The first step is to know whether you want an ecommerce website or an informational website. Will you sell products directly online (ecommerce) or will you simply advertise (informational)? In this article though we will only deal with the latter but another article for eCommerce CMS is on its way.

Informational website

Informational websites have the particularity that you do not sell any service through them. They show the descriptions of your products and might help potential customers choose your services. It does not mean, however, that SEO services are not important on these websites. SEO services are still essential since it is how you drive new customers to your website. You then need a CMS with an easy and quite complete SEO implementation.

Regarding these criteria we decided to choose two CMS: WordPress and Joomla

Below are the reasons explaining our selection

– User support

– Number of plug-ins, themes, modules available

– Efficiency regarding the task

– User ability to modify the content in a simple, straightforward way

– Security

– Support of the CMS and updates

WordPress

With more than 58 millions websites, WordPress is the leading blog content management system on the Internet. With its huge user base and popularity, you can be certain that there will be updates for the next few years. WordPress allows you to create a blog on its own site but we do not advise you to do so as it would reduce the customization possibilities, disallow you from monetizing your website, and overall, it would not be a good showcase for your business.

The CMS solution, although it has been designed for blog entries, is way more appropriate to SME:

– Possibility to easily make it evolve

– Blog entries leading to stronger on-site SEO

– Simple and slick administration interface

– Publish articles from everywhere through the mobile application

WordPress is a very easy-to-use and straightforward solution for people who have no special technical knowledge; it allows the user to create elaborate blog entries with minimal efforts.

It is a strong solution for informational websites as well as it is easy to integrate new customized modules. A good integration gives you the opportunity to manage them through the administration panel and you have enough flexibility to define a SEO strategy.

However WordPress has also its cons:

– For large projects WordPress is more complicated to customize than Joomla

– A bit less secure than Joomla

– Less options “out of the box” than Joomla

Due to its extreme simplification, the power-user will feel less comfortable with WordPress than Joomla when it comes to modification advanced settings. WordPress has also had some security issues but the developping team seems to have taken this problem into account in the recent releases.

Joomla

On the other side of the coin is Joomla. It is really complicated to estimate the number of websites using this solution as no updated figures are really available. We can safely speak of more than 60 millions according to our sources.

Joomla is a well-known CMS system, its main strength is its customization: user can make anything he wants out of the platform. The advantages of this CMS are as follows:

– High customization possibilities

– Complete administration panel with several settings

– Complete modules available (shopping cart, download platform… )

– Relatively secure if regularly updated

– Large number of plugins/themes/modules

Joomla’s architecture is more open to modifications than WordPress’ one. Even if, when too modified, the use of a CMS is lowered as the site would be better off developed from scratch.

Though Joomla’s high customization possibilities is its main strength, ironically a part of the cons of Joomla are related to this feature:

– Administration panel can be really confusing

– Interface is heavier compared to WordPress

– Menu customization is not accessible

– Some plugins do not work the expected way

– Not SEO friendly “out of the box”

– Many plugins are not free

Joomla is heavy partly because of the choice given to the user. The amount of options in the admin panel is way too large. And a very disappointing point is about SEO which is not attractive “out of the box”. However some plugins as Sh404SEF will do the job. Take into account that this plugin is not free and we experienced some errors while using it.

Verdict

Let’s say it, WordPress will do the job for 90 of informational websites and it will do it pretty well. It is more attractive than Joomla because of its simplicity and also because SEMs wanting a more complex website should directly choose the e-commerce CMS or web application options regarding their needs.

Obviously, in certain cases, Joomla might be more convenient – For instance if you want to add a shopping cart to your existing Joomla site, you can do so at low costs. Sticking with Joomla would then be cheaper than making a whole new website with a specialized CMS platform or a brand new web application.

You have a list of options (icons). You choose Add new articles that will lead to Joomla editor.

Title – title of the article written with diacritics. Underneath it was Alias, completed only after the Apply or Save button is pressed. WARNING: If the title is accented after you gave the article to be amended Alias Apply for diacritics and not recognize them, so it will be replaced with normal letters without diacritical marks, otherwise it will be poorly indexed by Google.

Section – will be chosen category desired.

Published – will remain selected after preferences. (Refer to publication of the article – Y / N)

Front Page – will remain selected after preferences.

Category – select the category to which it belongs.

On the right side, there are 3 menus that you used 2.

Parameters – You select the author name. If you put an item to someone, you select either his name or Alias will go to Author’s name (if that is not in the list of authors)

In the Editor: Write the first paragraph and then adds a suggestive picture that is related to the article, before or after the text. Proceed to develop the other paragraphs.

Justify the text should be full (not centered in the middle, not right not left) and this should be done after all other changes are made (e.g. a paragraph) for any subsequent amendment to the text (and not If correct spelling) it will goes to Central and will be given full Justify again.

To add an icon picture in the article uses the Insert / Edit Image above is found in all editor options. The image will be linked and will have completed the required title, even the article title. If a picture is too large, it will be re-sized to Appearance keeping proportions.

The film icon is added using the Insert / Edit embedded media, which is publishing all the options above. The same applies with the link, but the icon is called the Insert / Edit link.

Check the article again after that so Apply option will save the article, or Save, feature article, but you will save you from it. To exit the article always yes Save and Close or Cancel. You will never close the window to the article and stuck it blocked only one that can access, others do not.

Finally, in order to delimit the text that appears on the front page, there is an option under the window where you wrote the article called: Read More. Above, if you start with a paragraph and continue with a picture, then it will put a picture and you click that mouse button. There will be delineation.

What tools to use to build a Joomla Template?

Usually you will need Dreamweaver or any HTML editors, Firefox with the firebug extension and Chris Pedric extension. It really depends on what kind of template you are trying to build, in some cases they are available for free download. Some examples of this would be free Joomla church templates or free Joomla education templates, if this is what you are looking for no need to build it yourself! However, let’s talk about making your own template for now. The JTT Template Toolbar Tool stand alone plug-in and a standalone server, preferably Movamp 1.0 or Movamp 1.5. I have tried a lot of Joomla Stand Alone servers and for now Movamp seems to be the be one of the industry. The reason you will need a standalone server to build your Joomla template is that since Joomla is an online web based CMS you will be at the mercy of your internet connection. Working offline will be a lot quicker and more productive. It is also better to work offline than being online on a live production web site where you client and the whole world will see you make errors as you develop the site live…however, it is still possible if you choose the “site offline” setting in the global configuration settings, this will make the site only visible to you or however is logged in. For template design only the super administrator should have access to the site.

Do you really need Dreamweaver? While Free Dreamweaver Templates are nice to have they are not always necessary, Well…the Dreamweaver extensions make it a little more intuitive than the JTT Template Toolbar Tool tool, however both the extensions and the JTT Template Toolbar Tool do the same job. If you are using JTT Template Toolbar Tool you can use any HTML editor that you need, even notepad will work for that. NVU portable is not a bad editor to use to build Joomla site even if it does have it’s shortcomings like any editors around. How do you use and install movamp? Well that is pretty simple, simply unzip and click on the Joom2 go orange icon. This will start your Joomla site automatically in Internet Explorer by default. Give it at least a minute or tow to boot up as it takes time for the virtual server to start. Some settings are also available to set the default browser to Firefox but since I use Firefox portable I let it start in Internet explorer, minimize IE and work on the site in Firefox since it can handle the firebug extension and the Chris Pedric web developer extension.

Joomla is one of the most respected and popular CMS software used for web design projects. It provides state of the art software solution to boost the quality of the projects. It was found initially to boost corporate projects but later many extensions of the software were developed to support complex applications. The right balance of an easy to navigate Web 2.0 interface with customized business solutions makes it one of the popular software used for dynamic and interactive web portals. The interface provides a browser based administrator panel to manage web pages, content, menu items, blog articles, forum posts etc. The best part is that user can itself add tags, keywords on each web page to fasten the process.

Joomla is compatible with major hosting providers like Host Gator. It is one of the most promising web design software which boosts free license and access to readymade software plug-ins to save the cost. The CMS is famous for social networking aspects and has a large social community. The community users and developers post new solutions every day making it a grand success. This has increased the utility of Joomla. The front end of Joomla is developed on Google guidelines and has a CSS/XHTML oriented structure to boost speed and performance. There are various extensions related to real estate, SAAS business domains which add value to any project. The codes of Joomla are developed on Agile approach to ensure easy edits by developers as per the project requirements.

The web design industry frequently use Joomla to train novice developers as it is one of the easiest software. The codes and files are well organized and developers can make changes in the codes easily. The software can be also used as a separate plug-in to other portals. It has revolutionized the software industry.

Drupal has become one of preferred CMSs (content management systems) in the world for both individual blogs and business websites. What make Drupal development powerful are Drupal tools. These tools power Drupal developers to design and develop unique websites from scratch. Drupal has gained popularity, thanks to Drupal toolkit for developer. Instead of inventing and employing solutions, you can use these custom-built ones.

In Drupal development, 90% of the challenges can be met with a few popular tools. Most of the developers sitting in offshore development centers use these tools for custom development of websites. These tools are highly customized by the developers to offer you the right solution to meet your requirements. You can easily outsource your custom development project to these offshore development centers to get high-end results using Drupal.

Top Drupal Tools

Admin Menu– In Drupal,this is the most widely used menu tool. It lets you develop the nerve center of your website CMS. It defines the role of the administrator and other users when it comes to using the CMS. It is a theme-independent administrative interface universal for all kind of development.

Theme Developer– This is one of the most powerful of all the Drupal tools. It allows developers to install and customize Drupal themes for your website. It can easily identify the theme that is being used in on particular section of the website. It also holds crucial information like the usage of ‘tlp’ file or theme in the website.

Content Construction Kit – Content creation is made easy in Drupal with the use of Content Construction Kit. In a matter of few seconds, you can create special content fields using this tool. These fields could contain texts, URLs, references to other pieces of content, or users. You can also insert images, videos and interactive charts using this field in Drupal.

Devel– When Drupal developers think of module development, module customization or custom theme development, they can only think of Devel. This is one of the most powerful Drupal tools. This tool lets you monitor Drupal centric information like collecting and displaying Drupal db query log, nice error handlers, redirection log, page timers, memory usages, and an awesome krumo display. Apart from these, the tool also gives useful developer functions such as DSM(), DPM(), DARGS(), and many more.

Reroute Email– Another powerful tool, Reroute Email intercepts all outgoing emails from a Drupal site and reroutes them to a predefined configurable email address.This is useful for developers where they do not want email sent from a Drupal site to reach the users in situations like working on a test server.

There are hundreds of other tools, which have made Drupal popular among the users as well as developers.

In 2010 many SMEs want to be able to update their website themselves. In the earlier days of web design this wasn’t possible without knowledge of HTML programming or spending a fortune on a content management system.

Nowadays, content management systems (CMS) are king. This post provides an argument as to why you should use a CMS and helps you choose which one. It is written from experience and reflects our opinions.

A CMS gives you, the customer, the ability to update the content on your website through easy to use forms. No editing code, just simply click a few buttons and you can add new pages, change the navigation and add text and images yourself. If you want to be able to update a website and not pay a developer to do it you need a CMS. They are also great for search engines.

Choosing a CMS

The first decision to make is do you use an open source (i.e. free) CMS like WordPress or Joomla or a proprietary one, built by a company. We’ve seen both and tested both. Despite everything a sales person will say about their proprietary CMS we haven’t seen one yet which matches the capabilities of the open source ones. What’s more you pay for the privilege to use these ‘sub-standard’ systems.

Why open source is better

• Being open source means anyone has access to the source code behind the CMS and can improve it. With the best developers all over the world doing this; thousands of users providing feedback every day and frequent new releases  the products are improving all the time
• Not only do you get the CMS for free, developers create plugins for the CMS. A plugin may be a tool to help with search engines or it could be an e-commerce module. This saves you time and money in development costs as you can download the plugins and literally plug them into your website to expand its capability
• CMS platforms are built for search engines to read them, increasing your presence on search engines

If open source is for you, it’s then time to choose a system. WordPress and Joomla are the market leaders however there are some others. We’ve used both WordPress and Joomla. We find WordPress easier to use and is great for blogging. Joomla is more complex but works well for larger websites. You’ll have to do a bit of research to find out more and what’s best for your requirements but it’s well worth it.

With CMS becoming the norm through their reach and affordability, building a website on a CMS platform should be a major consideration when building a new website. For more information or to discuss the options for your new website contact us today.

Joomla is one of the learning programs for you to be able to build a website that looks professional and unique. You can do this in less than thirty minutes. All you need to do is following these few steps in this order and it will make the process so much easier that trying to figure it out on your own. The good news is that Joomla is made for beginner web designers.

Install Joomla one to the server, while you can do this the best thing to do is to find a host that already has Joomla installed onto the server. Next you need to get a Joomla template. You need to select one of the Joomla templates and click default. Then log into your website and install the template to you Joomla account. Next you need to start customizing the page. You will need to change the heading to something that is unique to your site. Open the Main Menu form and then go to Menu and then click Home. Then go to page title and type in anything that you want.

Then you need to section your articles. This can be a little bit more difficult for you to do. The best idea is to follow the Joomla instructions. But this is a step that you must do in order for you to be able to manage your site easily. After this open the article manager and click new, then you can fill out the sections that are given, this is to input your articles into the site. If you want to add ads to you site like AdSense then you can manually insert the code into your site like you would in many other methods. After this then you need to actually change your logo to a more personalized logo. Then you need to add Google Analytics to Joomla, this is a tool that will help you to track the visitors to you site. After you do this then you are good and you have a site set up and ready to go.

It is hard to believe that the Facebook Like button is a relatively new social media tool for Facebook users and website administrators. The Like button’s main function is to allow users to identify and share valuable information with their Facebook friends. Once a user clicks the button, your article, product or website instantly shows up on their Facebook news feed and the promotion is done for you– all without the user having to leave your website. For individuals or businesses with Joomla powered websites, adding the Like button is as simple as downloading and installing a Joomla Facebook extension or adding the button manually. If you have not added this feature to your website yet, there are plenty of great reasons why you should start using the Like button today.

Reason #1: It will add legitimacy to your website

Using the Like button will immediately lend creditability to your website. Users recognize and trust the Facebook brand, so when they see the company logo near your content, they will automatically associate that familiarity with your site. Likewise, if a Facebook user sees that their friend has ‘Liked’ you, they will be more interested in visiting your website because their friend has. These days, users are so used to seeing Like buttons online, that if it is missing they may view your website as not credible. It is important to enforce the legitimacy of your site and use tools that will build trust in your content. The more trust, the more likely users are to share your content with others.

Reason #2: It will increase your sales, visibility and web traffic

In the same vein as adding legitimacy to your website, the result of getting ‘Liked’ by a user can be tremendous. Your information will become visible to the users entire Facebook social network and from that point on the number of people who see your content and Like you themselves is immeasurable. If you are selling a product, for example, your visibility to other potential buyers will immediately increase once the news feed on Facebook is updated. If more people become aware of your product or see their friends buying it, it is more likely they will visit your website as well. With that increase in web traffic by interested buyers, you will be able to maximize your online promotion and increase sales.

Reason #3: It gives you direct contact with your users

One of the many perks of social media marketing is the direct connection it creates with other people. From a business or promotion stand point, there has never been such a direct way to engage with your users. With the Facebook Like button on your Joomla website, you can identify the individuals who prefer your content and learn how they fit into your market. You can incorporate other social media plugins, such as Facebook comment boxes, to gain even more feedback and insight from the public. Take advantage of the one-on-one interaction the Like button can create and you will gain valuable data to enhance your online marketing strategy.

Reason #4: It’s free!

Facebook does not charge website administrators to add the Like button to their website and gives instructions online how you can add the button yourself. For Joomla users, however, you can choose to spend money on Joomla Facebook extensions that will give you a variety of Facebook tools and plugins that you can adapt to suit your specific needs.

Reason #5: It will organically create buzz for your website

Social media empowers users to share content and opinions. You can enhance the process by adding the Like button to your Joomla website. Even if you add it and decide not to manage it closely, you will still see buzz created organically every time someone comes to your website and Likes you. Obviously, by taking a more active role in your social media marketing, you can can increase your online presence and build on the organic promotion or buzz that a user creates.

Using a Joomla Facebook extension is a great way for administrators to get started with social media marketing. If you are hesitant about adding everything at once or want to test out what combination of social media plugins work for you, the Like button is the best way to get started. You will be surprised how easy it is to connect with users and start marketing your website worldwide once you decide to integrate your Joomla website with the Facebook Like button.

As a Joomla developer, you encounter many things that are not be easily answered, like “why can’t I get this iFrame to work on my site?” Or your client asks “how difficult will it be to place a page from one of my other sites within the Joomla site you are building for me?”

Being a seasoned professional as well as a resourceful person you of course will tell your client “That’s easy enough, I’ll get right on it.” Then comes the mad dash to figure out how to make your client happy. Well, it’s really not that difficult to embed an iFrame, and I will walk you through the steps, but first there are a few assumptions I have made about your skills set. The first is that you understand and know how to access the administrator area of your Joomla site. The second is that you understand what iFrames are and how they work.

The most likely cause of your inability to embed an iFrame in to your site is that you are coming up against a “blacklist” in Joomla. All versions of Joomla since version 1.5.8 have had a “blacklist” function that protects the site from accepting actions that can cause possible security problems. These actions can prevent embedded files from being posted without proper permissions. The first step in allowing iFrames is to set the site permissions so that you, as the Super Administrator, can embed files and protect your site from others who want to embed files.

To do this, go to the “Content Menu” and choose “Article Manager”, then Click on “Parameters” in the upper right corner. A new window will popup, you will want to scroll down to “Filtering Options”. Select all choices except “SuperAdministrator”, next hit save and close the window. The steps you have just completed will enable anyone logged in as a super administrator to embed ANY code in to the site. These actions also will prevent anybody else from embedding possibly malicious code with tags such as embed, body, and head. Please be advised that only articles created AFTER you make these changes will be allowed to have code embedded in to them.

If your articles continue to not accept the embed code, it may be due to using Tiny MCE, a page editor program that appears as a bar of editing tools at the top of your article body text box. Tiny MCE runs its own security against breaches due to embedding code and you will need to shut Tiny MCE off before you can embed anything.

To turn off Tiny MCE, go to the “Site Menu” and then “User Manager” and select “SuperAdministrator”, which most likely is only you. On the right, under “Parameters”, change the “User Editor” from “Tiny MCE” to “Editor – No Editor” and click Save. Next, you will want to return to the article you were working on, confirm there are no editor tools at the top of your body text box. If the tools are no longer there, you should now be able to paste the iFrame code into the article body text box with no problem.

A dedicated CMS or content management system is essential for large websites which contain numerous directories and databases. The CMS is also required for organizing data output systems and internal email. Joomla and Mambo hosting systems are the most popular CMSs today. They have in fact won awards and have risen to be powerful forces in the industry.

The history of these two Content management systems is interlinked. They were both developed by the Mambo team. In 2005 the main developers of Mambo left the team on account of differences regarding development. After the split these core developers created Joomla.

There are countless benefits of using the Joomla and Mambo hosting. They are free and open source content managers that also help users to upload content on their websites. Joomla’s parts are so designed that it allows integrations and extensions to attach to it with ease. These include background extensions like plugins which make Joomla functional and replete with a plethora of options for the user. The Mambo hosting has almost the same features as Joomla because Joomla is really another version of Mambo with some minor variations.

Since they are popular CMSs they have large fan followings and community memberships- both formal and informal. Joomla and Mambo hosting are hence large CMSs which have the capability of offering two directional text support. This useful feature is not found in small content management systems.

This feature enables companies to upload website content in a language that is widely spoken in a region. Their largeness and open source feature also enables them to furnish users with many beneficial services like informal plugins, add-ons, web templates, extensions and freelance customization facilities.

Content managers like Joomla and Mambo can support almost endless types of extensions. The official record of Joomla extensions is an amazing 2100 extensions. This ensures that a web master can modify the content management system to meet the specific need of the organization in a better and efficacious manner.

These content managers are the usual choices in the content management industry so they provide a common platform for programmers for effecting modifications. One programmer may attach extensions to a web venue using Joomla or Mambo and another programmer can very easily take up the task from that point. The need for incorporating any changes so that the second programmer can continue work is eliminated because there is only one CMS platform. Companies and programmers can work faster. Work may also be outsourced to outside freelance programmers or organizations. This is advantageous to the open-source community also.

Joomla and Mambo is certainly a vital and integral part of large websites that need content managers for efficient working. They are of a very high standard. They serve as a bench mark for developers creating new content management systems. Their mind boggling features and innumerable benefits have made them the superstars of the content management industry. No wonder newer content managers are unable to match up to them. Joomla and Mambo hosting are likely to continue as the dominating forces in the market for a long time.