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The latest version from Joomla, Joomla 1.6.2 is a highly capable website software. It is an open source platform that works on Windows Vista 64-bit, Windows 7, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux and Mac OS X. Joomla is an extremely impressive Content Management System that is used for small websites as well as for online communities. Joomla works best on those webhosts that run on Linux, although even Windows-based webhosts will not give you any problems. It however requires a database to work, so it is important to check with the budget hosting plans as it does not generally include this. Installation is a very simple process where you can upload files to webhost and then open the installation wizard in a separate Internet browser. All you have to do is answer a few questions and then your website is all set to go. With Joomla, it is not possible to set permission for various users. So, a user may be able to write a few articles but won’t be allowed to publish it to le...

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems today. It is a very powerful web development tools that is used by developers for a number of reasons: It is extremely easy to use. Extensible. Open Source. Can be used anywhere and by anyone. Easy to Install. User-Friendly. Makes it easy to build websites. Besides these features, some of the most important features of Joomla include: Content Management. Template Customization. Search Module Integration. Easy User Management. Online Polls Availability. Multilingual Option. Any website can be built. Joomla can be used to build personal websites, education websites, small business websites, society websites, government portals, article directories, multiple language websites, community websites and corporate websites.

Joomla is one of the most popular Content Management Systems around today because of its search engine friendly features. Here is how you can set your site up to impress the search engines. I am however assuming that you have some knowledge of SEO. Step 1: SEO settings in Global Configuration: Log into the admin area of your Joomla site and go to Site. Click on Global Configuration and then click on SEO Settings. Set both these on Search Engine Friendly URLs and Use Apache mod_rewrite should be changed to yes. Before you save this setting, use the FTP client to go to the root of your site and then rename the file from htaccess.txt to htaccess. Click the Apply button. Step 2: Metadata Settings in Global Configuration: On the same page, you can enter a keyword-rich description in the Global Site Meta Description space and enter keywords separated by commas in the Global Site Meta Keywords space. This will ensure that in case you have missed out any specific meta descriptions or keywords ...

Using a map on your website is a great way to show your visitors where you are located – whether as a business address, or whether you want to show them the location of a restaurant. Once your visitors have a visual clue of the location of a place, it’ll make it easier for them to find it than simply giving them an address. The more likely visitors are to remember where you are located, the more likely are they to visit. Google Maps is a great way to embed a map onto your web page. There are two ways that you can do this manually, namely: Start by visiting the Google Maps website at – maps.google.com – and search for a business or address. Once you find it, click on the link in the top right hand toolbar. You’ll get two options, either to paste the link in an email or IM, or to paste the HTML or embed it on to your site. In the second option, there will be a text field to copy the HTML code. Copy everything and paste to an article. Go to the Google Maps website again and find the locat...

If you run all your business websites on a content management system, then the biggest reason for doing is because of the simplicity that these systems provide when it comes to managing content. I have used several CMS’ to build my business websites including Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. But if you are starting a small business website, then which CMS do you use? Choose the CMS that you will stick to for a long time: Every CMS has its fair share of pros and cons, thus each better can serve you the best depending on the type of website that you need. Be very careful BEFORE you choose a CMS and consider your options before you say yes to a CMS. Do your due diligence thoroughly or else you’ll be stuck with the wrong CMS for a long time. Even if you do choose the wrong CMS, it is possible to migrate to another CMS but this is resource intensive and the downtime involved during the transition will only annoy your visitors. Which is the best CMS for your small business? If you have a small ...

Pact has recently released a new book – Joomla! 1.6 First Look – This is an in-depth guide about all the new features in the latest Joomla 1.6! The book contains plenty of screen shots and detailed explanations about the new features in the latest version of Joomla 1.6 and how to use them. It also covers all the changes made in the latest version including the menus, extensions, templates and interface. Joomla is one of the most sought after content management system that has won plenty of awards and accolades. Written in PHP, it uses the MySQL database system to store all the information. It helps professional web developers build professional looking websites with powerful online applications. It is known for its ease-of-use and extensibility. The Joomla! 1.6 First Look edition gives its readers valuable insights into the various new features in the version 1.6. It also shows them what has changed, how these changes can affect them and how they can upgrade to 1.6. It get started by...

Joomla is one of the best content management systems in the industry today. With more and more websites taking to Joomla to build their sites, it has become very important to make sure that your website is configured properly so as to prevent any security issues. Here are a few tips to help you secure your Joomla website: Proper Hosting Environment: A well configured server is highly recommended for your site. You should also host your website on a server that runs PHP in the CGI mode with su_php. This way, the PHP will run under your account and not on the global Apache user. Change the Default Database Prefix: Always change the default database prefix to something else that is random. This will prevent hackers from retrieving your superadmin details. Disable the FTP Layer: When installing, never open the FTP layer as this gives rise to a potential security hole. Change you superadministrator username to something that is difficult for others to guess. Create a strong password to pro...

Online businesses are getting more and more competitive today. And this is why an increasing number of people are designing their websites with a Joomla developer, as it works out to a more cost-effective solution. The Internet, as we all know it, is a platform that is used for publishing a variety of content from blogs and commercial sites to forums. A content management system or a CMS gives prospective entrepreneurs easy access to start their own websites without having to go through the whole complicated procedure of learning coding. Joomla is an open source CMS that can help you manage your content with ease. Apart from this, there are plenty of other benefits to Joomla, including its amazing features that make it very attractive to entrepreneurs. The user-friendly design will help you manage your site easily and you’ll also get the nest modules and admin support. Here are some advantages of using Joomla for your website: Helps to Save Time: Joomla helps to save a lot of time in t...

Both these content management systems are extremely popular and have both released newer versions recently. If you are planning on building a website and don’t know whether to use Joomla or Drupal, this article might be useful for you. Here we will discuss the features of both Joomla as well as Drupal so that you can make a choice yourself. As Content Management Systems: Drupal provides you with unlimited category levels, categorization and tagging as well as the ability to create multiple content levels with various features, whereas Joomla provides only three levels of content. This is why you require a Content Construction Kit. As a Blogging Platform: Both can be used as blogging platforms as they have the capability to support extensions and a WordPress Port. Shopping Cart: Drupal has a powerful and dynamic shopping cart that is loaded with features. Joomla on the other hand has one shopping cart that is loaded with difficulties. Admin Interface: Drupal is more geeky in nature and...

There are plenty of articles out there with regards to the strengths and weaknesses of various CMS’. But not many people talk about security. Here we will be discussing which CMS handles security best – Joomla or Drupal? Both these Content Management Systems have recently come up with new and effective releases and most developers aren’t yet familiar with these new versions. Yes, software security is a very important topic, especially since we use Web 2.0 activities where we expose our companies to content change access to non-employees. Both the Joomla and Drupal engineers and communities pay very careful attention to security issues. The Drupal community takes security issues very seriously and there is even a special security team to handle this area. The main goal of this team is to identify and then resolve any security issues. There are a few security concerns that reflect the CMS’ differing approaches: Joomla’s main focus is on content management and security is only about acces...

Joomla is a great CMS that is used by websites across the globe. It is used to manage all sorts of content on any kind of website. Being a free utility, it allows people to add, edit, remove, reorganize and even syndicate content. The best part of it all is that Joomla allows bloggers and web owners to do this even without having any HTML knowledge. Joomla makes it very easy to add articles to a website, but as far as Joomla 1.5 goes, the process is slightly different than all the other versions. Here are a few steps on how to add articles to the Joomla 1.5 version CMS: Start by logging into the admin control panel and enter your username and password. Find the “Add Article” button. In the older versions, there were buttons for selecting Static or Dynamic content. But in the 1.5 version, all of this is more streamlined and there is only a button titles “Add Article”. Clicking on this button will take you to the article composition screen. Once you reach this screen, enter your articles...

Components are basically Joomla’s content elements or applications that generally appear in the center of a three-columned Joomla layout, or on the right-hand side of a two-columned Joomla layout. Components are basically the core elements of any Joomla functionality. Some of the core components include: Banners Contact News Feeds Polls Web Links Members of the Joomla community are also producing third party components continuously. Here is how you can install a component: Start by choosing the component that you desire. On the menu on top go to the “components” tab and select Install/Uninstall. You will see a whole list of components that are already installed on your website. Under this list, you’ll see a section that says “upload new component”. Click on “browse” and then go to the package that you want to install. Select the package and then upload it. The next screen will tell you whether the component was installed successfully.

Scores of books and articles have been written about the Joomla Content Management System. Many of these have been written for it and others against it. The most common argument is that Joomla is not the ideal option as far as search engine friendly CMS’ are concerned. However, in my opinion, this view is not very well thought out and comes from amateurs who don’t how this CMS can be good for SEO purposes. Joomla is arguably one of the best CMS’ available today. And for those who doubt this, Joomla is also extremely search engine friendly if it is handled by SEO experts who know how to maximize the results from Joomla websites. Search engine optimization is a very important tool as far as Internet marketing is concerned, and although many people believe that Joomla sites are the toughest to optimize, this is not true. Professionals who really know their job can handle such a project easily. Here are some of the features that are loaded into the Joomla CMS and that help to make it searc...

Your Joomla website can bring in a lot of ROI for your business, depending on how much time and energy you invest in it. Here are a few ways to make sure that your website rakes in the money: Traffic: Now that you’ve prettied your website in the best way possible, what do you do next? If you have a Firefox or IE browser, then get yourself an Alexa Toolbar. Google Chrome is also a great OS but will not help you increase your Alexa Traffic rank, which is what is the most used on the Internet by advertising companies that sell legitimates advertising spots. If you have Firefox, you can also install an extension, Alexa Sparky, through the add-ons on your browser menu. Once this is installed, you will be enabling Alexa to track any web surfing patterns. People use Alexa for other purposes as well, including viewing Alexa rankings on the sites they are visiting. If you are an advertiser, knowing the Alexa ranking of a site can help you in making your advertising decisions. Social Networks: S...

Various content management systems (CMS’) have various security levels to them. A recent report from HP has targeted some of the security risks of last year and has found that one content management system in particular is more vulnerable than most of the others. WordPress was found to have some of the least number of vulnerable installs that were found as opposed to Joomla, where all the installs were found to be vulnerable in one way or another. The report has shown that one of the biggest reasons why WordPress is considered to be a more secure and easy system is because it is a very easy system to update. Drupal and WordPress were observed in 2010 to have both done better jobs at patching up their overall core systems. But Joomla on the other hand, is one of the best Content management systems around. The Joomla developers say that they take security very seriously and that most of their teams and processes are in place. However, with the release of version 1.6 earlier this year, Jo...

If you are new to using Joomla, then there are few things that you should do and some things that you should avoid doing. Here is a list of Joomla dos and don’ts for beginners: The Dos Start by downloading and reading every single line of the Joomla installation manual. There are 2 basic versions – an online one and an offline one. Browse through the help.joomla.org site, which has been designed keeping beginners in mind. There are plenty of helpful resources and it is the best place to get free advice. Use a good search engine to find all the Joomla tips, tricks and tutorials you can. There are millions of free Joomla resources out there. Get yourself a good Joomla book. The Don’ts Never start using Joomla without first reading up on it. It is an extremely powerful SMS but it takes time to get used to it. If you are frustrated because things are not going your way easily, then don’t get disheartened – all developers have been frustrated in the initial phases! Hang on in there, and the...

Joomla is a unique platform that allows you to build graphically appealing websites that are functional and can be customized to meet your website’s goals and needs. This web application is great whether you are building a site for business purposes or whether it is for personal usage. With Joomla, you can now build the website of your dreams! All you have to do is download this application on to your machine and then upload it onto your site. It is an open source platform that makes it very easy to build the perfect website. In short, this platform is absolutely free and is offered by application designers. What this also means is that although this platform is free of cost, its core code will never be available to you. Joomla will allow you to work from the backend of you site, by allowing you to make changes that will go live in just seconds. By using the FTP program, you can upload text content, images, user forums, chat programs, articles and videos, and even incorporate any files...

What with the first quarter of 2011 already come to a close, reports have shown that Joomla has been a top contender in the CMS market since the end of last year. The report compares various effective CMS solutions, and Joomla ranks high on the list. Idealware is a non-profit organization in the United States that conducts all sorts of software research for the non-profit community. The report was sent out late last year and compares all the Open Source Content Management Systems including, Joomla, WordPress, Plone and Drupal. This report not only gave Joomla the highest rankings but also claimed that Joomla was the market leader in the CMS industry, closely followed by WordPress and then Drupal and Plone. What’s more, Joomla also does exceptionally well as a community-driven platform and competed well alongside other corporate-supported platforms such as WordPress and Drupal. Referred to as the “Big Three”, Joomla, WordPress and Drupal dominate the market. The report has assessed near...

Whether you’ve never worked on Joomla before, or whether you are a Joomla pro, it can never do you any harm to learn a few tips on how to make your Joomla site and better and smoother one. If you’ve never used Joomla before, then it can be a bit overwhelming at first, what with all the new things you’ll get to see. But once you start getting used to it, you’ll find it easier to handle. Creating a good Joomla site can be a challenging task and is very different from creating a static HTML site. Joomla is very famous for its SEO-friendly URL’s. Most default URL’s are very dynamic and are looked down on by the search engines. This is why you need a Joomla extension to rewrite all these dynamic URL’s and make them more search engine friendly. RSS feeds have become extremely important for websites and blogs. Even if you don’t have the kind of demand for it, it is still important to create RSS feeds. Because it is so easy to change themes on your Joomla site, you might be tempted to keep cha...

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems used today. Being a free utility, Joomla allows users to add, remove, edit and syndicate content. Joomla also allows website owners and bloggers to do all of this without any real knowledge of HTML. With Joomla, adding articles to your website is a very easy process, especially if you are using Joomla 1.5. Here is how you can add articles to your website by using Joomla 1.5: Start by logging into your administrator’s control panel. All you have to do is point your browser to the “yoursite.com/administrator/” tab and then enter your username and password. Now go to the “Add Article” button and click on it. You will be taken to the article composition screen. Once you reach this screen, make sure you enter your article’s title right at the top. You can also enter an “alias” or alternate title, but this is optional and will not be seen on your website. However, it can help to refine the search results. Next, use the two pull do...

If you’ve ever had experience in building a website or an online application, then you probably already know what Joomla is. While Joomla brings with it all the advantages of a good content management system, it still remains as a free and open source platform. Today, Joomla is one of the most used content management systems, and each day, more and more Joomla websites are going live. With Joomla, not only will you be able to access a wide number of extensions and customizations, but you will also be able to access your Joomla site on many platforms, including your iPhone. Here are 5 of the best Joomla applications to have on your iPhone: Joomla Admin Mobile! This application is also known as JAM! And is mainly directed towards admins. It focuses mainly on adding or blocking users, organizing forums and performing such tasks. With its advanced filtering and search options, it can easily help you find specific articles. BlogPress: BlogPress has a great lineup of loyal supporters because...

Developing your Joomla site on your own network is a great way to get things done faster. Building your Joomla site locally is simpler and faster than uploading and waiting for each of your pages to refresh on a remote server. Building your site locally also doubles as a sandbox test environment for when your site gores live, as it is important to refrain from updating or upgrading a live site. Depending on the Operating System that you are using, you will have 2 main options. But a great suggestion would be to use MAMP. If you use a Mac, like me, then the best option would be to use MAMP. MAMP has the ability to set up MySQL, Apache and PHP 4/5 in just a few seconds. It is however, not a Joomla-specific product so you will be required to manually install Joomla. But the product is a highly polished one with plenty of useful features and a basic version that is free of charge. The pro version on the other hand, allows you have multiple websites and can integrate with a dynamic DNS serv...

At the end of 2010, Joomla has become nearly double as busy as it used to be, with more 6 million visitors visiting the site per month. With the latest release of Joomla version 1.6, the growth of the site has accelerated so rapidly that it has been established that the site has grown by a whopping 25% in the last 4 months itself! The new version was released in January 10th, which quickly became the busiest day for the site. But strangely, most of the real traffic build-up was seen in the coming days and January 12th was seen as the busiest day with a third of a million visitors. And what’s even more surprising is that the surge in traffic hasn’t even subsided yet! In the last month, Joomla’s website attracted over 7.5 million visitors. Joomla even had inquiries from Twitter about the browsers and platforms that people use to reach their site.

So what is Joomla all about? And how do you use it to design your website? If these questions keep haunting you, then read on for the answers you are looking for! It is a fact that Joomla is THE easiest way to design and create a website quickly and efficiently. You can now create your own awesome looking website with all the functionality that you desire. WordPress is another great software to use if you want to create and manage your website, but let’s discuss that some other time. Joomla is an Open Source Content Management System that was first known as Mambo. In 2005, there was a rift between the core developers of Mambo and the owners of the name of the brand. The developers decided to move on and continue developing this software under the name of Joomla, and most of the community that had previously supported Mambo, simply turned their loyalty towards Joomla! Joomla has hundreds and thousands of free templates that are available online. You can choose the template that best sui...

Putting up banner ads on your website is a great way of earning extra revenue. You can add, remove and edit these banner ads easily on your website. Here are a few tips on how to install and manage banner ads on your Joomla website: Installing Banner Ads: Find a client who is looking for ad space and obtain a banner ad from him. Make sure the file you receive is in a .jpg or .gif format. Now, log on to your Joomla website administrator panel and click “Site” on the main menu. Click on “Media Manager” in the drop down box that appears. Click on the “Directory” tab in the Media Manager section and then select “Banners” from the drop down box. Click on the “Browse” tab and then select the ad. Open it to upload the file and then click on “Components” and then “Banners”. You next step should be to “Manage Clients”. Create a new client by clicking on “New” and then fill out the client information along with the desired time period and the number of clicks. You can display these banner ads b...

What with more and more users turning towards Joomla, it has become one of the most powerful and effective CMS platforms around. However, Joomla comes with its own set of limitations as well. The restriction of installing Joomla mainly on MySQL has posed as a major problem. So, in an attempt to add to its features, this award winning CMS started working on porting Joomla on to Oracle. Oracle is one of the most complex databases out there and has a huge amount of non-standards. Joomla then successfully ported the Joomla 1.5 version to Oracle. The next step was support the Joomla 1.6 version on to multiple databases from Oracle and SQLServer to PostgressSQL. An obvious question when supporting multiple databases is “How about ORM?” Object Relational Mapping is a kind of programming technique that converts data from incompatible systems into object-oriented programming languages. This creates a sort of virtual object database that is used in the programming language.

A lot of people who are using the older versions of Joomla are increasingly being hacked, which in turn takes all day to fix and interrupts your business. Your first step to avoid being hacked is to upgrade your site to the latest version of Joomla. In spite of doing this, there are still many other actions that you need to take in order to prevent having your Joomla site hacked: The guys at the Joomla.org community have created a Joomla Administrator’s Security Checklist. Go through this list and take the necessary steps to secure your site as much as possible. Install a security plug-in like the jSecure Authentication plug-in. Every Joomla backend comes with the same URL. By installing a security plug-in, you can add a suffix to your URL and make it exclusively yours. If the URL has not been entered with the correct suffix, then the site will be redirected to a 404 page. Keep changing the suffix every now and then. Never use the jos_ prefix! The jos_ is the standard prefix for Joomla...

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a scripting language that is used to regularly update web content. This content may be in various forms from blogs to press releases. RSS has proven to be a boon for web masters across the globe because it is an easy way to update your website, as you will be receiving feeds from other web publishers who also syndicate their content. Joomla websites are designed with a built-in RSS aggregator that is called the “Syndicate”. Owing to this, you don’t have to download an extension. The aggregator makes it relatively easy to add RSS feeds to your website. Start by logging into your Joomla admin page to define the categories. Click on the “Components” button at the top in the menu. In the drop down menu, you should select the “News Feed” button and click on “Manage Categories”. Next, click on the “New” tab to add a new category. On the following page, enter all the relevant information of your category. In the “Category Title Field”, enter the name of the...