From your smartphone or tablet running Android 4.0 or higher, go to Settings, scroll down to Security, and select Unknown sources. Selecting this option will allow you to install apps outside of the Google Play store.
Next, download the file you were sent or downloaded online from your device. Open the Downloads app and find the file you just downloaded. Open the file and install the app.
Canvas relies on your website’s design and content, therefore the time your app takes to fully load is directly related to your website loading speed, plus the time that it takes to load the app’s own assets.If you are not satisfied with the time that your app takes to load, we suggest that you perform some tests on your website, to make sure it is fully optimized to provide the best possible performance.The best way to start, would be to use a website speed test tool like Pingdom, which provides some in-depth information about your website performance along with some insights on how you can improve it.
Make sure to go through all the optimization tips provided under the Performance Insights section of Pingdom and you should be able to see some nice improvements in your app loading speed.
Canvas allows you to use any pages from your website inside your app, so you might want to take advantage of this and create specific pages for it, with an app optimized page structure and content.Synthesizing the content of your app might not only improve the overall user experience but also help with reducing the loading times of your app as there will be less text, images, and code being loaded.
When you submit your iOS app to the App Store, it goes through a long and strict review process, where a real reviewer (not a robot or anything like that) opens your app in his iPad/iPhone and navigates through it, as a real user would do.The reviewer then makes sure your app complies with Apple’s guidelines, works correctly, and provides a well thought and optimized user experience, which must be, in a way, different from what the mobile version of your website offers.
Since we are dealing with real people, it is hard to predict which parts of your app the reviewer will focus on, but there are some general tips and suggestions we can offer that might help with increasing the chances of having your Vendrux News app approved:
We can always assist with making the necessary adjustments to your app, based on the feedback provided by Apple, and then proceed with resubmitting it for a new review.There are specific cases, where the best option would be to take a step back and re-think your app purpose, design, and features, to make sure you are providing the best possible user experience in your app. We’ll make sure to address these with you.
Even though Canvas relies on your website for all the design and content, in some cases you will want to have the app set up in a slightly different manner.
In a social network app, for example, users will usually be required to log in before they can access the app content.
Below you can see a diagram of what this user flow would look like in the app:
As you can see, the login page is displayed as soon as the app is opened, before any piece of content, and only after we check if the login was successful, does the content gets displayed.
The login check, performed once the user submits a username and password is key to ensuring a smooth login process, and it can be handled in a few different ways:
When using WordPress, our Canvas Plugin will handle most part of the login process for you.
In order to enable the login functionality for your app, go into your Canvas Dashboard, and follow these steps:
You will have something like this:
Now under “Advanced”:
That’s it, the app will now display the login screen on start and identify a logged-in user accordingly.
If you are having issues with users not remaining logged in to the app, please check this guide.
After a successful login, you can redirect the user to a unique URL, one that will be specific to the successful login event.
In most cases, the URL to which the user will be redirected after a successful login will look like this: https://yourwebsite.com/home?login_successful=true
With this redirect in place, we can make sure that the app is capable of recognizing the successful login, dismissing the login screen, and taking the user to the content.
We perform this check using the “Login Redirect” method:
Then using the “Login Complete Regular Expression” field to determine the URL that will confirm that the user has been successfully logged in. If we are using https://yourwebsite.com/home?login_successful=true for example, this is how the regular expression could look like:
You can use a tool like Regex Tester to test your Regex and see if it matches a specific URL.
In some cases, a redirect is not optimal, when you have a one-page application for example.
The alternative, in this case, would be to use the Native Functions.
Once you have determined that the user login was successful, calling the nativeFunctions.login() will have the same effect as the redirect, dismissing the login screen and displaying the content to the user.
Similarly, whenever a user gets logout you will want to tell the app to display the login screen over the content, so the user gets prompted to log in again in order to continue accessing the content.
The logout works similarly to the login, meaning that you can either use a redirect or trigger the nativeFunctions.logout() to tell the app that the user has been successfully logged out.
TestFlight allows you to generate public links that can be shared with users so they can install your app and test it even before it goes live in the App Store and becomes publicly accessible.
Below you can find a step-by-step guide on how to generate a public link for your app:
1. Go to iOS Development Center– Click Log-in and proceed to Account >Certificates, IDs & Profiles.
– Then, click on App IDs (1.), select your App (2.) and click Edit button.
2. Scroll down to Push Notifications section, and click Create Certificate button under Production SSL Certificate section. Click Continue when asked to create a CSR file.
3. Now it is the time to create Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file. In your Spotlight window type in keychain and launch Keychain Access.
4. Within the Keychain Access drop down menu, select Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant >Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.
5. Enter the following information in the Certificate Information window:- In the User Email Address field, enter your email address- In the Common Name field, create name for your private key (eg. Name Surname)- Select the ‘Saved to disk’ optionClick Continue within Keychain Access to complete the CSR generating process. Save the file generated. Click Done.
6. Let’s go back to Apple Developer Portal, click on Choose File and select the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file you have just created. Then, click on Continue and Download the certificate that was generated.
7. Launch Keychain again.- Filter keychains by Login– Filter Category by Certificates– Import your aps_[development/production].cer into your Keychain by dragging and dropping it into login section in keychain.
8. After importing your certifications into your Keychain you will see an expandable option called ‘Apple Push Services’. Right click on ‘Apple Push Services’ >Export ‘Apple Push Services.
9. Save the certificate as flle somewhere you can access it.Save the certificate as (.p12) flle somewhere you can access it.
10. If you are submitting your certificate (.p12) file to Vendrux please leave password empty and click on OK.
11. Enter your admin password to confirm and click on Allow to finalize the export process.
If you still have any issues generating your App Push Certificate, please feel free to contact support@vendrux.com
When displaying your website inside an app, often times you will want to either display or hide certain elements in the app only.
There are a few different ways of achieving this, the two best approaches when using Vendrux are described below:
If you are not familiar with what a user agent is you can find more details clicking here, but to simplify, whenever your browser, or app, makes a request to your website to pull its content, they include a string into it, which looks like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
That string includes details that can be used to identify the system and browser used to perform the request.
Whenever a request is performed from the app, to your website, it will include “canvas” in that string, so it will look like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0 canvas-ios
This allows us to easily detect the app using a small piece of Javascript, as you can see below:
// Check if the user agent contains the canvas string
if (isApp) {
// Outputs custom CSS in the app only
document.head.innerHTML += ”;
}
In order to be able to sell your app for a fixed price or charge recurring subscriptions from your app users, you will need to have your Payments Profile configured.Find more details on how to configure your Payments Profile below:
In order to use most of the Facebook features for apps, like Facebook Analytics and Facebook Audience Network Ads, you will need to create a Facebook App ID
The tabbed menu is displayed at the bottom of the app, it allows the user to quickly navigate through the most important, or most used areas of the app.
The first tab will always be displayed as the app’s home screen.
You can configure several aspects of the tabs such as icon, label, type and order.
Below you will find more details on how to configure your tabbed menu:
1 – Navigate to “Vendrux > Configuration” then access the “Menu” area
2 – Under the “Menu” area you will find all the options for the Tabbed Menu, make sure the Tabbed Menu is enabled.
3 – You can drag and drop the tabs to determine the order in which they will be displayed. If necessary you can enable/disable certain tabs
4 – For the icon you can use one of the available options or you can upload your own icon.
5 – You can configure the label for each one of the tabs, it is important to make sure the label is short enough to fit the tab.
The tab type will determine the content that will be displayed in the tab
After configuring the tabs, make sure to save your changes
Once your changes are applied they will reflect in the app configuration instantly. Users will need to close and re-open the app in order to see the changes taking place.
Below you can find more details on how each tab type works:
The home screen will display a list of posts, based on the categories selected under the “Home Screen Settings”
Displays a list of posts for the selected category
Displays the content of a URL.
It is extremely important that the URL used in this case is optimized for mobile and to be used inside the app, as the user will not have the ability to navigate back and forth using the native interface.
Displays a list of posts that have been favorited by the user
Displays the app “Settings” screen
Displays a list of links, based on the menu defined as the “Sections Menu”