Steve’s Blog

March 28, 2008

First Member with 100 Comments Plus Free Membership and Tuition

This blog has been live for about 18 months now and one of our users just hit a milestone … David from GoodWebPractices.com has 100 comments to articles here. He’s been a source of wonderful advice both on the blog and in the forums and its great to have him around. David is also a blogger. There aren’t many people in the Joomla world who provide regular, high-quality posts. I can think of Barrie, Amy, Anthony and now its possible to include David as well. Make you subscribe to his RSS feed – its full of worthwhile Joomla tips and…

March 26, 2008

phpBB3 Integration Can Be The Joomla 1.5 Killer App

During conversations with clients over the last few months, one key question keeps coming up: "should I use Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?" In fact, I can trace the first time I was asked that question back to October 2006. Now that 1.5 has officially launched, I tend to point the non-technically minded to 1.0 and those who don’t mind dealing with a few bugs to 1.5. However, until this week I don’t think I’ve found a compelling reason for anyone to use 1.5 rather than 1.0. That may have changed:

March 25, 2008

See Your Site As Google Does

I recently came across a cool SEO tool: SEO-Browser.com displays a website the way search engines view your site. The site is displayed with all images and formatting removed, leaving just the links, headings, and text. Viewing a website the way the search engines do reminds us of and enforces the key elements of SEO. I have used this tool to show clients how their web site looks to the search engines. Seeing your site as simply text demonstrates how important relevant text is.

March 24, 2008

Joomla SEO Training in Chicago

Update: We now have classes all across North America. Click here for full details on our new Joomla Training site. Its been a long time coming, but I am very excited to be able to announce our first Joomla training event in the US. Its going to be the day after the Joomla EXPO 2008 in Chicago. The EXPO is on Friday 16th of May, and the training is on Saturday the 17th. The classrooms are right next to the hotel where the EXPO is being held. I’ll be there in person to give the training session and you’ll be…

March 22, 2008

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…

March 21, 2008

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:

March 20, 2008

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.

March 17, 2008

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…

March 14, 2008

The One Trick Everyone Misses with the SEF Patch

The SEF Patch is one of the most vital SEO component from Joomla. However, it has one really, really useful function that surprises everyone when I mention it to them. You can easily add and edit 100s of URLs at once and access a far greater range of features. Here’s how ….

March 14, 2008

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: