A Few Joomla Tips & Tricks

Are you new to Joomla and you are still finding your way around it? If so, then let me make things easier for you, here are some excellent Joomla tips and tricks that every Joomla user should know:

SEO Tips For Joomla

Joomla is no doubt one of the powerful content management systems out there aside from wordpress. Joomla makes managing your website a lot easier. As you know, SEO plays a big role when it comes to improving your site’s search engine ranking. So, to help you make the most of Joomla for your SEO campaign, here are some great tips to follow:

• Do not install dummy data.
• Be sure to switch off PDF links since search engines index them more hence you might lose the ranking of your main page and you might also be penalized for using duplicate contents.
• Remember to switch on system cache since this will boost the loading speed of your site which search engines love.
• Include social bookmarking plugin on your site so your visitors can easily share contents from your site.

Embedding Videos Into Your Joomla! Website

Like in wordpress, embedding videos in Joomla is an easy and straightforward process. When embedding a video, all you have to do is go to the site where the video you want to embed is uploaded. For instance, if you wish to embed a Youtube video, you have to visit Youtube first and choose the video you want to put on your site. Copy the embed video code from Youtube and then paste it on the body of the article. Be sure to turn off WYSIWYG when embedding videos in Joomla if you don’t want the video to get scrapped. In Joomla, since video codes are HTML, it is imperative to deactivate WYSIWYG.

Other Great Joomla Tips and Tricks

• When uploading a new file in Joomla, you have to ascertain that it will be uploaded to the right remote directory for upload. All you need to do is drag the file you wish to upload from your computer to your web browser.
• The easiest way to adjust images from a Joomla template is by opening it on your site browser so you can make the necessary adjustment on the image on it.
• Ascertain that you have created site database backup before you install third party codes into your Joomla website.
• Know that plugin tags in Joomla works regardless if the WYSIWYG editor is turn on or off.
• For multimedia enhancements on your Joomla website, you can make use media plugin Shadowbox. If you don’t have it yet, you can download it from extensions.joomla.org by typing Shadow on the search box.

Pros & Cons of Using Joomla for Your Site

If you do not have the time to create a content management system from scratch, you can definitely opt for ready-made CMS like the Joomla for a faster, more reliable and more effective blog or website. Joomla is a CMS that organizes your site and makes creating pages easier for the users but it does not help you create graphics and design. It is perfect for managing your content and it allows you to edit your posts from any computer that has an Internet connection.

What makes Joomla the best choice given all the other choices when it comes to CMS? Let us weight the advantages and disadvantages to help you get familiarized with the particular content management systems:

Pros:

1. Joomla is free - You can get this CMS at no cost! You just need to have your own web hosting space and the ability to use it. This CMs has a quick automated setup that will require you to input some of your hosting settings.
2. It already has great templates from which you can choose from - Joomla does not give you the luxury of designing your own layout or creating your own graphics but you have a lot of option when it comes to templates. You may choose a simple or a very complex design and you may also use artistic or professional templates depending on your preference.
3. It is easy to use - If you have enough time and effort, you will find out that learning how to use Joomla is very easy. It offers a number of tutorials, forums and other communities dedicated to help new users.
4. Joomla has thousands of plugin extensions that you can use - You can simply download all the plug-ins that you need for your blog or website.

On the other side of the coin, Joomla has its own set of disadvantages that you can surely overcome with a little help from other users and the support service.

Cons:

1. Users don’t have too much freedom on customization - Although you don’t lose everything in personalizing your website or blog, it is important to point out that there are some things you can’t do with Joomla. You may not be able to organize some things and have control on your scripts and functions.
2. Learning how to use Joomla will take time - You need to allocate a fair amount of time and effort to learn the CMS very well especially if you are new to web design.

How WordPress Differs From Joomla

According to surveys, WordPress has a large portion of the preferred platform pie—getting the advantage over other Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla. In fact, there is no way to measure, let alone prove, that one CMS is better than the others because it all depends on the user’s needs. However, WordPress has been steadily holding the record for the most number of websites and blogs that it powers.

Most of the CMSs are stable and offer a lot of great features but many of us would ask what makes WordPress differ, even standout, from the rest? Here are some reasons to give you an idea of how WordPress came to rule the Internet.

1. Easy to use - For non-technical users, WP is the easiest and simplest CMS to install and set-up. It is also the easiest to use. Anybody can surely set up a site on WP and be running after just a few hours. It is also committed to serve non-techies who want to communicate effectively. The features of WP were driven by people who are after the content, not the ones who are techie.
2. Focus - Joomla is designed as a proper CMS while WordPress is designed to help users solve their problems. It has a clear target market or audience and its developers built a lucrative business from this on day one.
3. Blog Factor - This feature has helped propel WP as a CMS. It has been considered as great blogging software because it is the 18^th most visited site in the planet and its slogan “A better way to blog” has enticed hundreds of thousands of bloggers already. In addition, A number of blogs run on WordPress domains and around 9% of these are in the top 1 million websites according to studies and surveys. Joomla, on the other hand comes in second as it earned 2.7% of the 1 million most visited sites.
4. WordPress is a blogging platform and a CMS at the same time - many bloggers are opting to use WP to power their blogs as well as the new websites and other pages.
5. Usability- Your website can look good in minutes with WordPress but if you have the luxury of time to learn the advanced techniques of setting up a website, opt for Joomla.
6. Versatility - WordPress aims to help you create the blog or site that you have been dreaming of but Joomla offers more advanced features that allow you to customize your page.

Other Content Management Systems for Your Site

Planning to set up your own website or blog? You have a lot of options when it comes to selecting the right content management systems (CMS) that you can use for your project. You should choose the CMS for your blog depending on how advanced you need it to be, and that is where the challenge comes in. A number of CMSs have slight advantage over the others depending on their usability, ease of installment and features.

To help you decide which CMS will perfectly suit your needs, take a look at the following list:

1. Drupal - A very huge and active community that focuses on its CMS essence rather than on blogging as a platform. This can be installed easily and it comes with a selection of modules that allow you to add interesting features such as OpenID, user blogs, profiles and forums.
2. ExpressionEngine - This is considered as an elegant and flexible CMS for any project. Easy to modify and extensible, EE is clean and intuitive in terms of the user administration. It’s also packed with very useful features such as the ability to have several sites with just one software installation.
3. Cushy CMS - A different type of CMS because it possesses all the basic functionality of a regular CMS but it does not rely on a particular language.
4. TYPOlight - Has the ideal balance of features in a CMS. On the downside, it has so many features and configurable options that may cause confusion.
5. Apache Lenya - An open-source Java/XML CMS that comes with multi-site management, scheduling, research, workflow and revision control.
6. Brightlabs CMS - This is an easy-to-use web CMS that helps you organize, build and manage your site to make it SEO-friendly.
7. Cyclone3 - This open source CMS engine and content management framework  can be availed for free. Cyclone3 is licensed under GNU General Public. This is the very first open source content management system that make use of the Mozilla Application Framework.
8. Radiant CMS - A fast and minimal CMS that is built on the Ruby framework Rails. This software is elegant and simple plus with the right number of functionality.
9. Textpattern - Deemed as the most popular choice for designers due to its elegance and simplicity. Its code base is also minimal and svelte. It aims to provide an excellent CMS to create a standard-compliant and well-structured page.
10. SilverStripe - A PHP CMS that is similar to WordPress except that is has more configurable options and tailored for content management, not specifically blogging.

Setting Up Your First Joomla Website

Are you searching for other Content Management Systems (CMS) tool that could host your website or blog? Joomla may be the right one for you. It is an easy-to-use CMS tool that lets you create a site even if you are not adept in web designing or programming. To set up your own Joomla website, it is imperative that you first sign up for the hosting account and then install the CMS.

Joomla also allows you to easily make a content-rich and interactive website that will help you boost your online presence in no time because it is a robust open-source CMS that is ideal for online applications and website building processes. The Joomla browser lets non-technical users to edit or add content and to manage data. Users can also install this CMS on a remote computer or a home computer.

In using the particular CMS, you must first need to know about the basics. You can create an account in Joomla using a valid e-mail address. To activate your account, you need to go to your e-mail and click the activation link provided in the message.

To get started on your Joomla website, you should follow these simple and easy steps:

1. Log on to your computer and then browse the Internet for the latest release version of Joomla.
2. Next thing to do is to download the latest version and unzip the package into your hard drive before uploading it. You must unzip and open an FTP client before uploading all the files to your preferred directory of your host.
3. After unzipping and uploading, set the file permissions for the configuration.php file to 666.
4. Select your preferred language to be used.
5. Inspect the check page.
6. Make sure to make the configuration.php writable.
7. The next step you need to do is to read the license and the terms of agreement.
8. Enter your database details. These will be needed by Joomla. Do not enter the .db extension then click the “next” button.
9. Set up your FTP client.
10. Type in your desired name for your website. You may type a temporary name because you can change it later. Click the “next” button.
11. Remove the directory labeled as “installation”.
12. Copy the configuration.php to your Joomla directory if prompted.
13. Navigate around Joomla and explore it for yourself.

After following the aforementioned steps, you may now begin creating your website by adding images, content, and other things that you need. Joomla is a sure way to get your blog rolling.