Steve’s Blog

January 23, 2009

iJoomla Use Bolt for New Website

iJoomla.com have just relaunched the website in Joomla 1.5. They’re now using Bolt (aka. the world’s fastest Joomla template). Big news on the Alledia front: we’re getting ready to launch the .com version of Georgia’s biggest tourist attraction … using Joomla and Bolt … eating our own dog food … getting very nervous. Any guesses as to what the site is? The answer will be revealed in a full blog post about that launch in the first week of February. Its being moved from a static HTML site so the SEO and technical challenges will both be interesting. You can…

January 19, 2009

When to Use a SEF Component

This post is intended to answer the question, “Can I avoid using an SEF URL component such as sh404SEF or SEF Advance? Joomla 1.5 default SEF URLs should be enough, right? Simply – yes. There are many sites and circumstances where Joomla 1.5 default SEF URLs are enough. They are great for most people – certainly are a big leap forward over 1.0. Adding an SEF URL component may simply be adding an extra, unneccessary layer of complexity. However, for some sites and circumstances, an SEF URL component is a must. Here is a rundown of the ones I’ve encountered…

January 15, 2009

Quote: Advertisers are Becoming the Media

"Advertisers are finding it cheaper to become the media rather than advertise on it and support its bloat" SEOBook with hat tip to NY Times This is my quote of 2008. I’ve thought about it more than any other because it sums up so many things from viral marketing to the decline of newspapers. The internet is brutal on middlemen and advertising is richest most prominent middleman around. Its an expensive extra layer between buyer and seller. I left college less than ten years agos wanting to be a journalist. Its almost impossible to imagine someone having that dream nowadays.…

January 12, 2009

16 Joomla Training Classes in 11 Weeks

We ran a series of successful Joomla training classes last year in Atlanta, Tampa, New York, Washington and Chicago. This time we’re taking things up a notch and and running 16 classes in 15 cities. Even to me this seems like a big challenge, but we’ve done our research and are confident there’s enough Joomla interest in these 15 cities. Some of the classes, for example New York and the first Atlanta class, are already half sold-out. The structure is almost the same as last year, except that we’ve added in an e-commerce session to the afternoon and we’ll be…

January 11, 2009

SherWeb.com

I was dreading this particular review as so many exchange hosting companies have well-earned poor reputations. Not so with SherWeb: Quality website – check Live phone numers – check An active blog – check They even have a high percentage of praise on review sites – that’s highly unusual as normally just the angry customers both to post. Essentially they offer sharepoint web hosting from around $10 per month. I’m more of a Basecamp fan but a lot of companies still need a hosted sharepoint solution. The company doesn’t have a huge online brand or great SEO currently, but the…

January 10, 2009

Affiliate Link Cloaking with Joomla

This is a quick how-to requested by two SEO Club members. The problem? Affiliate links are normally ugly and easy to spot: This means that: Some websurfers are reluctant to click on affiliate links. They may be naturally suspect of someone linking to a product for money or they may just resent generating money for the writer they’re reading. If the affiliate link is obvious, its easy to hijack. If you remind me they have an affiliate program, I could easily go to productsite.com, sign up as an affiliate and take the commission when I purchase there. There is…

January 9, 2009

Pagination Indignation

OK, indignation might be taking it a little too far, but pagination is annoying. What’s Wrong With Pagination? What’s the point? Does anyone say “I really want to go to page 68 of the blog?” No – they use the search. Weak link text. From an SEO standpoint, does the link text “68” help Google understand what a page is about? Impossible to optimize. Take page 68 as an example. You can optimize that page, but when you’ve published a few more posts all the content will move to page 69 and your work has been wasted. Most pages like…

January 5, 2009

Advertise

Alledia.com is the most popular source for Joomla SEO information. We run one of the most popular blogs in the Joomla world and get visitors searching for thousands of diverse Joomla topics. Advertising Banner on Alledia.com We offer the option to place 125×125 advertising banners on the right-hand side of this site. The cost is $99 per month and you can sign up below: Sponsored Reviews of Joomla Products on Alledia.com We offer the option to have your Joomla product reviewed in a frontpage blog post. We can’t guarantee to like it, but we do guarantee to give an honest,…

January 5, 2009

We Sponsor a New Version of Ninjamonials

We’ve just sponsored Daniel and his team at Ninja Forge to create a new version of their Ninjamonials component for Joomla 1.5. Ninjamonials allows you to easily add customer testimonials to your Joomla site. Ryan over at JCE sponsored the other part of the conversion. You can see a live demo at JoomlaTraining.com. Why a sponsorship? There’s been a double-whammy for Joomla developers recently with the recession and the need to move to a GPL license. Now is definitely a time to be trying new business models and looking for extra sources of income, so we were very happy to…

December 30, 2008

Joomla! Day Las Vegas in April

Last spring the North American Joomla Day was in Vancouver. This time its down in Las Vegas, Nevada. Joomla! Day Las Vegas is going to be an one-day conference of Joomla! experts presenting on Joomla! basics, design, development and advanced topics. Presenters will include almost the entire Joomla core team including Andrew Eddie, Anthony Ferrara, Louis Landry and Rob Schley. Registration costs $45 and includes a personalized Joomla! Day Las Vegas t-shirt.