Interoperability of Public Clouds: Case of Azure and Joomla CMS Migration

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The features built in Azure for rapidly setting up and deploying various well-known CMS, collaboration, e-commerce and other  packages involving multiple components (application, database, web server etc) is really great. Work which could take many hours by IT specialists in the past can now be done in couple minutes by less advanced experts. However, what happens if a customer wants to migrate out a solution from Azure to another cloud or simply a Web hosting provider? The need might be there due to cheaper price of the services or other preferences. Would Azure allow you to migrate out the solution with similar speed and simplicity as when deploying? Here is a summary of hands-on experience in migrating out Joomla content management system from Azure to Web hosting provider which supports widely known industry tools in Web hosting mentioned in the article.

What is Joomla CMS?

For those who might not know, Joomla is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing Web content and widely used by content publishers and Web designers worldwide. For more technical folks - Joomla is written in PHP, uses object-oriented programming, stores data in a MySQL and includes many features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization.
According to Wikipedia, as of February 2014, Joomla has been downloaded over 50 million times. It is estimated to be the second most used content management system on the Internet after WordPress.

General Migration Steps for Joomla
To migrate Joomla from one server (this can be Azure service) to another (new Web hosting company) there are generally few steps as described fully here and summarized as follows.
1) Copying Application Files with FTP
- Download application files from server (Azure) to your computer.
- Upload application files from your computer to the new server
These operation often done by well known industry tools as FileZilla, Cute FTP used by Web masters and admins.
2) Copying the Database with phpMyAdmin
- Exporting a copy of the database (such as Azure service) to your computer
- Importing the copy into a new database
3) Changing Joomla Configuration to point to the new database etc.

Azure and Application Migration
The Microsoft's tool available in Azure for copying files is WebMatrix. In order to use it for accessing  files, a publisher settings file had to be imported. Using 3rd party FTP application was not possible or clear/straightforward due to this setup required. WebMatrix has a function to Download site (to local). However, it always got stuck without any message at the stage seen as in the below screenshot. Another option (besides file download) is to set up the whole environment for Joomla with installing MySQL DB, XAMP etc. locally. While this also did not work out to the fullest due to WebMatrix stopping execution, it somehow allowed to download the application files.

Azure and DB Migration

While database is a critical component of any CMS architecture, it is not directly available in Azure portal for any operations. The only link to it is under website settings as seen in the screenshot. If clicked, it brings you to 3rd party service called ClearDB and might raise at least couple of questions if not more. After some time of research you might end up installing one of the tools like  Oracle's MySQL Workbench, Sequel Pro for Mac OS X, or Navicat to access your database and copy it out locally from Azure and ClearDB framework. While Workbench did not work out well Navicat was a relatively short learning curve to get the job done and allows transactions between both Azure and the new hosting provider.

In Conclusion
While setting up CMS (such as Joomla) on Azure might take just minutes, migrating out is not so straight-forward and can take up to one day or more depending on the technical experience. If you are not sure about staying with Azure service forever, it might be wise for any organisation or individual to consider migrating out plan as well since Web site hosting market is very competitive with possibility of finding better value elsewhere.

Social Has Been Around Since Ancient Times: Insights from the Head of Instagram in Japan

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Thanks to event organized by EN World, I had a chance to listen and talk with the head of Instagram in Japan, Mr. Tsuguhide Nagase. Instagram is part of Facebook but runs as a separate service. What’s unique about this network and why it could be relevant to users and advertisers in the mobile-first era?

Social is Nothing New

Social connectivity has been a part of human nature since ancient times - sharing things while having a tea or nonverbally while at campfire. Humans have always been messengers and story tellers. Thus, people have always been publishers as well. What has changed is the media – same behavior but in a whole new world.

Today, people look at mobile instead of TV. Time spent on mobile is significantly increasing in Japan. From 2009 to 2013 it has grown by 2.5 times while 4 times among those in the age of their 20ies. Usage of mobile is 1.5 times higher than that of PC. Trend of using mostly one device at a time is also increasing due to larger screens available for mobile devices. Mobile is the preferred screen in Japan. Facebook and Instagram are not social tools – they are marketing and branding tools. Instagram is in the business of branding. As of today, Instagram has 300 million monthly active users.

The Contributors
There are 2-3 groups of users on Instagram. Instagrammers – just upload pics and enjoy community. Instant meet is an activity where community can gather in a physical location to share and understand how nice and creative pics were made. It is not a drinking party.

Another group is famous users - celebrities. The number of followers is also affected by the actual artistic sense of the photos they upload. People will not follow if their pics are not nice. Famous users can also be organizations like National Geographic, Starbucks who use the service for branding. Getting more followers means creating great images rather than just clicking to like others and exchanging follows. As of today, Instagram has 70 million number of photos contributed a day and 2.5 billion likes a day.

In Branding Business

In the mobile-first world, the power of user’s thumb – tap or skip means that an ad needs to be very good at first impression and should have creative impact. What you saw is important. 99% of people who saw a Facebook ad and then bought a product in a store never clicked on that ad at all. They remember the impression and make the transaction later. Therefore, Instagram is focused on branding and awareness via images rather than click-through rates. Here, images are universal language. Therefore, it is no wonder that from the beginnings of the service, 70% of the users are coming from outside of the US from various geographies.

If a company publishes nice images unrelated directly to their trademark, those can attract followers who can also become customers via overall brand awareness. For example, Louis Vuitton often publishes images not linked directly to their trademark or promotions. Burberry can publish images of London. Then London could potentially tag with Burberry in the user’s mind etc.

Facebook and Instagram ads are different. Facebook targeting is based and follows click-through rates. Instagram is focused on creative images and the measurement would be different. Instagram will start advertising services in Japan this year. One of important principles will be to maintain good user experience.