PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info

Wordpress Tops Joomla in Domain Importance

22.10.09

One site I visit a lot is SEOmoz.org, a great resource for SEO and marketing. I noticed today that that have a great top 500 list of "most important domains".

I was interested to see that Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal all make it into the top 500, with Wordpress taking the lead, and Drupal bringing up the rear.

The corresponding top 500 pages list saw Wordpress.org and Joomla.org in the top 15!

At Joomlashack University we have a main page that lists all the tutorials that are available. We have had several student requests that it would be useful to easily see what lessons they had visited. Short of some custom programming to achieve this, we implemented a simple visual icon with CSS that would show next to any link that had been clicked on. It uses the a:visited property. I received a review copy of Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia from Packt Publishers and was expecting to read a lot that I already know about Images and the image manager in Joomla!. But instead it was an eye-opener about the possibilities that Joomla! and some special extensions gives you to create a complete multimedia experience for your visitors. This [...]

You are reading a post from: Joomla SEO Blog by PathosSeoBlog.com

Joomla! Multimedia – A Book Review about Images, Video and More…

As many of you know, in late 2009 it was decided by OSM and the project leadership to contract with Andrew Eddie and Louis Landry and to pay them for working on the Joomla! project. This was a very big step and was only undertaken after much discussion and careful consideration. There was strong agreement in the OSM and project leadership for this decision. Formal and informal polling of community members found a substantial majority in favor of the concept, with a minority opposed to it. Some of those opposed had strong feelings against it.

From the start, the plan was for Andrew to focus on coding for version 1.6 and for Louis to help support Andrew but also to work on longer term and infrastructure projects. This general plan is still in place today, although some of the specifics have changed over time as version 1.6 has moved from alpha to beta.

The Production Leadership Team (PLT) was tasked with the role of setting the priorities for this work and providing supervision and oversight. Initially, this was done informally. Recently, we have instituted a more formal process whereby the PLT has started issuing monthly reports to OSM and the community on the work completed and goals going forward.

What does this mean to you? Just this. The PLT makes the decisions about what gets worked on and the priorities going forward. So, for example, if you have ideas or concerns about what either of these individuals is working on (or not working on), you should express them to the PLT, not to Andrew or Louis.

If you don't like the whole idea of paying them for doing this work, then you are absolutely entitled to that opinion. But again, your difference of opinion is with the project leadership and the OSM leadership, not with Andrew or Louis.

I only wish the PLT could take the credit for the fantastic work that these guys have been doing during this time. But that credit goes to them alone.

In a community as large and diverse as ours, there are always going to be disagreements. This issue is particularly sensitive and one on which people can have very strong feelings. I hope that people on both sides of this issue can work together and keep their disagreements respectful.

There are so many reasons to making your site easily visible on Social Networking websites and platforms - they raise general visibility and offer access to communities which may not otherwise find the information you spend time publishing in your posts.

Of course, one of the most agile word-of-mouth Social platforms on the web is Twitter and you may have recently noticed a pretty cool widgety thing people are using on their blogs/sites to include a 'retweet' link and counter of how many times a post has been tweeted - its powered by a site called 'Tweetmeme' and installs pretty easily on any website - whether using static html or a CMS like Joomla.

When you take a peek at the tweetmeme page containing the necessary embed code it may not be too easy to tell how to use it with your Joomla site - and though there's a couple of plugins/extension floating around Joomla, it may not offer the flexibility you require for clean theming/templating.  However, there's an easy way to go about embedding this and all it takes is a small modification of the de facto embed code. 

All you have to do is:

• copy the following code(s),
• replace 'http://mysite.com' with your own root URL and:
• replace 'twitterhandle' with your twitter handle (if you want reweets to automagically incude @yourtwitterhandle - you can opt to delete that line from the code otherwise.

For individual article template files (eg 'templates > your_template  > html > com_content > article > default.php'):

  <script type="text/javascript">  tweetmeme_style = 'compact';  tweetmeme_url = 'http://mysite.com<?php echo $this->article->readmore_link; ?>';  tweetmeme_source = 'twitterhandle';  </script>  

For article list pages - like section or category template files (eg 'templates > your_template  > html > com_content > category > blog_item.php'):

  <script type="text/javascript">  tweetmeme_style = 'compact';  tweetmeme_url = 'http://mysite.com<?php echo $this->item->readmore_link; ?>';  tweetmeme_source = 'twitterhandle';  </script>

The trick then is to take this code and include it in the appropriate version of your theme's template files - Of course, you can see I've wrapped the code in a div called 'tweetmeme' so you can then add in some css for that div wherever you want in your template to style the tweetmeme widget.  You can learn more about Joomla templates and the files which they can comprise of in the official documentation wiki.

Basically what we've done here is include some php to tell the embed code the specific URL for each post - so the widget works cleanly on individual article pages as well as displays showing multiple articles at once.

*You can see the widget in action here on this site above - just below the title of each post. Try it out and retweet this post to see how it works!

Joomla 1.5.11 has been released, and it includes security patches, so its important to update. But getting your Joomla site upgraded to the new version can be tricky, especially if you are using FTP.

Fortunately, there is an easier way, check out Joomlashack's tutorial How to Update Joomla 1.5 Versions.

You'll need SSH access, and remember to back up first!

Of course, if you want to never have to bother with updating Joomla or your extensions ever again, you can try [...]

In an effort to maintain the Board's effectiveness during its search for a new Treasurer, the Board of Open Source Matters, Inc. (OSM), on the 10th of August 2010, appointed Steve Burge as Acting Treasurer of the organization, for a period ending no later than November 1, 2010 or until a new Treasurer has been elected, appointed or qualified, whichever comes first.

The Acting Treasurer shall have all the abilities and privileges of the Treasurer, but is only expected to provide his services in a limited role during this interim period.

The OSM board wishes to express thanks to Steve for assisting in this important role.

Sitting down in the wake of Joomla! USA West 2010 I've had a bit of a chance to digest what is going on. The event, held at eBay's own campus, was the biggest JoomlaDay's in the USA. However I now come to the realisation that now both Microsoft and eBay share something unique and awesome. What does Microsoft and eBay have in common?

Both have signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement or the JCA. The JCA is the agreement put in place before code is contributed to the project and two of the largest companies in the technology sphere have now signed the JCA. To be honest when you sit down and think about it this is absolutely awesome and a confirmation of what we're doing with the Joomla! project.

I announced that Microsoft signed the JCA back in April and their contribution to the core was support for the cache support Microsoft provide on Windows. This code, now in the Joomla! 1.6 trunk, will hook into the Wincache extension for PHP and provide a speed boost for running Joomla! on Windows. Since then we've kept the Joomla! Web Platform installer project up to the latest version of Joomla! and it is in my mind the easiest way of getting Joomla! up and running on Windows.

Over the weekend we had the announcement that eBay has signed the JCA as well. eBay is the world's largest online marketplace and is internally using Joomla! to build their portal to help enable the organisation to be data driven through analytics. At the JoomlaDay Oliver Ratzesberger, senior director of analytics platform at eBay, demonstrated their platform utilising not only the core Joomla! product but also third party extensions such as social networking platform JomSocial, forum tool Kunena and Mosets Tree.

It is amazing to be in a world where Joomla!, a GPL project, is being contributed to by Microsoft with not only code in the Joomla! core but with members of the company providing support on the forum and are starting to write documentation on our wiki. eBay have only just come into the fold but they've been working on some very exciting stuff that I look forward to seeing in the near future. I am also excited that both Microsoft and now eBay have been supporting Joomla! events with eBay hosting and sponsoring JoomlaDay USA West in addition to Microsoft hosting the upcoming JoomlaDay New York and JoomlaDay Washington, DC events as well as sponsoring JoomlaDay's around the world such as JoomlaDay Bangkok.

At the end of the day it is great that the project that I and many others have been working on for the last half a decade is now being adopted and supported by some of the biggest companies in the world. I think that's just awesome and let's bring on Joomla! 1.6

This is just a short note to say that we've asked the Forum Admins to archive the White Papers forum while the Production Leadership Team works on a replacement in conjunction with the rebooting of developer.joomla.org and the commencement of new development initiatives this year.  The content will be kept for some time as there is good material in there to work off.  More information about a replacement process will be forthcoming as soon as we can make it available to you.

Recently, Barrie received an email asking questions about Joomla versions and upgrades, and how the system will work going forward. We are happy to take requests from our readers and address them here in our newsletter!

You are reading Basic Joomla 1.6 SEO Settings Do’s and Don’ts a post from: Joomla & SEO Blog.

Joomla 1.6 is stable and very good to start a new website on, but for Search Engine Optimization you have to set some basic parameters for optimal results. So here is a short overview of basic Joomla 1.6 Do’and Don’t for Search Engine Optimization. Let’s start with the Do’s… Global Configuration SEO Settings Like the … Continue reading

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

I received a review copy of Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia from Packt Publishers and was expecting to read a lot that I already knew about Images and the image manager in Joomla!. But instead it was an eye-opener about the possibilities that Joomla! and some special extensions gives you to create a complete multimedia experience for your [...]

You are reading a post from: Joomla SEO Blog by PathosSeoBlog.com

Joomla Multimedia – A Book Review about Images, Video and More…

For those new to these extensions, Community Builder is one of the oldest (and possibly most used) Joomla extensions.  It has a plugin system and lets you quickly develop user profiles for logged in members; with custom fields and member lists.  Because its Open Source and how long its been around, there are a ton of plugins to give you google maps of your members, on-going/live (facebook wall-type) listings of member activity on their profiles and more.

Jom Social isn't Open Source.  Its a commercial release from the Malaysian web development firm Azrul Studio.  They're well known for simple blogging and commenting extensions and have recently released Jom Social - which pretty much gives you the same functionality as Community Builder for $100+ but doesn't require must setup/configuration once installed.

There's been discussion in the Joomla forums about this topic before and I think people are most concerned about the lock-in factor of using commercial software plus the question of how integrated JomSocial is to Joomla itself.

Before I jump into a comprehensive review next week, I wanted to ask for your thoughts on Community Builder vs Jom Social. (Post comments! :) )

There are lots of places to buy a Joomla template - but Joomlashack is the only one to offer lifetime template updates and a 30 day money back guarantee! One of the defining characteristics of Joomla compared to other open source CMS's is the rich variety of professional templates that are available. There are, of course, the poorly coded sweatshop template sites, but lets take a look at a comparison of the others.

Give us six days, and we'll help you make a plan for a successful, content-rich website.

That's the idea behind our new six day mini-course "Creating a Content-Rich Website."

When you are starting on your path to create a website, you have to understand some key differences between a old-school static/HTML type site and one built with a modern Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla.

This special 6 lesson mini-course will show you how to take a generic and "static" business website and propel it into web 2.0

In October 2009 the new Joomla training course - Joomlashack University opened its door to its first class of 100 students. For the last 4 weeks, these students have been learning how to Joomla with our rich video screencasts and tutorials and asking questions and networking in our forums.

Before launching Shack U, we knew we had a great product to offer. We gave leading Joomla figures a sneak look at the content and, as you can read yourself, they loved it.

As well as teaching insider Joomla tips and tricks to our first students, we have been taking feedback and improving the course. We have streamlined the student path through the learning content and added more courses.

After 4 weeks, we are ready to open our doors again.

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