Steve’s Blog

New Joomla Books Website

New Joomla Books Website

New Joomla Books WebsiteWe’ve written our own Joomla Book about Search Engine Optimization and thought it would be useful to have one site where people could find every book written about Joomla! 

So, today we’ve rolled out Joomla Books. We’ve managed to uncover 13 English language books about everything from the most basic features of Joomla to building your own extensions and templates:

Have We Missed Any Books?

Feel free to leave a comment below or to email us at [email protected].

 

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Juggling Animal

This Extension Had Better Sing, Dance and Juggle

Juggling AnimalSome new products immediately jump out as a great idea. Others don’t.

I have to admit that today I came across something that immediately gave me a sinking feeling. A company called Serr.biz are planning to launch a new Search Engine Friendly URL component called SerrBizSEF.

Now, I’m a sucker for Joomla SEO Tools, and I’ve reviewed just about every one available on this site – most of them with great enthusiasm. However, I don’t believe this one will fly. Here’s why:

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Champagne and SEO

Why Your Joomla Site Should Be Full of Champagne

Champagne and SEOEver see a real, live champagne tower? They look great, flow smoothly and get the party started in no time.

Allow me then, to make a very cheesy analogy: You should build your website like a champagne tower.

The tower is your site, the glasses are your pages and the champagne is that lovely link juice (Page Rank) that Google pours down our throats? Stick with me and I’ll show you how to build a great tower:

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GPL Week

Major GPL Series All Next Week

GPL WeekWe’re pleased to announce a series of interviews focusing on Joomla and the GPL.

Every day next week we’ll be talking with a Joomla developer who works with a commercial GPL business model. Five developers have taken the time to discuss their business and their experience building subscription and support-based projects.

Why are we interviewing people working with commercial GPL models? Because only a small number of people currently have experience with selling Joomla extensions under the GPL. Those developers have a wealth of useful experience that has yet to be tapped. Several have remained quiet during the GPL discussions.

Will you also interview five people with non-GPL models? No. Not because of any bias, but because I believe that the current development model is well understood. The commercial GPL model is still largely unclear to many:

  • Can it support a full-time developer?
  • Can it allow a company to grow and hire staff?
  • How long does it take to build a successful subscription-based site?

Will these interviews be pro-GPL propaganda? No. There will be food for both sides in the interviews. Not all of the developers agree with the core’s decision. However, its important that their voices are heard and hopefully their opinions will help people discuss the issue with more evidence at hand.

We look forward to seeing you back here next week.

Update: links to the interviews are below

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Joomlatwork New SEF Component

OpenSEF Will Be Back

OpenSEF Great news for those of you with OpenSEF installed on your sites.

Zorro over at http://nitsche.org blogged about this. Those of you like me with high-school German or less can read the remarkably good translation from Google.

This is great news because OpenSEF is a remarkably useful component that a large number of people still rely on. The attempt to find new developers with NuSEF hasn’t managed to get off the ground.

The new domain (not ready yet) will be http://www.opensef-for-joomla.org and the developers will be Ken McDonald from OpenSEF plus Richard from Joomlatwork.

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sh404 SEF

New Version of sh404SEF

Joomla SEF URLsOf all the Search Engine Friendly URL components released under the GPL, sh404SEF is the most active project. Yannick Gaultier has taken the old 404SEF codebase and added a host of new and improved features. The latest update is no exception:

New Features in Version 1.2.4.s 

  • The ability to create SEF URLs without .htaccess or mod_rewrite.
  • Compatibility with MosTree, MyBlog and Docman. sh404SEF works with sef_ext.php designed for both SEF Advance and Open SEF, which means it works with more extensions that any of the alternatives.
  • Better handling of duplicate URLs. Previously it just grabbed the first one, which meant you had the load the correct page immediately after installation, otherwise it might grab the wrong URL.
  • Integration with Yannick’s other module: shCustomTags. For those that haven’t used it, consider it to be a simplified, non-hack version of the SEF Patch from Joomlatwork.com.

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Great SEO Improvements in Joomla 1.5

 One of the questions I hear most often on the Joomla SEO Forums and at Joomla.org is: "Will Joomla 1.5 be any better for SEO than 1.0.12?" The answer, we’re pleased to say is yes. Behind the scenes work is being put into some possible SEO changes for 1.5:

What may change in 1.5?

Those of you who have used the SEF Patch from Joomlatwork.com will recognise many of the same ideas at work. That’s because the improvements are being done by the same person – Richard from Joomlatwork. See these screenshots for a dramatic view of the potential changes:

Inside Menu Items and Content Items

http://www.joomlatwork.com/dmdocs/joomla150_frontpage_seo.jpg

You can gain control over page titles, the index/noindex tag, plus Google cache and snippet control

Inside the SEO tab in Global Configuration

http://www.joomlatwork.com/dmdocs/joomla150_seo_config.jpg

The tab has been greatly extended to include complete control over the default setting for the title tag, removal of the Joomla metatag, custom metadata fields plus Google cache and snippet control.

How does it work?

In a similar way to the SEF Patch – everything is done through XML files. With 1.5 you can define custom fields into a separated XML file so that you extend the META fields.

Where can I see this in action?

If you want to test it by yourself see the SVN repository below (the changes aren’t uploaded to 1.5 yet): http://www.joomlatwork.com/svn/joomla150_svn.zip

  • Unzip the zip file
  • Rename the configuration.php file into configuration.php-dist
  •  or

  • Retrieve the latest SVN from Joomla
  • Install it and then replace all the files with the files within the zip file.
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