News

Overview

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Latest SMG News

2015-01-23:

SMG completed the transition from a localized electronic hardware PBX phone system to a cloud based PBX system. Of particular importance to all of our personnel, colleagues, associates, clients, prospects, etc is:

  • The SMG PBX management console can be accessed by any computing device anywhere in the world with internet access.
  • The SMG PBX is not affected by power disruptions at any SMG locations.
  • All SMG phones including the main switchboard are answered anywhere in the world that there is a satisfactory internet wifi or data connection.
  • All worldwide calls are local to the SMG number called, currently:
    • +1-604-669-4310: Canada main; Voice
    • +1-604-307-4312: Canada mobile; Text Voice
    • +1-650-539-9410: USA mobile; Text Voice
    • +1-425-440-9523:  USA alternate; Text Voice
    • +1-650-385-8800: USA alternate; Voice
    • New localized numbers will be added as SMG grows
  • Each individual on the phone system has a unique extension and a unique voicemail connected to their extension.
  • All voicemail is converted to an audio and text file. These files are emailed immediately upon completion of the voicemail to the addresses linked to the called extension.
  • Each individual has whatever combination of VoIP phones best meets their needs:
    • Conventional headsets
    • Conventional wireless headsets
    • PCs, laptops, tablets… : SIP phones, softphones
    • Smartphones: SIP phones, softphones

2015-04-18:

The SMG website has been designed using permalinks. Each page (or post) on the website has a unique permalink or name that is based on the title of the page. Examples, using the format “PAGE TITLE: permalink”, follow:

When moving around a website that uses permalinks, just add the permalink of the page you wish to visit to the end of the URL of your current location, push the “RETURN “key, and you will be taken to that page wherever it is located on the website. No matter how the website organization is changed, the permalink of any page is permanent, and will automatically locate the page you are looking for. You do not have to remember the actual URL of the page; your website bookmarks can have the following format:

  • Go to any webpage using permalinks: URL “(of any current webpage)”/permalink “(of any go to webpage)”

2014-08-25:

All SMG website tables have been made responsive by placing them in a scrollable container. If a device (laptop, PC, smartphone, tablet, etc) screen is able to publish a whole table, the container is invisible; the content of the table is scrollable using the scrolling functionality of the device. If a device screen is not able to publish a whole table, the table container becomes horizontally scrollable. Any table is vertically scrollable on any device using the  scrolling functionality of the device.

2017-04-12:

The SMG website, like almost all websites today, is built using a CMS like WordPress.

To optimize webpage load times, the CMS must use a caching plugin like WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache;  and a CDN like CloudFlare, MaxCDN, Rackspace Cloud Files. In a computer, a cache is a place to temporarily store data. Active data is often cached in order to reduce load times. Caching plugins work by saving dynamically generated HTML files on the CMS server; these static files are stored in and served from the plugin cache whenever a webpage request is made, rather than reloading all of the dynamic PHP scripts. The result is that webpages load faster.

A CDN is a collection of servers located around the world that optimally caches the latest “plugin cached” version of a website from the CMS server; this includes the static content of a website like images, CSS, JavaScript. A browser webpage request is automatically routed to the dynamically closest CDN server. This helps the webpage load much more quickly. In addition, because the content is loaded from many servers in separate locations, bursts of traffic are less likely to cause issues, because the burst is spread out over hundreds of servers. When a frequently accessed website is revisited, chances are that the browser will have many of the website files stored within its cache. This means that the browser needs to receive only new files from the CDN, resulting in much faster load times. Whenever webpages are changed, new plugin cache files are generated and distributed to the CDN. Whenever a website is revisited, unless the browser cache is cleared, the browser version might not be the latest CDN version of a webpage. To guarantee that you are looking at the latest CDN version of any webpage, you must simultaneously push the keyboard keys Control and Function 5 , usually represented by ctrl+f5, while on that page. Eventually, the latest versions of webpages and websites propagate to the browser caches.