We are pleased to announce the launch of our new Client Support Portal. The support portal allows our clients submit and trace all technical support issues related to their websites. The new support portal offers an ability to quickly view submitted requests, trace their status, add attachments, and comment on follow up actions. The support portal sends automated email notifications and reminders, providing an added convenience of hands-free project management.

The Joomla Bliss Support Portal currently includes the following features:

Software as a Service (SaaS) is the term that has gone mainstream in the last two years. SaaS is a delivery model for software needs. Essentially, it is "renting" or "leasing" parts or all of your IT infrastructure: servers, email, software applications for accounting, document management, etc. etc.

While we don't dispute the fact that in certain situations renting or leasing can be the right decision, it certainly does not fit all businesses all the time. And yet - this is where everyone is going, and going fast.

According to report published by ZDNet magazine, in March last year, Gartner forecast that worldwide SaaS revenue would reach $14.5 billion in 2012 — a 17.9% increase over 2011's $12.5bn. This healthy growth rate is set to continue, according to the research company, which predicts a $22.1bn SaaS market in 2015.

In this post we attempt to swim against the current and argue that SaaS is a poor business model for a large number of businesses. As the first step, let us take a look at the main pros and cons that are typically assigned to SaaS.

One of the articles on web design published by Smashing Magazine provides some useful insights on recent changes in the web design field affected by mobile devices.

The article makes many valid points, such as mouse click versus taps, etc. Those details are important to keep in mind when designing a website.The presentation is good and so is the conclusion. But there is one point concerning the main design principle that caught our attention. Here is what the author is saying:

"The way we designed our websites until recently was by putting a header with the logo and navigation at the top, putting the subnavigation on the left, putting some widgets on the right, and putting the footer at the bottom. When all of that was done, we’d cram the content into the little space that was left in the middle. All of the things we created first — the navigation, the widgets, the footer — they all helped the visitor to leave the page. But the visitor probably wanted to be there! That was weird. It was as if we were not so confident in our own content and tried our best to come up with something else that our guests might like.

But rather than pollute the page with all kinds of links to get people out of there, we should really focus on that thing in the middle. Make sure it works. Make sure it looks good. Make sure it’s readable. Make sure people will understand it and find it useful. Perhaps even delight them with it!

Once you’re done with the content, you can start to ask yourself whether this content needs a header. Or a logo. Or subnavigation. Does it need navigation at all? And does it really need all of those widgets? The answer to that last question is “No.” I’ve never understood what those widgets are for. I have never seen a useful widget. I have never seen a widget that’s better than white space."

Well, it's just like saying, why do you need a roof and a wall and an entrance, focus on the living room. That's all that matters, your guests will be there after all.

An interesting moment we found is how everything has to be linked to "confidence" these days.

Companies are trying to display a summary of their website's content on their home page for a reason, to make sure users don't miss something important, not because they have no confidence in what's in the center of the page. Granted, it often creates a cluttered look, hence a granular top navigation can be useful to mitigate this.

But in any case, it is not a power game. Confidence in one's content has nothing to do with sidebar widgets and additional navigation links. Without navigation, your users will be confused.

If you run a focused website, a blog on a particular and rather narrow topic - one living room solution might work.

But if your website has a repository of documents, tools, etc .- your users will be utterly confused. Recently, I was talking to someone who was trying to locate a particular item on the shopify.ca website. This site has the above-mentioned living room design, it does not have a traditional navigation, so clicking back and forth and scrolling down endlessly is the only - annoying! - way.

The use of white space is, indeed, a good thing. No arguments here. But "never seen a widget better than a white space"? Huh? How about calendar of events? Weather storm monitoring? Traffic congestion report?

So please, confident web author of smashing magazine, for those of us who is used to structure and logic, let us keep some navigation, at least one level somewhere! Not all concent can - or should - be reduced to a flat one-level menu.

We noticed that a lot of websites found a way out of this trendy pickle by finding a heavy use of the left-site navigation. Not sure what's the difference. If you are going to use a hierarchical navigation, you might as well provide one common point of reference and use a drop-down top menu like we did before. 

Web design trends are constantly changing. Just like with mobile devices, websites are typically upgraded every three years to stay current. Are you wondering what are the most recent new web design trends? We attempt to present our summary below, please read on.

1. Flat or flattened navigation structure
   

   Perhaps influenced by the simplicity of WordPress templates, one of the most notable web design trends is a flattened menu structure. Often times the fly-out or drop-down options for the main menu are replaced with additional line of links above or below the main menu. For large websites, this often results in confusing navigation where breadcrumbs (or hierarchical path) is hard to establish. We don't foresee the flyout menus would go away. Some websites create an impression of a flat navigation by having only a few top menu tabs and adding huge on-point mega menus (as shown on the last screen shot in this section).

   
   
   
   
   
2. Heavy use of graphical elements 
   

   Images, images, more images. Vector images. Icons. Cartoons. These days it is certainly a feast time for photographs and graphic designers! One of the most noticeable web design trends is the heavy use of graphical elements. You can't have a page without an image or two on it. Only people over 40 will attemtp to read half a page without any graphics on it. Even serious companies use vector and cartoon-like images. Icons, diagrams are a must. Illustrate or die. We like images too, so thumbs up on this web design trend.

   
   
   
3. Typography is king
   

   Another highly noticeable web design trend is the use of contrasting typography. Often, page titles or module headers are presented in huge fonts, with subtitles or text next to them in much smaller fonts for contrast. In the past, it was customary to use one, maybe two font types. Not anymore, the typography is not restricted anymore. We saw the use of up to five different font types on one page. If done well, this can look good. However, the roundish nature of the most popular fonts make the overall effect somewhat juvenille.

   
4. Use of bold contrasting colors. Pink is huge
   

   The disco style spread to web design trends. Bold colors are on. Contrasts are on. Even websites of large consulting companies with conservative strictly-business reputation begin to look like children coloring books. Below are examples of corporate websites of two largest consulting companies in the United States. When not overdone, use of bold contrasting colors can be very visually pleasing. Overall, our thumbs up on this web design trend.

   
   
   
5. Large images, teasers and calls to action buttons
   

   As in case with typography when section and title headers are purposefully oversized, images too are often closeups. The same goes for buttons. Large buttons with bold colors for calls to action are one of the most noticeable web design trends. We think it is good to show what you want your visitors to do on your website and show it clearly, so thumbs up for this web design trend.

   
   
   
6. Layering of images. Use of transclucent images
   

   This is one of the most visually pleasing web design trends. Modern websites often have a central main slider with images that are layered one over the other. And in addition, the whole slider can be layered onto the background image. When done well, the effect can be stunning. Our thumbs up for this web design trend.

   
   
   
7. Boxes, boxes, more boxes
   

   Windows 8 is a good example of this web design trend. But the box-ed design has been getting popular before Windows 8 was released. We are not surprised, it is easy to create for web designers and appropriate for mobile devices, boxes are probably here to stay. Not our favourite web design trend, though.

   
   
   
   
   
8. Long home pages
   

   Once again, influenced by the tablet technology, home pages are now designed to be scrolled and scrolled. Many boxes stuffed in rows and columns on a long page are meant to be convenient for mobile devices where you don't want to load another page unnecessarily. This can be used for SEO purposes but at some expense of the overall design and style. Some websites are just one long page. One of the latest website templates by Joomlart Ja OnePage, for example, is a good example. We noticed that Shopify's site is done this way too (they may be changing their site often, though). We find navigation gets confusing is the site has more than several pages. Not our favourite web design trend.

9. Large stylized footers
   

   A couple years ago, footers contained a copyright statement and a link to a Site Map and maybe a line of the company contact information. Not anymore. The current web design trends demand fancy and very busy footers, often times with a large map image, newsletter subscription box, full address, and a summary of the site's main content areas. We find that there is no harm in this trend and stylized footers can add some zest to a plain website. Our thumbs up for this web design trend.

   
   
   
10. Use of white space
    

    Because of the huge images, icons and fonts, it is not surprising that one of modern web design trends calls for generous use of white space between all elements. It is must easier to scroll and read fast if all sections are spaced away from one another. Bullet points are easy to grasp at a glance. Once again, good for teenagers and for busy executives alike. Thumbs up on this web design trends.

    

There are other new and trendy web design elements, of course, but we thought that these 10 are the most noticeable ones. Feel free to add to the list, let us know what you consider the most notable web design trends nowadays.

A new website with high visibility on search engines might seem prohibitively expensive to small business owners.