Steve’s Blog

Joomla Hosting

Basic Hosting Packages  This is a list of hosting companies who specialize in hosting setups that work well with Joomla. Name Logo Cost Space Bandwidth Reviews 1and1 $3.99 10 GB  300 GB Click to read 1and1 reviews BlueHost $6.95  1500 GB 15000 GB Click to read BlueHost reviews HostGator $4.95 350 GB 3000 GB Click to read HostGator reviews LunarPages   $6.95 1500 GB 15000 GB Click to read LunarPages reviews Managed Joomla Hosting Packages The companies above will host your site but not update it or keep it secure. Simplweb is a company that will manage and keep your…

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Interview with Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com

Today we’re delighted a have the chance to talk with Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com. Aaron’s SEO Book has been around since 2003 and he writes probably the best one-person SEO blog in the industry. As we did here at Alledia, Aaron recently shifted his business model from pay-to-download-my-book towards a more community-based training system. His new site is built with Drupal, so we asked him about SEO and Content Management Systems:

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Easter Special: 20% Discount on SEO Club Memberships

Here’s an Easter special for all our readers. Over the Easter weekend you can use the coupon code “easter” for a 20%? discount all membership plans. This offer works for new and renewing members. It starts right now and ends on Sunday night. Note: Membership prices are going up by 30% on April 18th (the club’s half-year anniversary), and so now is a great time to get in for only 50% of next month’s price. Click here to join the Joomla SEO Club today.

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Slow Websites Will Cost You More Money

Google have just announced that the speed of your site will start directly affecting your profits. If you’re using Adwords, fast landing pages will lead to a better Quality Score. Slow sites may well end up paying more for their clicks. More from the Google Adwords blog: Why are we doing this? Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your…

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New Homepage for Alledia.com

Earlier this week we launched a new frontpage for Alledia.com. We used iJoomla.com’s News Portal and it really is a pretty slick application. The main goal of the redesign was simply to place the freshest content right on the homepage.  Thanks to Chris from JoomlaJunkie for the inspiration: "Your Homepage Should be The Application!" by Aytekin Tank:

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Joomla SEO Wiki Open For Your Ideas

Three weeks ago some of the brighest SEO minds in the Joomlasphere took up the challenge to form a thinktank and bring together their thoughts for improving SEO in Joomla! 1.6. Today this team is happy to announce the opening of a public wiki for the Joomla! community to get involved in this process. Over the next 2 weeks we would like to gather as many ideas, suggestions and concepts as possible.

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Getting Started With Links to Your Joomla Site

One of the hardest things for a new site owner to do is start generating links. However, because you’ve built your site in Joomla, you have the chance to get? a good number of valuable links. Earlier this week we talked about using Siteground’s strategy of dominating the search results with extra sites. This is an alternate strategy that involves building positive links to bolster your online reputation. It helps you fill the search results with positive mentions of your business and provides protection against negative news. I’d love to have a dollar for everyone who’s said “we decided to…

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Joomla.org Changes Policy on Hidden Advertising

Good news over at Joomla.org – extensions with hidden advertising will be clearly labelled. We’ve covered this topic two times on this blog and thoroughly support the decision. I think this will do quite a bit to protect the reputation of Joomla and 3rd party developers. Its embarrassing to explain to high-value clients why their Joomla sites contain hidden links to hotels,  apartments or random web developers. This is the notice that will appear on guilty extensions:

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Siteground.com and Search Results Domination

Last year I wrote a couple of posts about how important it was to fill the search engine rankings with positive mentions of your company. Its one of the cornerstones of online reputation management and can help to filter out bad news about your company. A few people have asked for examples of those techniques and I found a great one today. Siteground is a hosting company that targets the Open Source niche. They offer middle-of-the-road prices and like many other companies they manage servers at the ThePlanet.com. They do offer fast answers to support tickets, but generally they offer…

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