Steve’s Blog

How to Add Funky Fonts to Your Joomla Site

We’ve had a 24-hour make-over on Alledia. Throughout today we’re using the SimSun font for all headlines on the site.

Its made possible by a cool technology called sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), created by Mike Davidson. It solves the problem that disappoints many people when they first start designing websites – browsers only accept a limited number of fonts. Some people try to get around this obstacle by using images for text, but this technique is bad for SEO, invisible to screenreaders and difficult to change. sIFR uses Javascript and Flash to solve all those issues.

However, one thing you need to do is create a special Flash file to hold your font. In this quick tutorial we’ll show you how to use sIFR on your Joomla site in 8 easy steps:

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Add your Virtuemart Products to Froogle

I’m very careful about recommending products on this blog, plugging only about 10% of the stuff that gets sent. Thats mainly because so many developers harvest email addresses and send out a mass mailing. Just a two-line, personalised message and a sample of the product is enough to get my interest.

It also helps if something comes from a friend who doesn’t know you’re going to give them a mention.

Today, I got a very pleasant surprise from Ian from NewWorldDesigns.co.uk, who’ve worked with for a long time. His first commercial product came out today and its a great start – its a RSS Feeder for Virtuemart. It allows you to submit a feed of all your products to Google’s shopping search engine. It works out of the box and without any hacks. Its simple to set up and the demonstration video gives you a good idea of what it can do.

So, no affiliate links, no paid posting, just a recommendation. Its a good product.

Find Out More

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Joomla Extension of the Month – July 07

July Extension of the MonthThis month’s award goes to one of the best Joomla extensions and one that is almost certainly the most under-appreciated.

JACLPlus is a hack that allows you to create an unlimited number of new user groups and give them fine-grained access to different content areas on your Joomla site. It works with a few extra components such as Docman and Repository, but by-and-large it is a solution for improving user access to the core of Joomla. Instead of simply restricting people according to "public" or "registered", you can now create user levels of a complexity that rivals

Why is JACLPlus not currently given the credit it deserves?

  1. Installation. Over the years it seems to have acquired a reputation for being a somewhat difficult hack to apply and to an extent that used to be true. However, Byostech.com are charging ahead with development and installation on most sites is a breeze (be warned – as with anything, test this on a demo site before going live).

  2. Marketing. Its admittedly poor. They don’t have a logo or any slick 3D box images. Oh, and guys, you make a great product but the colors on your website make my eyes scream for mercy. Please soften the palette a little.

Our experience is that neither of these things is a genuine issue. JACL Plus is also a really stable product. We’ve clients using JACL Plus to manage 1000s of users generating over 10,000 hits per day. Its a great product and a worth Extension of the Month for July.

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Automapping and Duplicate Content

This post is a follow-up to our previous discussion of automapping, and why it can be really useful in helping you avoid duplicate content problems on your Joomla site.

For those of still thinking about how to handle duplicate content, head on over to the official word from Google. One of their key tips is "Understand your CMS". As the saying goes, "a bad workman blames his tools." Joomla sites can rank well but to make that happen you do need to understand something about how they work.

If you haven’t already, make sure you understand what Itemids are and why they can cause difficulties for your site’s SEO. If that makes sense, dig into this great post on the Joomla forums from Ken McDonald, Project Administrator for Open SEF. He explains how different SEF URL components deal with the problem of Itemids, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each solution:

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Can Some Domains Extensions Hurt your SEO?

There’s a great thread over at Domainstate.com, reacting to the news that ICANN, who control top-level domains on the Internet, have decided to create yet more extensions. After the runaway success of .aero, .coop, .museum and .name, people are clearly desperate for more. DomainState offered their ideas in the form of a fake press release:

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GroupJive Springs Back to Life

GroupJiveSad but true. When our clients ask for social networking we almost always them advise them to use Drupal. Its user profile system is comparable to Joomla’s Community Builder, but Drupal is a better choice because of its immensely powerful groups system. Using Organic Groups, Drupal users can create and manage their own groups, adding on dozens of other features from forums and blogs to photo galleries and even registrations. If Joomla is going to compete for social networking sites, it needs groups. It needs Group Jive, the one extension attempting to meet that need.

Unfortunately, things haven’t looked good recently. Development moved to a new site, slowed down and finally at the end of May, the developers of Group Jive admitted that the extension’s development "hasn’t proceeded like you expected". They asked for help.

The good news is that the request worked. Mark Raborn, the Program Manager, posted that the GJ development team now has 23 people on board. A roadmap is apparently in the works and the release of GroupJive 1.5 now has a new lease of life.

Good news for GJ and good news for Joomla! as a whole. Head on over to GroupJive.org and find out more.

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Review of Heavenly Titles Module

One of Joomla’s inbuilt SEO flaws is how it handles page titles.

The titles of your Joomla page probably look like this:

<td class="contentheading" width="100%">My Page Title</td>

That makes about as much sense as wrapping up the paragraphs on your page with code like this:

<td class="paragraph" width="100%">This is my paragraph and it rambles on and on….</td>.

Whats wrong with <p> and </p>? Fortunately Joomla does use <p> and </p> but it doesn’t utilise <h1> and </h1>. Fortunately, there’s a new module that offers a potential solution….

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New Joomla SEO Forum

As promised – we have a major bonus available today for Joomla SEO eBook Subscribers.

We’ve opened a new Joomla SEO Forum. Over the next few months, we’ll build the forum into the most comprehensive Joomla ranking resource on the web.

What does this mean for you?

Existing SEO eBook Subscribers

  • You receive free lifetime membership to all areas of the forum.
  • You can download the SEO eBook whenever you want from the forum.

Future SEO eBook Subscribers

  • You can join the forum and subscribe to have access to the SEO eBook.
  • The price of the book is not changing ($37) and in addition to the book, you will now get 6 months of forum access and free updates.

Non SEO eBook Subscribers

  • Continuing our tradition of giving away the best free Joomla SEO information on the web, non-subscribers will also have access to sections of the forum. We’ll be on hand to answer any Joomla SEO question you have.

Click here to visit the forum now!

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SEF URL Updates

Some quick updates from the world of Search Engine Friendly URL extensions for Joomla:

Finally, we’re continuing to test sh404SEF on live sites and are finding it to be a great, stable SEF extension. Highly recommended.

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