Are you stressed about your website development? Yes then, you should switch to Joomla development to get easier, faster and reliable web and related applications expansion. You must be wondering that why just Joomla for entire website development? The answer is straight forward as well as quite simple and i.e. Joomla is an open-source content management system that consists of special abilities to offer offshore web and application development at affordable cost.

Core information about Joomla

PHP is base of Joomla programming language as it is written in the same language. The main and basic feature of Joomla customization is that it supports OOP (Object Oriented Programming). The superiority of the language can be derived from a record-breaking fact that it has been downloaded more than 30 million times till the date and these figures makes it second most famous CMS on the net. For better and comfortable access, the latest version of Joomla i.e. 3.0 was released just a month ago.

Joomla has number of extensions that carry out their separate functions for the betterment of website development. Some of the main extensions of Joomla are:

• Modules of Joomla
• Joomla Components
• Templates of Joomla
• Plugins
• Languages

You should also know that all these components are further divided into sub-divisions, for e.g. – let’s have a look over the sub-categories of templates, which are as follows:

• Effects and Images
• Fonts
• Design
• Layout
• Color Schemes

What all Facilities Joomla ca offer you?

Joomla provide several numbers of services for the website and relevant apps development. Some of the important amenities that Joomla proposes are as under:

• Business web-apps development
• Community site development
• Social- Networking websites development
• E-Commerce web-applications development
• Job and Hiring Site Development
• And a range of other additional sites development

Joomla can be helpful for you only when you find a faultless Joomla developer that has core and wide knowledge regarding the same. It is absolutely a daunting task to hire Joomla developer from the bulk crowd of the Joomla programmers. A Joomla developer must be expert in Joomla theme designs and Joomla design integration because both these factors play a vital role in proper and ideal expansion of a website. In addition, you must also ensure that developer has resonance experience in the same field as well as superior grasp over the PHP language. Last yet primary thing, the Joomla developer or the Joomla development company must tender the services at affordable cost as well as on time.

Joomla websites can be slow, especially if you have a lot of extensions installed. Slow page speeds drive customers away from your website. Sincemore, since Google might consider page speed in its ranking, it's more important than ever to have fast page speeds. JCH Optimize, a plugin for Joomla, is a fast, free, and easy way to speed up your site immediately.

A client called me and asked it I could optimize his site for speed. I checked out his site and found that it seemed to load pretty fast, or as least as fast as the dozens of different sites I visit every week. But to get a more quantitative measure of the site speed, I installed Google Page Speed ​​and tested his site. The site speed score was 75. Then I tested my site and the page speed was 67. Speed ​​scores are like grading curves and 67 is failing.

Two of the largest speed drains on my site were multiple CSS files and Javascript files. Since almost every Joomla extension comes with it's own style sheet and javascript, the more extensions you have, the more of a speed drain on your site.

After some quick research, I found JCH Optimize, a Joomla plugin which purpose is to speed up your site. Once I installed and configured JCH Optimize, my page speed rank went immediately from 67 to 78, an 11 point improvement. A 78 puts brings my site up to a passing grade. Certainly not the fastest site, but not the slow either.

In fact, I did some page speed tests on other high-profile sites and after that I felt more comfortable with my improved page speed.

Note: All page speed scores are for the home page only. Often, sub pages are much faster since they do not have as much media and images as the home page.

• wittenowdesign.com – 78
• Apple.com – 68
• Joomla.org – 74
• Macworld.com – 71
• Microsoft.com – 79
• nytimes.com – 64

Keep in mind that the more information you have on a page, the lower your page speed. Add movies, flash, AJAX, and lots of nice images, and your page speed will go down. Also, database driven websites like Joomla and WordPress are inherently slower that static web pages.

JCH Optimize speeds up your site by doing the following:

• Minimizes css and javascript. This means it removes all line ends and comments.
• Combines css files into one file.
• Combines javascript files into one file.
• Gzips the combined css files.
• Gzips the combined javascript files.
• In addition, it can minimize all of your html output, but I did not use this feature.

JCH is easy to configure, and you can choose to turn on only some of the features. In fact, you might have to exclude some Joomla components or individual javascript files from JCH Optimize because minimizing and combining of the files may create conflicts that break your javascript functions.

For example, I had to exclude AllVideos Reloaded because the javascript optimization made it so my YouTube movies did not play in Internet Explorer 8 (no big surprise since Internet Explorer is the most troublesome and buggy of all the browsers).

There are some negative effects caused by JCH optimize , but if you know about them, you can work around the issues. When JCH Optimize is turned on, any edits you make to javascript or css files are not immediately recognized. As a result, I recommend that you use JCH Optimize only after all of your development work is done. If you need to make configurations to a javascript or css file, first turn off JCH and then make your changes. Once you are done with your changes, you can turn JCH back on.

I highly recommend this plugin if you want to instantly speed up your Joomla Website . Thanks to the developer of this GREAT plugin: Samuel Marshall.

As usual, I had a client with a very specific request for their Joomla website: they had some forms on their website that they didn’t want accessible to the general public. Furthermore, they didn’t want their clients to have to register. Instead, they preferred to have one password to protect these forms. If they wanted a client to have access to the forms, they would send the password to the client. I did a Google search and found MosPasswort Plugin for Joomla.

MosPasswort, a Joomla Plugin, allows you to password protect Joomla content items. Once you install the plugin, you simply enter {password} in any Joomla page that you want to protect with a password. Then, when a user attempts to access a password protected page, they are presented with a password screen. There is no need for the user to register OR to login. They just need to enter the correct password.

Why can’t I just use the default Joomla Registered user function to protect a page? Good Question. You certainly can use Joomla’s default page protection by forcing a user to register and login before viewing a page. But many users don’t like to register or login.

The Joomla MosPasswort plugin allows you to define a password for certain pages. Once you set up a password protection for a page, the user simply enters the correct password to view the protected page.

This method can be very handy when you want to you have pages you want to protect from the public. Send your clients the password and they can access the page. No need to mess with registration and login. As long as you don’t need to collect user data, this method is much faster and easier for the user.

This is a very nice Joomla Plugin, and it does exactly what it is designed to do.

NOTE: You must have php5 on your web server or you need to make a small modification to the passwort.php file.

aiContactSafe contact form component for Joomla is perfect. For years I have struggled with contact forms on Joomla … and wasted a LOT of time. The default Joomla contact form is very limited: you can not add extra fields and there is no captcha to prevent spamming. And I've tried many other form extensions. Although they are good for creating complex forms, they are highly complicated for creating a simple contact form.

If you're looking for a replacement for the default Joomla contact form, this is it: it's easy to use, you can add extra fields, and it has CAPTCHA spam protection.

The Good:

• First and foremost, it's easy to use.
• It's FREE!
• Provided anti spam CAPTCHA
• Multiple profiles with different fields
• Unlimited custom fields with Textbox, Checkbox, Checkbox list, Combobox, Radio list, Edit box, Date, Email, Email list, Hidden, Separator, Joomla contact
• Redirect to specific page after the message is sent
• File attachment
• SEF URL
• No link back to developer site on the contact form (this is pretty amazing since it's a free components and it's only fair for them to add a link)

The Bad:

It's hard to say anything really bad about this component. After all, it does exactly what it is supposed to do: provides an easy-to-use contact form with custom fields and CAPTCHA spam protection.

• No error messages. If you specify that a field is required, there is no way to add a specific error message for that field.
• No field validation. There is no mechanism to validate that the user entered the correct data in the field. For example, you can not validate that the user entered a correctly formatted phone number.

Thank you to the software developers at Agil Info for providing this perfect replacement for the default Joomla contact form. I hope this contact form extension will be included in the Joomla software distribution.

OPML is simply another name for Outline Processor Makeup Language. It remains an XML-based style that is commonly used in applications, programs, OS and computer environments. There is every possibility to use your Outline Processor Makeup Language file along side with Joomla. Joomla remains an open source CMS that works with some types of applications, applications and files. You can as well build your own web page from the scratch using Joomla. In most cases, people usually find using OPML along with Joomla difficult, but in the real sense, the process remains simple. Are you looking for tips on how to import OPML into Joomla? With the few steps explained in this article, you will be sure to understand the concept of how to import Outline Processor Makeup Language into Joomla easily.

Step 1:

The first step to envisage on is to log in to your Joomla account or Cloud client platform.

Step 2:

The next step to take is by navigating on '' My Products and Services "icon. Go ahead to navigate on" Manage Instance "icon.

Step 3:

Under the "Product Details," "try to click on the button with the inscription" Enable Uploads. "Once you are able to upload, there will be an e-mail confirmation sent.

Step 4:

At this joke, you will have to go back to your Joomla web page. Once you are able to land on your Joomla web page, ensure to navigate on the button carrying an inscription of "Media Manager." Go ahead to click on the option carrying import a file.

Step 5:

Finally, under the inscription "Upload File" option, go ahead to click on the button "Browse." You will have to find and select the target Outline Processor Makeup Language file. This is often done from your PC. Once you are able to achieve the selection of the OPML file, try to navigate on the "Open" button. Once the open has been placed operational, ensure to click on the "Start Upload" button. You can go ahead to start editing your Outline Processor Makeup Language file in Joomla.

Conclusion:

Following the comprehensive explanation in this text is sure to guide you when importing OPML file in Joomla. The most important thing know is prior to the process is having your Joomla website and Cloud client platform ready. Once you have all the needed tools ready, the import process will never be difficult again. You can give it a try now. You will be happy with the result.

While almost everyone has heard of minors by now if you know anything about internet marketing, very few people have considered using an open source and free CMS or content management system, like Mambo or Joomla, which is based on Mambo code, to produce minisites.

What are the advantages of using a CMS like Joomla to quickly make and deploy minisites on the internet?

1. Joomla is easy to use and you can use thousands of free CSS based templates that support the latest standards and have a site up in hours, not days.

2. Joomla support easy wysiwyg or what you see is what you get visual editors that allow you to set up and add content to a site as easily as using a word processor on your desktop computer. What this means is that your site supports the latest web 2.0 standards and can grow in content easily and quickly without redeveloping your website from scratch.

3. Joomla has thousands of extensions and you can easily produce websites that rival sites costing tens of thousands of dollars for nothing. You can easily add membership sites, photo galleries, streaming video, audio, chat, and forums as well as rich blogs. In short, everything to make your site "sticky" and keep bringing back those visitors over and over again.

4. Joomla makes changing the look of your site a snap, since you can change your template and quickly change the look and feel of your website in just minutes, allowing you to freshen up your site every once in a while.

5. Joomla is continuously updated and is now releasing a beta version called 1.5. Most people are still working on 1.03 or so, but it is nice to know that future upgrades are available.

6. Joomla is well supported by many hosting services now, and is able to be installed by Fantastico scripts with just one click. There is a user manual and several video packages that show you how to make templates and set up membership sites for profit.

7. Joomla and most of it's extensions or add ons are free and open source so it is cheap to get a very professional web presence on the internet.

For all the advantages, it will take a few weeks to get used to the new methodology of using a CMS to manage and deploy your websites unless you are using to making websites from your browser. Once you get the hang of it however, you never want to go back to the slow laborious system of desktop website creation and uploading.

I recommend you go to one of the sites called Joomlatutorials.com and go through the tutorials right after installing Joomla and before you do any work on your own site. Basically, you start with a template that you get for free at the largest free site template repository called http://www.joomla24.com . They have over 1,500 free templates you can start with. Alternately, you can go with one of the many commercial template companies that offer a variety of paid templates that you can modify and make into your site.

Once you select the template, you must change the permissions on your template and media areas of your template section in Joomla under your public html directory so that you can make changes to the appropriate template and files.
You do this either within joomla or most often, from cpanel using your file manager functions and set the file permissions to 777 for the folders and 666 for files.

You must get a log in from your hosting company after installation so that you can go into the administrators section that you manage and build the site from and make changes and add content to the site.

After you log in, you go to the templates section in the site manager and click on new.

Then you are presented with a dialog that asks you to browse on your computer and pick the site template which must be in zip format and you upload the template on your site. After a few minutes, if it is successful, and it tells you so, and then you click on continue. Then your site template will be listed with the other default templates. You click the radio button to make the template you installed the default template.

Then, you click on the radio button to select the default template and then you click on html to edit the html for the template page. You will be checking for the image files on the page.

As you can see, you need to study html and I would especially study CSS or cascading style sheets and tables so that you know how to place things on the page. In any event you need to look for the header graphic and replace it with a graphic header of your logo or a header image for your site.

You must be sure the graphic is slightly smaller than the size given so that the header graphic or logo will show up without messing up the format of the template or page. You must upload using an ftp program like Transmit or Filezilla the image file that you want to use for your logo or header image. Once you find the joomla folder in the public html folder, you must click on it to find the templates folder. Inside that there is an images folder. You must upload your chosen image to that folder. It should be a .jpg or .gif file in the same format as that used in the template if possible. Once the image shows up in the file, your next job is to change the html in the html file and replace it with the name of the image you uploaded. Then when you pull up your [http: //www.sitename/joomla] your front page should show your graphic logo or header file.

Next, you need to unpublish those buttons on the front page that you do not need. You go to the main menu section and unpublish everything but the home button. You will need to go to joomla extensions page and go to menu section and find a menu extension that will allow you to use images or other files to set up your menus. Then you will have the appropriate file extension ready when it is time to link your menus which is the last step in setting up your website.

One thing you can do now is figure out what extensions or extras you will need on your website. You can just have a straight minisite but you will do better in the search engines and in the eyes of your visitors if you have a theme based content site and not just a sales page. If you add a chat client, a forum, and a blog to your site then you will find that your visitors become involved with the site and keep returning. The more they are on your site, the greater the chance they will buy what you have to offer, be it an affiliate offer, an ebook, or a membership.
Check each section of the extensions. Especially the graphics section where all the banner advertising extensions are. You can monetize the site with banners and / or text ads that will bring additional money onto the site. It is true that if you use AdSense on your site, your site will show up in the search engines sooner. There are several AdSense modules. You will need to add docman or Remository if you will be setting up files for download on your site. Community builder or AEC will serve you well if you are setting up a membership site. You will need One of the wsiwyg content editors in the content and news section so that you can edit your pages easily and quickly. You must set up your wysiwyg editor as your default editor for Joomla. Then when you go to add content, you can easily and quickly edit your pages. You should go to the Blog section and add X-Blogg for editing your blog offline and download one of the blog programs for easily setting up and running a blog from your site. You will need to add one of the payment processors and / or a shopping cart for your site if you will be selling products from your site. Once you have added all the extensions, be it a component, module, or mambot you are ready to go to the next step.

Next, you will start adding the sections you will need in your site. Then you will add categories to the sections until you have divided your site into an organized entity. Then you will edit the front page using the content editor and the wysiwyg editor you have made the default content editor. You will add images and add articles so that everything is done to your satisfaction. Use Polls, banners, and the AdSense or other text ads for your affiliate programs to the front page on a rotating Banner or rotating ad schedule. That way you can track where most of your sales are coming from. Keep adding articles and other sections to your site until it is finished. Do not forget to add sales pages for each of the products or affiliate opportunities you are promoting. Then you will add a Thank You page for any downloads you need to offer or ebooks or software. You will have to set up the extension and add any thumbnails or links you need to download products for.

Once that is all set up check all your images and your spelling for all your articles. Check your links and make sure that everything is in order. Make sure your shopping cart is working properly by adding a sample products and ordering them. Make sure that any forms are working properly to add your visitors to your opt in list.

Add your newsletter buttons and set up your mailings. Set up your autoresponders for any orders or requests for you newsletters. I suggest you set up your newsletters in an archive section on your site so that people can download them from the site in case their email Spam filter eats your newsletter.
Once everything looks good publish your pages.

Congratulations, your site is now live. Write two articles in your area of ​​expertise a day and you will have over 100 articles in a years time circulating all over the net earning you money. You just submit the articles to article directories and you will add a signature file mentioning your experience and your main web site. As I said, if you do this to hundreds of sites you will soon see a flood of traffic to your site and the money will follow! Joomla Greetings for the holidays!

Joomla! is one of the renowned content management systems. It works on the platform of php, and is used by both small and big business. In fact, it has is an award winning project and the best part is it is open source. Joomla! is very user friendly. It is aimed to facilitate users with negligible technical skills. Basically, Joomla! is software that optimizes, and manages the content hosted on the site. Joomla! is one of its kinds and is widely used by both big and small enterprises.

Overview:

With the immense popularity Joomla! is used by every kind of site, from corporate sites to government to personal. This is main feature that makes Joomla! stand out. Big companies like MTV Networks, Howard University, Citi Bank are using this content management system. It is enriched with many features such as management, search facilities, web services. The chief feature is management, and every type of management such as content management, user management, media management and many more are integrated in Joomla!.

Why Joomla!?

Joomla! is very easy to build and design a website. An amateur with nugget of development and web designing skill can effortlessly create wonders with Joomla! web design. Joomla! has a glorious history. It started in the year 2000, and since then it has got around 200,000 admirers and has a strong community including big and small companies. It got the award for the best CMS open-source developer. To get started with Joomla! is very simple, just download Joomla! and read the guidelines available on the Joomla! site.

It has the feature of demo using, from which a user can take an experience. For organizations looking for advanced and high quality framework, Joomla! advanced version known as core Joomla! is also available. This version provide platform to develop e-commerce systems, inventory control systems, complex directories, communication tool. Joomla! is recommended for small firms because it is built on the platform of PHP and MySQL. Both PHP and MySQL are open source web development and database management system.

Benefits:

Joomla! is incorporated with many advantages and below here are some of them which describe its acclaim.

· It is an open-source CMS development kit.

· Apart from managing content such as text, video, photos on the site, it also helps the web hosting site to encourage polls, search, and web help system.

· The real strength of Joomla! websites is its ease f use. It is very user friendly and any proletarian web developer can get acquainted with it.

· Still for consumer’s satisfaction it has an option for demo use, which shows that site’s way of encouraging small scale companies.

Many technical features are there but these are some basic boons that separate Joomla! from other CMS developers.

Joomla! web development is not only cheap and user friendly but also comes with a user satisfaction tag, its wide history demonstrates that. So this pristine web developer is highly recommended for small scale industry. The big commercial firms displays that they also recommend Joomla! as the best.

Before we see why it is beneficial to use Joomla designing, let us have a look at what is Joomla? Joomla is a free open source Content Management System (CMS) that helps in managing the contents of your website. It enables to control the presentation of a particular website giving it a professional look.

Joomla offers so many advanced features to a developer or for that matter even to a person who is new to Joomla. It is very easy to understand and provides first grade templates giving your website a completely professional outcome in no time.

One of the best advantages of Joomla is that they eliminate the possibility of static in the contents of the website. A Joomla designed website collects contents from a stored database which makes the website management quite dynamic in nature.

Joomla websites use CSS layouts which mean there is a lot of flexibility available to the contents of the website. It provides a kind of breathing space for the contents by adding column spacing or ‘gutter’. This is why a website powered by Joomla has wide pages.

It is important to have a very creative and dynamic website if you want to flourish in the online industry. By using Joomla designing you can get all the web designing tips and tools that help you create an extra ordinary website with all the advanced features.

More over, Joomla designed websites are easy to maintain and update. And best of all Joomla application is free!

Is Joomla futuristic?

Yes, it is absolutely the CMS of the future. It is one of the most popular CMS used today. It is widely used by people with no knowledge of web designing to high tech professional developers. Joomla started back in the year 2000. Eight years down the line, Joomla managed to get over 200,000 community users and contributors. Therefore the future of Joomla definitely looks bright.

Joomla Content Management System (CMS) is one of the most popular in the web development, where the companies can save lot of money in developing their web presence or portals to offer various services. Joomla extensions are helping various modules to implement and achieve the required functionality, thanks to wide user and developer base. Joomla implementation is very user-friendly and more than than that it Open source application, you can customize it as required and distribute, any number of times, without any licensing fee. Today, Joomla is being used all over the world to develop most-effective websites. Most of the Joomla Extensions are free or available with very nominal fee, most of them offer trial version. Joomla’s extensive documentation, helps any novice to download and install the application on the web servers, it need very little technical know-how.

Joomla is not only user-friendly to the developers, it is also excellent platform to integrate any kind of design, and most importantly, it is SEO-friendly. If you would like to implement Joomla for your web development requirements, you can easily approach any Website Designing company, and start without any hesitation. Most of the web development companies are realizing the value and flexibility of the Joomla and offering it as their regular service.

Joomla and it’s extensive Extensions library helps the developers to build many applications, to list some of them : simple websites, corporate portals, eCommerce websites, online Catalogue, eZines, Travel & Hotel Bookings, wedding websites, community portals, etc., etc., the list is end-less.

Joomla’s easy to use text editor makes it pretty easy to add pages (they call it articles), to the website. It is as simple as working in MsWord. You can easily integrate text, tables, graphs and flash elements, etc., More over most of the development companies also train the clients, so your future updates will be pretty easy, and you need not to wait for the web developer to respond, or shell out large amounts.

Are you ready for Joomla

When it comes to choosing a CMS, I am often asked which is better – Joomla or WordPress. Although they are both completely and strongly different, they have many similarities as well. Both Joomla and WordPress are open source software, which allows them to be easily customized to suit your needs, it often becomes a daunting task to decide which one is better to use. So, we bring you a comparison between both Joomla and WordPress to help you make an informed decision:

Basic function:

In WordPress: WordPress is a website engine, which allows the entire work installing and running the system, as well as publishing basic content a breeze.

In Joomla: Joomla is for managing and publishing a bouquet of different content types, in diverse ways.

Primary use:

In WordPress: Although it began as a blogging tool, it has evolved into a full-fledged CMS. You can check the blogs of the NY Times to get a peek into what WordPress can do. However, WordPress still caters mostly to newbies.

In Joomla: It caters to end users, developers and designers alike.

Estimated number of users:

In WordPress: There are 54,971,377 WordPress sites in the world. Over 333 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages each month. WordPress.com users produce about 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new comments on an average day.

In Joomla: As of March 2012, Joomla has been downloaded over 30 million times. It is believed to be the second most used CMS after WordPress.

Expansion plugins vs. extensions:

In WordPress: There are over 20,951 WordPress Plugins in the directory, which have been downloaded 338,446,638 times and counting.

In Joomla: Joomla has 3 types of extensions: Components, Modules, Plugins. A specific function is handled by each of these extensions. As per the Joomla! Extensions Directory, 10019 extensions have been served to the community.

Expansion themes vs.templates:

In WordPress: There are thousands of WordPress themes – some free, some paid. Free Themes Directory of WordPress lists 1,580 themes, which a user can download at no cost.

In Joomla: Although there is not any central directory where templates are stored, it's estimated that more than 8,000 templates (counting both free and commercial templates) exist.

Popular Businesses Using the CMS:

In WordPress:
Yahoo! (Internet Search)
PlayStation Blog (Video game blog)
eBay (Online Auction Shopping)
Boise State (Educational)
Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs (Celebrity)

In Joomla:
MTV Networks Quizilla (Social networking)
IHOP (Restaurant chain)
Harvard University (Educational)
– Citibank (Financial institution intranet)
– The Green Maven (Eco-resources)
– Outdoor Photographer (Magazine)
– Play Shakespeare.com (Cultural)
– Senso Interiors (Furniture design)
– Thousand of Government Agencies around the world

Security:

In WordPress: The availability of multiple security plugins for WordPress has made the task of managing your CMS's security simpler. The WordPress tools can search for various updates of core files and plug-ins installed, and patch them automatically, thus making the administrator's job even simpler. You can enhance security further by renaming the administrative account from the default admin through MYSQL command-line client. Features like password protection, restricting and changing file permissions, managing separate databases, firewall plugins etc. help in tightening the overall WordPress security.

In Joomla: The core code of Joomla, built on MySQL and PHP is considered very secure and safe.

User base and support:

In WordPress: Although it has a loyal user base, WordPress forums are not as active as that of Joomla.

In Joomla: A huge user base and a high level of activity on the Joomla forum.

Size of the installed CMS:

In WordPress: Around 10MB on the server.

Joomla: Joomla installs at about 30MB, while 100 MB space can be taken by a small working site.

SEO:

In WordPress: WordPress has adjustable plugins, which you can help improve your ranking.

In Joomla: You can get 100% perfect metadata and SEF URLs if you have your website setup properly. However, tables in the layout scheme pose a problem.

Ideal for:

In WordPress: Small 5-10 page simple sites up to large, expansive sites.

In Joomla: Websites that can be expanded to include a multitude of functionality.