Steve’s Blog

Big Discounts on Joomla Training

UPDATED: We have a few tickets sold out our Joomla Training in Atlanta, next weekend, Saturday August 23rd. However, we’ve opened registration for the next class on October 25th. Click here to sign up , and use the coupon "allediablog" for a $50 discount!

In addition to the class, attendees get:

  • Lunch and coffee / snacks throughout the day.
  • Free membership to our SEO Club.
  • Free copy of Barrie North’s best selling Joomla Admin Manual eBook.
  • A flash drive full of tutorials and best-of-breed Joomla components.

Coming up in December, we’re taking our training to Colorado and early birds get a $200 discount! Read on for more details:

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Joomla ECommerce

Joomla ECommerce Solutions Compared

Joomla ECommerceI’ve made this chart after getting several requests in the last few days, all asking which Joomla E-Commerce they should use. There’s no right answer as the two main shopping carts, Virtuemart and iJoomla Digistore, are both very different.

There are two other shopping carts available that look like they may become contenders:

  • Freeway is an enhanced modification of osCommerce and thanks to Damian, the lead developer, I’ve been able to create a column for it also.
  • IXXO is a commercial script I haven’t had the chance to fully test-drive yet. It costs nearly $300.

If any major features have been missed and need comparing, drop a note in the comments.

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Fireboard Forums

Where Have the Joomla Forums Gone?

Fireboard ForumThere has been an interesting update to the forum sections on the Joomla Extensions Directory. It has been split into Native Joomla Forums and Forum Bridges. 

I was shocked to see only five native Joomla forums remaining. There are two native forums with a wide range of features:

And three very basic forums:

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Drupal Wordpress Joomla

Joomla Trademarks Name and Logo

Drupal WordPress JoomlaThere are some third rails in every community … things that people are reluctant to discuss. Joomla’s move to a GPL license was one of those, and I think we did a reasonable job of openly talking about the issues and implications.

This week, I’m going to attempt to touch another third rail: Joomla’s trademark.

Today, Joomla’s trademarks for its name and logo were accepted and published. This week, I’ll attempt to answer questions about what this means for Joomla and for people running Joomla sites. This first post lays out facts about the trademarks:

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sh404SEF

Solving Common Problems With sh404SEF

sh404SEF logoIf you read this blog often, you’ll know I love building sites with sh404SEF. However, its such a powerful extension that it can be complex. There are several issues that people keep asking me about. So instead of giving the same answer every time, I’ve written up the answers in a single document.

This is a free article from the SEO Club’s guide to sh404SEF. Club members can look forward to the release of a full guide to Artio JoomSEF within the next couple of days. If you’re not a member, we’re still offering a free two week trial.

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how.jpg

Joomla Training Discounts in Atlanta and New England

how.jpgAre you looking to learn Joomla 1.5? There are Joomla training sessions coming up in Atlanta, Boston (MT), Manchester (NH), Hartford (CT) and Albany (NY).

We have a special offer for Alledia blog readers today … $50 discounts for all of those Joomla training sessions:

  • $50 Atlanta Discounts: Use the coupon "allediablog" for a $50 discount on August and October training sessions.
  • $50 New England Discounts: Register in the next two weeks and get a $50 discount.

To find out more about the Atlanta training, please click here. To find out more about New England, keep reading:

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Alledia T-Shirt

Open Questions: Gifts from Customers?

Alledia T-ShirtBack at JoomlaExpo in Chicago, one guy stood up during Barrie North’s presentation and very happily announced he’d found Barrie’s tutorials so useful that he’d sent him a box of juicy steaks.

Alledia T-Shirt
I didn’t get any food this week, but did get a big box of T-shirts
courtesy of CustomLogoUSA.com who have been SEO Club members for
several months. They’re a very friendly company from Syracuse,
New York who allow you to put your logo on all sorts of items.

So this week’s open question is …

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Joomla 1.5 RSS

Full Site RSS Feeds on Joomla 1.5

Joomla 1.5 RSSNo doubt about it, RSS feeds on 1.5 are better than they were on 1.0. Not perfect, but certainly better.

Instead of a single feed, the 1.5 RSS feed that appears in the browser bar is always changing because it shows only the articles on that page. You can see a good example at http://community.joomla.org.

This did lead to one problem I found the other day … its sometimes difficult to produce a full RSS feed for all the articles on your site.

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Joomla Survey

Surveys Build Mailing Lists

Joomla SurveysIf you’re serious about getting repeat visitors and building your brand, sending out newsletters is a vital tactic. Sometimes its hard to get started with a subscriber base, but there are tactics that work well – surveys are my favorite.

Prospect Magazine carred out a survey to rate the "world’s top 100 public intellectuals". A pretty boring subject, but it caught on with newspapers running campaigns to vote for local heroes in Indonesia, Canada, India, Spain, Bulgaria and Turkey. This story about the results on NPR really got my attention with a quote at the end:

Interviewer: "Do you have many subscribers in Turkey at this point?"

Propsect Staff Member: "We’re hoping to get a lot more. We quite cleverly made it compulsory for people who are voting to enter an email address into the system. Our email newsletter list is now made up of about 95% Turks." 

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