Steve’s Blog

January 19, 2007

Using Firefox to Help Clients

One of the first things we do when working with new clients is ask them to install Firefox. Originally this we did this because we wanted them to get into the habit of viewing their site in both IE and Firefox when making changes, because those are the most popular browsers. Recently, Firefox has been the beneficiary of so many great extensions that we’re now starting to use the browser to help interested clients learn more about Search Engine Optimization and even make CSS changes to their sites. Once Firefox is in place, we also help them to…

January 17, 2007

A Very Happy 6th Birthday and Version 5.0 to Drupal

There’s been a very gratifying exchange of support and kinds words between the Drupal and Joomla communities during the last few days. It started with the announcement of the release of Drupal 5.0 on Drupal’s 6th birthday. That news made a big splash, reaching the frontpage of Digg and several other technology news sites. The Joomla developers responded with a big "Congratulations!", a response that was greated warmly at the Drupal forums. In that same spirit, we offer a brief comparison, showing that Drupal and Joomla have a lot more in common than may people realise: …

January 16, 2007

January Search Engine Optimization Test Update

After just a month, our Search Engine Optimization test is already producing some really interesting results. Our WordPress test site already has a sizeable lead with Drupal in second place and Joomla quite a way behind. On the most important ranking (top ten rankings in Google), the WordPress site is twice as successful as Drupal and three times more so than Joomla. The overall score is calculated using WebCEO, and is based upon a website’s top-5, top-10, top-20, top-30 rankings. {moschart id=8} So, is this a fluke so far? Yes – Jabalpur has fewer results in Google than either of…

January 16, 2007

10 Reasons to Love .info Domains

info is a keyword which makes it great for SEO. If you consider people searching for golf, you have a good number of people searching for "golf info" but no-one would ever consider looking for "golf net", "golf org" or "golf biz". Its still possible to pick up great domains. While .com, .net and .org and covered by the large firms who make it impossible for small fry to pick up valuable dropping domains, there are still .info gems that can still be caught by people like you and me. In the last month, we’ve picked up major cities and…

January 13, 2007

Interview with Barrie North of Joomlashack.com

In Week 2 of our series of interviews with people in the Joomla world, we’re delighted to welcome Barrie North from JoomlaShack.com and CompassDesigns.net. Barrie was kind enough to take a while out of his busy schedule to talk about template design, SEO and where he and Joomla are headed in 2007. 1) Hi Barrie. Could you tell us a little about yourself? How did you come to Joomla? What’s your background? My background is pretty mixed. I started out as a rocket scientist. No – really! I have a Masters in Physics and spent a while at England’s Atomic…

January 12, 2007

Europe has Wide Lead in Joomla Development

JoomlaYellowPages.com has been going for 4 months now and in that time we’ve found Joomla developers in 42 countries. It seems like a good time to run down where the commercial Joomla world is today. Which areas of the world have the Joomla bug? Which continent has the most developers? Europe with 68 companies. There’s even a Joomla development company in tiny Andorra. That’s more than twice as many as the Americas which have 32 in North and South combined. Which country has the most developers? France with 20 companies. Which city has the most developers? Toronto with 3 companies.…

January 11, 2007

Where to Get Free Joomla Templates

Template clubs, template clubs, template clubs. There are literally dozens of template vendors jostling for attention in the crowded Joomla market, trying to compete for your $30 / $50 / $80 per year. While free components are still produced every week, it seems that the free template has gone the way of the dodo (or reduced to an advertising move in order to attract paid memberships). Today, we thought it would be nice to mention those people who still don’t charge for their templates. If we’ve missed anyone, please feel free to email us and we’ll add them…

January 10, 2007

How Do You Back Up Your Sites?

Ever since Google released its Code Search feature which made it next to impossible to safely create and store backups on a webserver, we’ve been struggling with a security question: Backing up MySQL databases every day is easy, but what’s the best way to backup a site’s files? There are tutorials available on how to use a cron job to use get CPanel to backup the files automatically. However, these are not really appropriate for most of our clients who aren’t able or willing to learn how to use and manage cron jobs. Many hosting companies don’t even…

January 9, 2007

Can Joomla or Drupal Produce a RedHat?

People have already proven that big companies can be built using Open Souce software. 15 years ago Linux started as the hobby of a Finnish university student. Companies such as RedHat have built on his developments and created multi-billion dollar companies. RedHat alone has a market cap of 4.25 Billion US$. It took 8 years for Linux to produce a company listed on the Stock Market whereas both Mambo/Joomla and Drupal are nearly 8 years old now. Can Joomla or Drupal produce a RedHat?

January 8, 2007

Interview with Cory Webb of Joomlaform & HowtoJoomla

We’re delighted to announce a new feature here at Alledia. Every Monday for the next few weeks, we’ll be interviewing people closely involved in developing for Joomla First up is Cory Webb, the talented web designer who is involved in running two key Joomla sites: Joomlaform.com. A showcase for the best in Joomla template design. HowtoJoomla.net. A site full with tutorials for Joomla beginners. If that, wasn’t enough, in addition to working with Joomlashack.com, he also has a full-time job. Last week he was kind enough to submit to our questions about himself and about building templates for Joomla.