Steve’s Blog

June 25, 2008

URL Changes in Joomla 1.5

Joomla 1.5 has really taken hold in recent months, overtaking 1.0 to become the more popular system. The aim of this post is to compare the URLs in 1.0 and 1.5 so that you know what to expect in the new version.

Some Background

Joomla has always shipped with two different URL possibilites, the “Default” setting and the “Search Engine Friendly” setting. In Joomla 1.0 the phrase “Search Engine Friendly URLs” probably wasn’t accurate. Google and Yahoo never found much to love about them. It would be fairer to just call them “Shorter URLs”. Joomla 1.5 offers the promise of better URLs. Lets see if thats true:

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June 25, 2008

2000 Comments and a Special Prize

Last week I mentioned that we were approaching 2000 comments on the Alledia blog and that whoever posted number 2000 would get a free lifetime SEO Club membership.

Søren from notwebdesign.com in Spain is the winner after leaving a comment on our post about big companies using Joomla. He’s also the developer of Linx (for reciprocal links) and Linkback (which shows the most popular incoming links to a page).

We’ll be offering this same prize every time we add another 1000 comments, so look for more free lifetime memberships when we reach 3000, 4000 etc.

Thanks to everyone who has posted over the last 18 months! We have some big changes coming up at Alledia in the next couple of months and we’ll be running more competitions alongside the new features.

June 20, 2008

SEO Plugins for Firefox

I’m sure most of you have heard the trick question for webdesigners: “which browser do you use?”.

(The correct answer is “all of them”, because designers need to check their work in every major browser.)

SEO people will give you a different answer: “Firefox”.

It so many great plugins available that it really is the best browser to use. In honor of Firefox 3’s huge launch, here’s a rundown of the best plugins available for SEO work:

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June 18, 2008

Joomla Day Vancover Recap

Just got back from Joomla Day Vancouver at around 3 this morning, having enjoyed every minute of it.

With over 300 emails to answer and our monthly Atlanta Joomla meeting to organize for tonight, I hope you don’t mind if I leave most of the recap to other people.

Here’s an online roundup of the conference:

Presentations: Live blogging was done by Raul who has a substantial summary of almost every presentation.
Publicity: There’s a write-up on Linux.com which also talks about Joomla Days in general.
Photos: Rastin, one of the organizers, has a good number of pics from the event.

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June 12, 2008

Quick Round up Before JoomlaDay Vancouver

I’m off to Vancouver tonight and I’ll be taking my wife, so in addition to going to JoomlaDay Canada, I’ll have a couple of days vacation. The new Vancouver.com is incredible and its really whetted my appetite for a day or two off in such a beautiful city.

Posting will be light so I thought I’d post a short round-up of whats going on:

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June 10, 2008

Does Siteground Control Mambos Website?

Mambo has been dying a slow death since the split from Joomla. In fact, the last time I visited their site was when they were forking again!

Its sad to see a once-great project in such a state. Several links on the homepage are broken, only three users were in the forum compared to over 800 in the Joomla forums and the “Download Mambo” didn’t work.

There are even paid links on their homepage. Scroll to the bottom of Mamboserver.com and you’ll see “CYLON: Internet Marketing, Check out our Customers:” and underneath a list of links including “Phone Card | Used Cars | Geh?use Netzteil USB | Phone Cards | Business Web Hosting”.

Even more shocking was that Siteground, whose antics we’ve covered here before, seem to have taken control of Mamboserver.com.

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June 7, 2008

Joomla and Drupal Training Classes

We run live training classes for Joomla and Drupal across North America. Click below to buy tickets for our upcoming classes:

June 5, 2008

More Joomla Training Dates in Atlanta

Around 5 weeks ago, we annouced Joomla training classes in Atlanta.

We’re happy to announce that the first class in June has sold out and that we’ve been able to schedule several more.

There are two dates for Beginner Joomla Training. No Joomla knowledge is required. The classes are aimed at people who want to manage and build successful
Joomla sites. We’ll be giving practical but not highly-technical
tuition:

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June 4, 2008

Different Header Images on Different Pages

This 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.

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June 2, 2008

Open Question: Major Companies Using Joomla

Do you know of any major companies using Joomla?

I’ve decided to set the bar high by looking for sites that do over half-a-million uniques per month or belong to a truly substantial company. A good rule of thumb is “do they have a Wikipedia entry?”

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Angelica (Publicly-traded health services company)
Avis (The car rental company in Nicaragua)
Burger King (For a special promotion)
CW.com (Main corporate site)
Danone (A lot more than just yogurts)
Derbi (Motorcycle maker – part of Piaggio)
English National Ballet (England’s flagship ballet company)
IBS Software (Software for airlines)
IT Wire (Most popular IT site in Australia)
Jetstar (Airline owned by Quantas)
Latvia (The country’s official site)
Mansfield Oil (Large U.S. Gasoline Distributor)
Mistubishi Venezuela and Poland (The car manufacturer)
Mountain West Sports (Cable TV sports channel owned by CBS)
Nikon Instruments (High-quality technical products)
Olympus (Camera maker’s Australian site)
Peg Perego (Italian child accessories)
Porsche (Brazilian site)
Quizilla (Heavilly modded Joomla site owned by MTV)
Scandinavian Airlines (Official crew guide)
Schneider Electric (World leader in power and control solutions)
Sprint (Customer feedback site for cell-phone company)
TNA Wrestling (Pro-wrestling organization)
Toshiba (Greek site for the electronics giant)
UNRIC (Branch of the United Nations)
Vodafone (Cell-phone company’s Icelandic site)
Visat (Danish site for Scandanavian TV and telecommunications company)
Yamaha (Musical instrument company’s Mexican site)

Feel free to post more sites in the comments and I’ll add to this list whenever we find a new one.