Squiz NZ Newsletter April 2009
Down with licence fees! Search for savings leading to Open Source
Open Source Software (OSS) is getting great press. The recession-driven search for efficiencies is leading governments and businesses to open source solutions. Some recent examples:
- UK government backs open source
- And from the USA, Calls for open source government
- Gartner: “Adoption of open-source software (OSS) ….becoming pervasive…”
- Bad economy is good for open source
And there’s more to Open Source than lower costs
Some findings from the 2009 Future of Open Source Survey. The top four factors that make Open Source Software attractive are:
- lower cost
- security
- no vendor lock-in
- better quality.
Certainly, Squiz is growing rapidly on the adoption of our Open Source enterprise CMS MySource Matrix by governments, corporates and universities around the world. We now have close to 200 employees in five countries.
Find out what Open Source means for information management today
Squiz International Managing Director John-Paul Syriatowicz has been discussing the issues with industry analysts, and government and corporate leaders. Now we’re hosting a breakfast briefing on April 22, focusing on the opportunities and challenges of Open Source for information management.
The briefing is for CEOs and CIOs, and attendance is by invitation only. To request an invitation, contact Kathy Olsen, phone (04) 805 00098, ext 861.
Open Source Enterprise CMS Seminar
Planning a CMS project for your organisation? Interested in the state of the art in enterprise web content management? Register for a free, half-day CMS seminar.
Welcome Matt
Matthijs (Matt) Mourits has joined our team of MySource Matrix implementation specialists.
Matt is an Internet professional with 12 years industry experience, most recently as a web developer and technical consultant for LBi Lost Boys, one of the most prominent creative Internet bureaus in the Netherlands, and as Senior System Administrator for the Netherlands’ National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science.
Training: what's on
Advanced web editing for content authors / editors
Our new MATR 102 Advanced WYSIWYG course runs for the first time on April 27. It teaches advanced web editing techniques using features of the WYSIWYG editor in MySource Matrix.
Web statistics course a hit with webmasters
Our new STATS 103 course has proved highly valuable, equipping participants to interpret web statistics and the basics of Search Engine Optimisation.
“…you could see how to apply it to your website immediately….I think anyone who uses the stats programme would benefit from seeing how to get the most out of it. Highly practical, relatable, well instructed and constructed course.” Jenny Brownlee, MTA.
Register early to secure your place on our next STATS 103 course on June 3.
Upcoming courses
-
STATS 103 - Website Statistics
This course seeks to demystify web statistics for website owners. Allowing site owners to collect and interpret information on how users are interacting with their website using reports produced by two popular statistical packages, AWStats and Google Analytics. -
MINI 101 - MySource Matrix Mini
This course teaches users the basics of how to use the Administration Interface of MySource Mini, including day-to-day tasks such as creating pages and basic content, and more complex features such as workflow. -
MATR 202 - MySource Matrix CMS Administrator
This course extends the topics covered in MATR 201 to include all administrative principles in MySource Matrix. This is for people who need to administer all aspects of MySource Matrix. -
MATR 201 - MySource Matrix Content Administration
This course teaches basic administration tasks on assets in a web site. This is for people who will need to administer site permissions and manage user access. -
MATR 102 - Advanced WYSIWYG
This course extends the topics covered in the MySource Matrix Fundamentals course and focuses on advanced features of the WYSIWYG content type. April 27 -
MATR 101 - MySource Matrix Fundamentals
This course teaches users the basics of how to use the Administration Interface of MySource Matrix, including day-to-day tasks such as creating pages and basic content, and more complex features such as workflow.
View Squiz New Zealand Training Courses / Training Schedule / Training Registration Form
Enquiries, email training@squiz.co.nz, or contact: Fran Denton, phone (04) 801 0098.
Website accessibility training
Version 2.0 of the New Zealand Government Web Standards 2.0 was released in March. A major change is adoption of the W3C's WCAG2.0 standards.
Accessibility specialist Bruce Aylward of W 3 A will run a series of training courses at Squiz’s training lab in Wellington. Each course is a practical, hands-on guide to complying with one of the three WCAG 2.0 priority levels.
Course dates
- Thursday 7th May – WCAG v2.0 Priority 1 Checkpoints
- Thursday 14th May – WCAG v2.0 Priority 2 Checkpoints
- Thursday 28th May – WCAG v2.0 Priority 3 Checkpoints
- Thursday 4th June – WCAG v2.0 Priority 1 Checkpoints
- Thursday 11th June – WCAG v2.0 Priority 2 Checkpoints
- Thursday 18th June – WCAG v2.0 Priority 3 Checkpoints
Course cost: $500 + gst per day.
For enquiries and registrations, email W3A.
MySource Matrix tip: make your site faster with a slicker parse file
The faster you can make the parse file for websites running on MySource, the quicker web pages will load on your users’ browsers.
This is because the parse file is used by Matrix every time that a user views a web page, as it is the template for the HTML of the site. The parse file contains a combination of HTML and MySource Matrix tags. The Matrix tags make the website dynamic, as they bring through the content that is entered into Matrix.
Here are some tips for speeding up your parse file:
- Unrestricted Access setting for files
Set CSS and Javascript files to ‘Unrestricted Access’ on Details screen. Apache will serve file instead of Matrix the result beign a faster parse file. - Use as few CSS and Javascript files as possible
Each of these has an time overhead to load it... Less files = Less overhead = Faster page load time - If possible, put <script> tags at the bottom of HTML
The CSS and images will load before Javascript and the page will seem to load faster to user. - Have as few MySource_Area tags as possible.
The more MySource_Area tags there are in the parse file, the longer it will take to make changes to it. Similarly, minimise the number of parse file customisations if possible. Again, the more customisations a parse file has the longer it will take to commit.
DIY: MySource Matrix resources
http://www.matrix.squiz.net/download/documentation| Resources | Where you can find it... |
|---|---|
| MySource Matrix website:
| |
| Download MySource Matrix under GPL licence | |
| MySource Matrix User manuals (unrestricted access) | |
| MySource Matrix Support Forums (unrestricted access to browse; user account required to post) | http://www.matrix.squiz.net/resources/support-forums
|
| SSV module users manuals | To access SSV client-only user manuals, you need to first create a user account for the Support Forums, then contact support@squiz.co.nz with your Support Forum user account details to request access to the SSV manuals. |
Lights out for Earthhour
On March 28 Squiz staff in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Poland turned off all non-essential lighting and appliances at work, and offed the lights at home, for EarthHour ‘09. Squiz staff have participated in EarthHour since its inception in 2007. According to the WWF, over 3,943 communities in over 88 countries made a symbolic stand for the planet, making Earth Hour the world’s biggest voluntary action environmental event.
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