Steve’s Blog

Long Term Growth

Results of the Alledia.com Migration

At the beginning of March 2009, we migrated this website from Joomla 1.0 to 1.5.

We discussed some of the technical issues involved in this blog post, and I’m now going to talk about the Search Engine Optimization angle. I’ve had quite a bit of experience in moving sites to new platforms and my experience is that the traffic drop can vary from 0% to 75% depending how well its done. For example, the only other Joomla person to publish their data was Barrie from Compassdesigns.net who reported a 20% drop in traffic after his move to 1.5.

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Template Design Class Interview With Rick Blalock

Rick BlalockFor the first time, we’re expanding the classes we offer at JoomlaTraining.com beyond just beginners classes. On April 22 in Miami, Rick Blalock is teaching a Joomla template design class. He’ll take you from a your basic HTML and CSS knowledge and using hand-on examples, he’ll show how to build a fully-fledged Joomla template. The class will also run on June 18th in Atlanta.

Rick is based in Miami and runs BeautyInDesign.com which was the first place on line to give people comprehensive tuition on how to build Joomla templates. He came to my attention several years ago with some groundbreaking templates including one that looked like a computer desktop and was the forerunner of many of today’s Mootools / drag-and-drop templates.

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AdminPraise2 Login

Review of AdminPraise2 Template

This is a review of the AdminPraise2 template from JoomlaPraise. In fact I should clarify that description: AdminPraise2 is only a template in the way that some of the largest and most ambitious frontend templates are … closer to an serious of extensions than a simple template. AdminPraise2 changes the look and feel of Joomla’s administrator area but also adds an enormous amount of functionality.

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Barrie North

New University Level Course in Joomla

Barrie North

Recently I found out that Barrie North from Joomlashack was running a university level course in Joomla. The class is “Web 2.0 Marketing with Joomla” and I asked Barrie more about this joomla foray into higher education:

1) How did the idea for a graduate level course come about?

I think Jen McKibben originally came up with the idea. I was speaking at the New England JUG about online communities and she thought a graduate course would be great (she is a program director at Marlboro Graduate Center). Its been a long time since I have been teaching in a classroom setting, so the idea appealed to me. I think that once you are a teacher, you’ll always have that desire to educate.

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Joomla Day Las Vegas

Joomla Day Las Vegas Recap

Joomla Day Las VegasI’ve just arrived back from a long series of Joomla training classes on the west coast that culminated in Joomla Day Las Vegas on Saturday. Before I start to wade through the 4000+ emails in my inbox, here are some thoughts on the Vegas experience:

1) Unconference

Initally I was unsure about traveling all the way to Nevada for an unconference. Part of me wondered what on earth an unconference was anyway. Even Allen Gunn who ran the day agreed that its very easy to be sceptical about a “hippy event where people talk about whatever they want”. Its also hard to market an unconference because, especially in this economy, many people want the clarity of a schedule that includes fixed learning classes.

I was wrong. It was more lively, more engaging and I met more people than ever before at a Joomla conference. In the hands of a skilled organizer like Allen, holding an unconference proved a masterful decision.

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Joomla Training

We’re Hiring Joomla Teachers

Joomla TrainingIf you’ve been reading Alledia.com over the last few months, you’ve noticed that we’ve been working on a large new project: JoomlaTraining.com. We started with a single class in Atlanta last June and its snowballed within 9 months to occupy most of our time and business.

We’ve reached the point where we’re ready to start working with teachers. We’re opening up the applications process to teachers in the U.S., Canada and the U.K..

Required Background

  • At least three years of Joomla development experience
  • At least five years of experience as a teacher in a school, college or corporate education setting.
  • Knowledge to teach a Joomla beginner, intermediate, template or coding class.

Required Commitment

  • Ability to run a class four times per year in a city local to them.
  • Willingness to support and participate in the local Joomla User Group.
  • Ability to attend one of our existing classes before teaching. The current class schedule is online: http://www.joomlatraining.com.

If you’re interested, please click here and use this form to contact us.

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ivy league

America’s Top Universities Run on Joomla

ivy leagueThis is the outcome of various Twiter conversations over the last few days. I mentioned that the University of Washington ran Joomla on lots of sites and people started tweeting back about other top colleges using Joomla. So, with a hat tip to compassdesign, zuno, corywebb, joomladaylasvegas, mozami and more, here’s what I’ve found so far:

All Eight Ivy League Universities!

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SanDiego.com Logo

SanDiego.com Multi-Million Dollar Domain on Joomla

SanDiego.com LogoA great domain name is a beautiful thing and there’s a Joomla site running on one of the best … SanDiego.com.

What I particularly love about this is that the company ran the site for several years on Java. Late in 2006 they got an investment of over $1 million dollars to invest in the business … and they choose to rebuild the site with Joomla.

Geo-domains are highly popular and often emerging as rivals to the local city newspapers. Here at Alledia, we’ve got a Joomla website in the planning that will run on the .com of another very famous American location. Look for that launch later this year.

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Does Anyone Use Joomla in Seattle?

Joomla Training Seattle

It doesn’t seem like it …

In a couple of weeks, we’re doing Joomla beginner training classes up-and-down the west coast. See if you can spot the odd one out:

So if you do use, or want to use Joomla in Seattle, we’re going to run a special coupon for alledia.com readers … over at joomlatraining.com, you can use “spaceneedle” for a 33% discount on our Seattle class.

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Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center and NASA Both Run Joomla

Lincoln CenterLast week I was up in New York and Washington for Joomla training classes and was fortunate to meet a lot of great people using Joomla in high-profile and interesting ways.

In New York we had a student from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The Lincoln Center is a huge group of buildings in downtown New York that host a dozen of the city’s highest profile arts groups including the Metropolitan Opera, Juilliard School, New York City Ballet and New York City Opera. Their main website at LincolnCenter.org runs Joomla.

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