Steve’s Blog

Often you have pages on your website that you want to keep private – either for your staff or for you registered members. This week we’ll walk you through how to keep search engine bots from indexing certain articles. Method #1 In your Joomla Admin panel, go to Content >> Article Manager and open the article you wish to keep private. On the right-hand side under “Parameters (Article)” you will see a field labled “Access Level”. If you set this to “Registered” then only people at the “Registered” user level and above will be able to see the article. If…

As the season of giving and good will toward others is upon us what better time to collect donations for your favorite charity, organization or cause. This week we’ll show you how to do just that by adding a PayPal Dontation button to your website to help you collect donations. Here’s how you do it: Download the Easy Paypal Donation Module In the administration area of your Joomla site, go to Extensions >> Install / Uninstall and upload the file to install. In the administration area of your Joomla site, go to Extensions >> Module Manager and locate the Easy…

One of the most famous blogging experts is Brain Clark on Copyblogger. He recently wrote a post about the “Click Here problem”. He quotes research that shows how often people click on different kinds of link: “Click to continue”: 8.53% “Continue to article”: 3.3% “Read more”: 1.8% The main problem is that “Read More” doesn’t tell people what to do or what they’ll be reading about. Well, you can probably guess which of these options Joomla uses by default. Fortunately, it is possible to make Joomla’s Read More more descriptive and useful. Here’s how you do it: Go to the…

Joomla templates allow you to redesign your site easily. They also allow you style your modules. Your login box can have one color, your “Latest News” can have another color and your “Most Popular News” can have third. This image is an example using the Bolt template. Red header, white background. Orange header, orange background. Yellow header, white background. Green header, green background. You can see the full list of color options by clicking here. Here’s how you do it Go to the administrator area of your site and Extensions >> Module Manager. In the parameters of your module, on…

This tutorial will show you how to create a list of related articles for your Joomla website. You can see an example on the right-hand side of this site in the “Related Articles” module. Joomla is analysing the keywords in the current article and automatically listing other articles that have the most matching keywords. Related articles lists are: … good for Search Engine Optimization because the search engines can find accurate and descriptive links to other pages on your site. … good for your users because they can find other articles similar to the one they’re already reading … which…

This tutorial will show you how to track search queries on your Joomla site. Often these queries can be a great source of information about what your visitors want: They show you what visitors can’t find: If one search term is really popular, it might be because people can’t find it using your current menus … it might be time to add a new menu link. They show you what visitors really want: You may think people want “pink widgets” but search terms might show that people really want “blue widgets”.

This tutorial will show you how to add a contact form to the front of your Joomla site. This will allow people to contact you easily and quickly without having to navigate through to a dedicated “Contact Us” page. Step 1: Click here to download the Rapid Contact module. Login to the Administrator area of your Joomla site. Step 2: Go to the Administrator area of your Joomla site and click on Extensions >> Install / Uninstall Step 3: Upload the Rapid Contact module. Step 4: Go to Extensions >> Module Manager then find and open the Rapid Contact module.…

This tutorial which will show you how to create a business directory or Yellow Pages on your Joomla site. We’re going to use a component called Sobi2, which is available from www.sigsiu.net. Installing Sobi2 Click here to download the Sobi2 component. Go to Administrator >> Extensions >> Install / Uninstall and upload the Sobi2 files. Click “Install Sobi2 data” Go to Menus >> Main Menu and click “New” Choose Sobi2 >> Frontpage or Selected Category for your menu link. Give the link a title such as “Directory” and click save. Visit the front of your site and click on the…

One of the most common questions we get from Joomla learners is … How do I set up a shopping cart with Joomla? For several years the only option was Virtuemart. However, Virtuemart is a very large and complex product that it simply overkill for many sites. Fortunately, some simpler and easier shopping carts have recently been released and perhaps the best of the bunch is RokQuickCart from Rockettheme.com. It does have basic tax and shipping options, plus support for either PayPal or Google Checkout. It doesn’t have the ability to put products into categories or have custom fields for…