 10 rmb”. Then, the customers come in and discover later that only a few products are at that price. So they leave without purchasing. In China, the consumers like to buy things in promotion; they may be attracted by your promotion slogan. So if you give them wrong information, it will require a duplication of efforts without any results.

Have a good knowledge about the different characteristics of search engines
In China, both foreign and local search engines are used, such as Google and Baidu. Google has never given you a good ranking even if you have paid for, so check with Baidu since it’s not the same situation. So you should know more about this domain to ensure that your web advertising is enough efficient.

A good start about implementing your own product type

Florence SONG — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:59:52 +0000

Magento support different product types by default. But sometimes, in order to meet customer’s requirements, you may ask yourself “Do I have to create a new dedicated product type to handle this?”
It is of course possible to define new product types in order to customize the logic of your product. For example, different price rules or cart logic, product view detail page, etc…
Here are some clues, to make sure you won’t forget any important step.

1. what are the critical steps to not forget:
a. First, define the differences between the new product’s type compare to simple product’s type (in order to not code something that Magento already handles, we are not here to re-invent the wheel!)
b. Define the new type (app/code/local///etc/config.xml)
c. Custom product model inherited from abstract product model
d. Custom price model inherited from abstract product price model

2. Problems you might meet:
a. Don’t forget to define the model of catalog data index, else the products that come from this new type won’t be indexed (searchable)
b. Sometimes you may have to modify the mage_catalog module comparing the product type code (some logic can’t be defined at the module level).

3. Is Magento really “module oriented” to implement such a modification:
a. You must always put all the code into one module because the modifications might affect the standard product types (be carefull while rewriting mage_catalog..) (Rewrite the blocks and model of mage_catalog module in the custom module).

Finally, here are some important tips:
a. Make sure the customer really needs a new product type. Usually they want to keep the standard catalog functionalities on front and backend, and still wants some specific behavior. If the specific part can not be handled with attributes system (or slight modifications..), then developing your own product type may be the solution.

b. Create new product type is not that complex. But you will have to customize a lot of logic in new product’s model according to the differences between the different product types.

c. There is not that much documentation about product type on Magento wiki. Having a deep look at the bundle module (Magento core module) is a really good start to understand what you ll have to face. Also, have a look at the really usefull example on Inchoo blog: http://inchoo.net/ecommerce/magento/how-to-create-a-new-product-type-in-magento/.

Web application development & Magento Ecommerce

Florence SONG — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:45:49 +0000

In today’s world, commercial transactions take place mainly online and an apt answer to these requirements are the e-commerce platforms that have become so common. There are still the challenge to develop bigger and better e-commerce applications that simplify the processes of web application development. Magento e-commerce and web application development platform have already offered solutions to these problems’. Here we can see some basic points about Magento e-commerce’s advantages.

Integration of content and new features

Magento integrates third-party vendor solutions easily, so a Magento website can save you a lot of time and resources.
The functions such as product labels, shipping address, or multi-product comparison system, are included in the existing Magento system, you can find out more.

Professional and Community Support

Unlike other open source solutions, Magento offers professional, reliable support, you can also ask the communities for assistance. They use all the feedback to improve its operation. The platform’s open system allows you to easily upgrade the service.

Better advertising

Raising your conversion rate and having more traffic, you can use a better search engine optimization advantages. Your customer’s feedback and recommendation is your biggest potential customers, so to have a platform to receive more opportunity for reach your target is important. And word of mouth advertising on the strength of the text is a free and effective way to sell products.

Complete scalability

After a time regardless of site or year of growth, you do not need to worry about you system having problems. Magento offers complete scalability. It allows customers to understand software engineering. With specific hosting plan, customers get more knowledge about the system, thereby enabling them to repair and add new features, as the case may require them.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction should be the top priority in e-commerce. Shopping cart through the provision of effective, comprehensive search and easy clearing functions, user-friendly web site can guarantee your customers’ satisfaction. Magento e-commerce payment and accept a wide range of international currencies to help your customers to purchase abroad easy.

The Interview Between Shanghai Business Review & BysoftChina

Florence SONG — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:29:41 +0000

First, thanks for the interview invitation from Shanghai Business Review, which is a monthly English-language magazine that provides business information and market intelligence to senior executives at Foreign Invested Enterprises in Shanghai and for those looking to enter into the Shanghai market. More info? Please refer to the below Q&A:

Q: Can you tell me about Bysoft China and your presence in China?
A: BYSOFT CHINA is a comprehensive web agency based in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuhan, China. We are devoted to build engaging websites through expert technology, clean and usable design, and a passion for the Web, with the interest of our customers always in focus. As a subsidiary of French group BYSOFT INTERNATIONAL, we bring an international background to our local experience and practice to deliver the performing websites needed today.

Q: How long have you been operating in China?
A: Bysoft has been operating in China since the end of 2003. First as a production center, then starting from the end of 2007 as a service provider in China, but also for customers established overseas.

Q: How big is your presence here?
A: Today we count over 65 employees in China. We have 3 offices: Guangzhou our headquarters and main production center, Shanghai our sales office, and we recently opened a new production center in Wuhan.
(More details about our presence in China on http://www.bysoftchina.com/english/about-bysoft-china/the-agency )

Q: How is China a growth market for you? Why did you first enter the market, and in what ways is it important for future growth?
A: The number of Internet users in China is already over 6 times the population in France! And the web industry in China is still very young but getting mature especially in ecommerce. As the online economy is more and more important and globalized and Chinese companies become more educated on its potentials, we expect the need in professional web services to grow, and we want to be a part of it.
Also as China is a key market for many multinationals, our unique position as a foreign-culture company with local implantation and recognized experience gives us the opportunity to work with top-tier clients and on innovative projects, from which the whole group can benefit, especially in terms of image.

Q: Can you talk to me about some of your most notable past and/or current projects in development? What are your expansion plans, if any?
A: We are working with various types of clients, from SMEs to government institutions and multinational groups, whether based in China or overseas, Chinese or foreign- operated.
Especially among our projects, we are proud of our collaboration with the Chengdu Tianfu Software Park, for whom we have already released 3 websites including their main portal (www.tianfusoftwarepark.com), and 3 more under way. This is a very good example of our know-how and how we apply it in China: multilingual content management system with English, Chinese and Japanese, multi-channel information publishing (article, news, RSS, newsletters, etc…), and an interactive 3D map.
In the past we have also achieved some complex portal for the French Chamber of Commerce in China (www.ccifc.org), with many different types and levels of information, a member area to access the directory of French companies in China, and a distributed edition workflow to allow the 6 branches of the Chamber of Commerce to animate the website in a collaborative and reactive manner.
On the ecommerce side, we recently released the Greater China e-business platform of Pull-In (www.pull-in.asia), a French brand of fashion high-end underwear, with 3 websites targeting 3 regions of Greater China (Mainland, Hong-Kong and Taiwan). And today, we are working with Kaiser + Kraft, a leading European group of warehouse equipment, to recast their ecommerce platform for China and Asia.
Regarding expansions plans: we recently opened a new office in Wuhan to boost our production capacity. After 2 years of testing the market in the middle of the international crisis, we now expect to grow faster and maybe expand to northern China in the future.

Q: What advantages or benefits do you think being a French company brings to the China market?
A: At the beginning, as a small young company, being French has helped us to win our first important projects in China, thanks to the large and active French business community here.
We also often are a provider of choice for companies doing ecommerce between China and France, or China and overseas in general, as we have the people to understand them and communicate in their preferred language, and have the necessary experience of their target market to give them the best advice and service in general they can get.
Then, in our industry, graphic design is a strong selling point, and our French culture certainly helps for that. Not only foreign accounts but also Chinese accounts who are looking for a high-end website trust us naturally with their design. In the same idea, France also has a long experience in open source technologies used in website development (ex: PHP), which are now becoming popular in China. Bysoft is for example the first company in China to ever have certified engineers in such technology and today is recognized as the most expert company in PHP development in China.
Finally, being a subsidiary of an international group is a factor of reassurance for our customers who are looking for a long-term relationship with a stable provider who can give them the quality products and relationship they are looking for.

Q: What are your projections for business in 2010 and moving forward?
A: Following our first series of successful cases thanks to our expertise and position inherited from our France headquarters, we now want to focus more on the SMEs in China. We just released our new website www.bysoftchina.com to that aim, and plan to offer a wider range of services and become a reference website provider in China.

China’s online shopping market will reach 713 billion in 2012, which takes 3.5% share of total retail business

Florence SONG — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:52:06 +0000

According to Analysys International Industrial Database Publishing “China online retail market trend forecast 2009-2012″ shows that China’s online retail market in the double promotion of the traditional economy turn to internet and economic crisis, market growth will be kept at a high level , Analysys International estimated that by 2012, online retail sales in China will reach 713 billion, according to China’s total retail sales of social consumer goods optimistic estimates, online retail market will account for the proportion of the overall market size will reach 3.5%.
The quick market growth can not be seperated from the mature industry chain: on the one hand, the Internet has gradually become the important consumption channel among the core consumers, more and more people has transferred to the online shopping instead of the off line shopping; on the other hand, more traditional production and distribution companies starting to focus on internet business channels and accelerate online channel layout and control; In addition, the appropriate storage, logistics, payment, marketing, service and other related sectors indicate the complementary development together with the online retail market.

online shopping forcast for the year 2012

Alipay Processing in Shopmaker Solution

Florence SONG — Wed, 26 May 2010 08:37:03 +0000

Alipay.com Co.,Ltd (AliPay) is China’s leading online payment service by both number of users and total transaction volume. A member of the Alibaba Group, it enables individuals and businesses to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online. AliPay works like an escrow service, solving the issue of settlement risk in China. To meet the requirements of our clients, Bysoft launchs the ecommerce solution-Shopmaker which has integrated Alipay perfectly. Let’s go through and enjoy the full alipay payment processing.

Case 1: Pay immediately once order placed

Actions in front-end:
Step 1: Select Alipay as payment method and place order

select alipay

Step 2: After order placed, the user will be redirected to Alipay interface, select to use Alipay or Bank online to pay

redirect alipay interface

Step 3: Enter Alipay account info and confirm to pay

confirm to pay

Order processing in back-end:
Step 1: A new order will be recorded in back-end with status “Pending”; a “New order” email will be sent to the customer automatically.

new order

Step 2: After payment with Alipay, an invoice will be auto generated, and a “New invoice” email sent to customer automatically.

new invoice

Step 3: The order status will be changed to “processing” automatically.

order processing

Case 2: Not pay immediately after order placed

Situation 1: login to alipay account after order placed

Actions in front-end:

Step 1: Select Alipay as payment method and place order

select alipay

Step 2: After order placed, the user will be redirected to Alipay interface, select to use Alipay or Bank online to pay

redirect alipay interface

Step 3: Enter Alipay account info but not pay, the order info will be recorded in Alipay account.

order in alipay

Results in backend:
A new order is recorded in back-end with status “pending”, “New order” email sent to customer automatically

new order

Next step to pay the order:
Customer login to alipay account and confirm to pay

confirm to pay

Order processing in backend:
The same as case 1, an invoice will be auto generated in back-end, “New invoice” email sent to customer automatically, and the order status changed to “processing”.

Situation 2: not login to alipay account after order placed

Actions in frontend:
Step 1: Select Alipay as payment method and place order

select alipay

Step 2: After order placed, the user will be redirected to Alipay interface, but not enter any account info

redirect alipay interface

In this case, there is not any order info recorded in customer’s Alipay account.

Results in backend:

A new order is recorded in back-end with status “pending”, “New order” email sent to customer automatically

new order

Next step to pay the order:
In order to pay this kind of order, customer can contact the eshop owner to get his account information, and then make the payment through Alipay or in other means.
Order processing in backend:
Step 1: After received the payment, the eshop administrator can create an invoice manually by clicking the button “Invoice” in the corresponding order

create invoice

Step 2: Edit the invoice, and set whether “Email copy of invoice” or not to customer

edit invoice

Step 3: After invoice generated, the order status will be changed to “processing” automatically.

order processing

Magento Professional Released!

Florence SONG — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:07:14 +0000

In response to requests and feedback from Magento merchants and partners, Magento provides Professional as a guaranteed product which is sold through their solution partners.
Magento Professional provides the same core functionality found in all current Magento eCommerce platforms, with additional features not found in Magento Community:

* Increase Customer Retention with the Reward Points module
* Increase Revenue with the ability to sell Gift Certificates/Cards
* Increase Customer Service and Satisfaction with the Customer Store Credit module
* Increase Security and Peace of Mind with Enhanced Data Encryption

Below you can find the magento platforms’ comparison:

magento platform comparison

Want to have a try? Please click the picture below:

demo the store front

demo the back-end

The Subsite of Chengdu Tianfu Software Park Released-On Joomla!

Florence SONG — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:02:58 +0000

Tianfu subsite1, or Human Resourcs Solution Center has been developped and released online. It is a standard content management system(CMS) solution. Clean design with slideshow feature on home page presents quick information to users.

tianfusoftware-humanresourcesolutioncenter

More info? Please see at http://www.tianfusoftwarepark.com/hrsc/index.php