Design

In this section you can read Alledia blog posts about web design.

admin praise

Yes, Joomla Admin Templates Are Worthwhile

Back in mid-2008, Kyle from JoomlaPraise.com approached me about writing a guest post. He was trying to promote AdminPraise, a new design for the Joomla administrator area.

I was sceptical. Very. So sceptical that I asked him to basically defend the need for AdminPraise. His guest post became Are Joomla Admin Templates Worthwhile?.

Fast-forward to early 2009 and I was able to review the next version AdminPraise2 and say: “No-one else is building administrator templates”. I didn’t see the point and it seemed many others didn’t either.

Now in 2010, I’ve got this to say: Kyle, you were right. I was wrong.

Continue reading “Yes, Joomla Admin Templates Are Worthwhile”

Read MoreYes, Joomla Admin Templates Are Worthwhile

SEO Template Presentation from Joomla Day Netherlands

Joomla Day Netherlands took place this weekend and by all accounts it was a great success.

There was the official release for Joomla’s new Resources Directory, a presentation with useful security tips by Brian Teeman, and a really good overview of how to create a Joomla SEO-optimized template:

Rene Kreijveld from Webcreatives.nl does a great job of explaining how to create a basic source-ordered template. “Source-ordered” essentially means putting the unique, original text on a page higher up in the code, so that search engines don’t have to wade through lines and lines of repetitive code before reaching tha text. I’d recommend viewing the slides in full-screen as some of the code displayed is small (click the icon on the bottom, second from the right):

Continue reading “SEO Template Presentation from Joomla Day Netherlands”

Read MoreSEO Template Presentation from Joomla Day Netherlands

8 Joomla SEO Template Principles

This is a guest blog post from Cyrus Patten.

Joomla can create powerful, robust and stunning templates. In addition to the flexibility of the templates, many of them dynamically change to fit your content and extensions. This is a great feature of Joomla! However these features can lead to some very bloated, complex and non-search engine optimized templates. The following is a list of template principles to look for when purchasing or designing your next template.

Continue reading “8 Joomla SEO Template Principles”

Read More8 Joomla SEO Template Principles
Joomla Praise

Are Joomla Admin Templates Worthwhile?

Joomla Praise Admin TemplateIn one of a series of guest posts here on the Alledia blog, Kyle Ledbetter of Joomlapraise.com asks whether admin templates are worth the effort.


Over at JoomlaPraise we make Joomla templates and extensions and have recently released AdminPraise, an administrator template for Joomla 1.5 that falls somewhere between a template and extension.

However, the question we’d like to ask is … do Joomla users want/need an alternate admin template?  The admin template system is obviously in place for this reason, but no one really uses it.  We’ve seen slight variations on the Khepri template, but that’s about it.

Continue reading “Are Joomla Admin Templates Worthwhile?”

Read MoreAre Joomla Admin Templates Worthwhile?
Header Image Module

Different Header Images on Different Pages

Header Image ModuleThis is a straight-forward tutorial explaining how you can place different header or logo images on different pages of your site. For example, your sports site may need a baseball player on top of the baseball section, a golf player in the golf section and so on.

How Not to Do It

Create a different template for each page. Believe me, I’ve seen this done with over 30 header image, which means over 30 extra templates.

Continue reading “Different Header Images on Different Pages”

Read MoreDifferent Header Images on Different Pages
amazon-dropdowns

Amazon Experimenting with Dropdown Boxes

Paul Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” is a classic guide to designing easy-to-use websites. In the book he makes a pretty compelling case for using tabs instead of dropdowns. His prime example is Amazon.com who lead the way in successfully using tabs.

Therefore, I got a big surprise today when I saw that even they’re are using dropdowns and with a really interesting twist …. dropdown menus with boxes instead of an organized list of links.

Continue reading “Amazon Experimenting with Dropdown Boxes”

Read MoreAmazon Experimenting with Dropdown Boxes

We All Mess Up – Just Not As Badly As This

Admit it – you’ve been making changes to a live site and something went wrong. You screwed up the site and spent an hour or more fixing it while visitors kept coming and kept wondering what on earth was going on.

However, you don’t run one of the 40 most popular sites in the world…

For about an hour this morning, some poor staffer at the BBC posted an unedited photo of England cricket captain Michael Vaughan. The photo was so large that it made a complete mess of the BBC’s frontpage. 3000 pixels high and 2158 pixels wide? Woops, should have been 66×49…

The image was so big that the frontpage was pretty much unusable while it was posted. Check out the original photo and the correct one.

Click Below for Snapshots of the Mess

{gallery}bbc{/gallery}

 

Read MoreWe All Mess Up – Just Not As Badly As This

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:

Continue reading “How to Add Funky Fonts to Your Joomla Site”

Read MoreHow to Add Funky Fonts to Your Joomla Site
Independent Frontpage

The Independent Graphic Design Excellence

Its almost common place now to say that newspapers are finished and that all they can look forward to is eeking out a living online, while their paper edition die a slow death.

This is true for most newspapers and in Britain there’s only one newspaper that has consistently been able to overcome the negative predictions.

In late 2003, the Indpendent was a struggling newspaper. It ranked almost last in popularity? among the Britain’s dozen major newspapers. It was then that it made the brave decision to move from being a broadsheet to being a tabloid. Every day the frontpage features a single image or photo trying to grab the readers attention. Some worked and some didn’t but many were little masterpieces of graphic design. 3 1/2 years later it is selling 15.5 per cent more than it did back in September 2003.

While their reporting is good and has won several awards, its their cover photos that really make the Independent stand out. Today, we take a look back at some of the very best graphic design examples from the Independent frontpage over the last 18 months:

Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
Tony Blair’s Legacy Whale Hunting
Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
Climate Change Prediction Mental Illness Treatment
Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
New Laws Heroin in the UK
Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
Record Art Sales New Laws
Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
Immigration into Europe Special Aids Issue
Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
SUVs and Climate Change Climate Change
Independent Frontpage Independent Frontpage
Haj Photos Healthcare Problems

?

Click here to see all a list of all Independent frontpages since January 2006.

Read MoreThe Independent Graphic Design Excellence