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For a final part to our series on speeding up your Joomla site, I’d like to give a recommend two companies who are working on tools to make Joomla faster.
I make it a point to check the Joomla Extensions website every day to keep track of new developments but I’ve only seen two add-ons that significantly improve performance. Because of the price, I can’t recommend these for use this on all sites but if you do have a key website and some spare change, both of these extensions are worth the investment:
As always – there are no affiliate links. The developers don’t even know we’re recommending their products.
We use both on our site and hopefully you’ve seen our fast loading more quickly in recent weeks. Google certainly seems to agree. Despite a significant interest in traffic during 2007 we haven’t had any problems with the site slowing when traffic spikes:
(Click here if you want to see you how fast your site is in Google’s eyes)
This week we’re trying to answer one of the most common questions in the Joomla world: “What is the best URL setup for Joomla and why?”
Yesterday I talked about default Joomla URLs and why they are a bad idea for your Joomla site. Today is Part 2 of the quest we’re going to look at the default Joomla Search Engine Friendly URLs.
Lets see whether this set up is any more useful….
Continue reading “Joomla URL Week Part 2 – Default SEF URLs”
Working in Joomla SEO and browsing the forums, there is one question I hear more frequently than any other:
"What is the best URL setup for Joomla and why?"
Reading around, I haven’t been able to find a clear answer currently available. So to resolve this question, this will be "Joomla URL Week" here at Alledia.
Each day we’re going to break down one of the five most common URL setups with Joomla:
Today, we take you through the default Joomla URLs and help you to understand why they are the way they are.
Continue reading “Joomla URL Week Part 1 – Default Joomla URLs”
Working with Joomla SEO on a daily basis, I’ve been through every SEO tool available. There’s only one that has proved to be indispensible – the Joomla Search Engine Optimisation Patch from Joomlatwork.com.
What does it allow you to do?
All of these are key factors in giving your site a ranking boost. JPromoter from JoomlaEquipment.com does similar things. The disadvantage there is that you need to run a scan every time you add new content, although it has a major benefit in that unlike Joomlatwork, you don’t need to modify core files.
The basic version is free and the expanded verion a mere 8 Euros. Great work Joomlatwork!
A short and sweet post today, following up yesterday’s discussion about making your Joomla site smaller and faster. Someone over at Digg recently pointed out that if Digg made one small change they could save thousands of dollars in hosting costs ever year.
That change is to send out webpages in a compressed format. When you get a Joomla component it is often contained in a zip file. This enables the file to be much smaller without damaging the content in any way. You can do the same thing with webpages. In Joomla you just need to click “Yes” in the following place:
Site => Global Configuration => Server => GZIP Page Compression => Yes
Theres also a great test to find out how much your site will benefit. According to WhatsMyIP.org, Alledia.com shrinks from 47k down to just 9k when GZip is enabled. Some major sites are compressed such as YouTube.com, MySpace.com, CNN.com and Bebo.com. Others have still not made the leap:
These are the 20 most popular sites worldwide, according the Alexa.com. Only four of the twenty don’t use GZip and three are owned by Microsoft:
Over the last few years, we’ve seen revelations about the huge amounts of data that Google collects about us, our websites, our browsing habits and our lives in general. Wikipedia has a list of everything Google knows about you, and thats only what has been confirmed.
Although theres a server full of information about you in Google headquarters, there’s only piece of data about your website that they consider important enough to put in their search results – the size of your website:
For Alledia.com its 48k. Why might this be the single most important statistic about your website? Quite simply, the faster your site loads, the more useful it will for your users. As we mentioned before, Google keeps a track of how fast your site loads and may well boost your ranking if it is sufficiently fast.
For people using a 56k modem, the ESPN site will take a minute and a half to load and Google will take about 3 seconds. Under 50k is good for a site and under 30k is great.
All of these following tools work in more or less the same way – the longer the bar, the longer that part of the site takes to load. Looking at the image below, you can see that XAjax mambot is the slowest object on the page.
This is often the case with Joomla. Mambots are a major cause of slow sites, particularly because they need to load on every page, not just on the pages where they are being used. Large photos and widgets from external sites are other common culprits.
If you do want your Joomla site to run as fast possible, use the following tools. You may need to spend time making changes, but your visitors will thank you for a faster site:
Click on "Net" and after browsing to the web page you want to analyze, click on "HTML", "CSS", "JS", "Images" or whichever aspect of the site you want to analyze.
1) Hi Les & Andy. Could you tell us a little about yourself? How did you come to Joomla? What’s your background?
Well, I can tell you one thing is for sure, I don’t have a big ego, I’m way too cool for that! I guess that summarizes everything, so just click on JoomlaStorm.com.
All joking aside, my experiences in this grand ole world range from having my diapers changed by my mother to jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. I’m a big fan of the outdoors, I love the Discovery channel (Man vs Wild), I wig-out to Pink Floyd, I attended the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, I’ve lived in big cities like Chicago, New York City, and Phoenix, I’ve been in Men’s Fitness magazine, and every co-worker I’ve ever worked with has been more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs wondering what prank I would pull on them next, and with all of that, somehow my family and relatives still consider me to be an ideal father to my four beautiful kiddo’s. I ran out of breath on that one, I hold my breath when I type. Was that a run-on sentence?
I am a home schooled computer geek with a passion for graphic arts. I can remember being first introduced to Joomla! about 6-7 years ago when an IT guy at one of my previous places of employment brought my attention to Mambo. I was captivated by the concept of Content Management and knew instantly this technology would one day shape the future of web design, and Joomla! is well on it’s way to doing just that!
Now, the guy that spends all day making me mixed drinks and opening my fan mail is my fearless partner Andy! Andy is one of those so called "edu-ma-kated" guys who spent 4-6 years acting like they were in college to learn, when truly they were there for chicks and beer! The mere thought of it makes me, uh-um….moving on.
Andy graduated college two years ago with a degree in information systems analysis and design. Apart from mixing me drinks and reading another letter from some obsessive fan of mine, he designs web sites for some software development firm in the travel industry. He’s a newbie to Joomla! but can say the alphabet backwards in binary format while juggling eight bowling pins. I keep telling him he picked the wrong career field. You wanna hear someone tear it up on an electric/bass guitar, Andy can "RIP"! He’s in a well known local band, Left on Sunset. He gets all the chicks, but where does that get you?? Yeah right! When we disagree about something we settle it over a good ole Guitar Hero 2 competition on the PS2. Andy dreams of one day beating me, hopefully he doesn’t read this!
2) Have you worked or designed with other systems apart from Joomla? If so, how do they compare?
We’ve both worked with PHP-Puke, I mean "Nuke". That’s about all I’ve got to say about that! Joomla! or bust!
3) What are the origins of JoomlaStorm? You seem to have developed a distinctive design philosophy – big, colorful and clear…
Andy and I are both dreamers. When laying the road map for JoomlaStorm, we knew one thing for sure, we wanted to be "Simply Different" and stick out from the rest of the Joomla! theme sites and clubs that were already available out there, and as everyone knows, there are some great ones! I’d like to give a shout out from JoomlaStorm to all of our friends at:
These sites as well as several others have done and continue to do a great deal to promote the advancement of Joomla! Andy and I knew the time was now to join the pioneers and do our part to take Joomla! to new heights. Our philosophy is "Build it and they will come!" and our goal is to do more to touch some of the hundreds of thousands of designers and developers out there that have never heard of Joomla! before. We search the web everyday for new places to drop a line about Joomla!
Andy and I also spend a great deal of our time researching new web trends, tips and techniques to share with our Members and the Joomla! community. Just recently, Andy and I have both been inspired and intrigued by the Web 2.0 philosophy and the concepts behind it. Web 2.0 is all about standing out from the crowd with big bold attitude, vibrant contrasting colors, code so clean you could eat off it as well as graphical world domination! The key to success is becoming more comfortable slinging around CSS than the Swedish Chef is wielding rolling pins and handguns! For all of those Swedish Chef fans out there: check this out!
4) What design resources would you recommend for someone working on improving their design skills? Are there blogs and sites that you read often to pick up tips?
The truth is out there? Does anyone know the URL? These are some of our favorite sites for building your CSS design skills:
5) Are there any features or scripts you see on non-Joomla designs that you would like to implement on your templates but can’t currently because of the way Joomla works?
No, not really. You can integrate anything into Joomla! There are so many designers and developers out there that are more than willing to help that I think the sky is the limit. That’s the beauty of Open Source, use it to your advantage. Let’s dream and design together! If anything, come over to JoomlaStorm, we’ll try our best to help each and every member succeed in their dreams. Our reputation thus far has been to help each and every member as if they were our only member! Stop by and ask some of our current members what they think!
6) What can we expect from the new Designers Club that you’re launching?
JoomlaStorm has recently taken the next step in it’s evolution! We have transitioned from a Theme Club to an all inclusive Designer’s Club, a one-stop-shop and complete resource for any web designer. In addition to our Joomla! Themes and support forums, we have also added several other features such as a Store for non-members, offering a wide variety of graphic design elements, JoomlaStorm Themes, and Flash elements/tools that all add those finishing touches to your projects and designs. We have also added a Pligg based NEWS section available to the entire community to promote their own sites, products and interests that relate to web design. We are also in the process of adding a section completely devoted to tutorials, tips and tricks about anything and everything that is cutting edge in web design that will prove to be a priceless addition to your browser bookmarks! And that’s just to keep us busy for now, We also have bigger dreams and more impressive goals, but if we were to share those plans, Andy and I might receive a visit from "Vinnie" and that wouldn’t be healthy! If you still have any doubts on our determination and staying power, just keep an eye on us and see where we go! If you’re the best of the best when it comes to design, keep in touch, we will be expanding in the future and that means we may make you, the next "American Designer"!
7) As someone highly involved in design, what benefits are you looking forward to with Joomla 1.5?
Andy and I are trippin’ out on 1.5 Mark my words, 1.5 is going to set the bar so high that other CMS groups out there might as well just jump on our wagon and ride it to the top with us. One major advantage of 1.5 for theme design will be the ability to modify the HTML output generated by Joomla! The HTML output will be moved to extension templates, which can be overridden so a designer can remove tables and change the CSS classes in an effort to make the site more accessible. I definitely am looking forward this one!
Well, I’d like to say thank you to Steve for the invitation to take the "Hot Seat!". Steve has a great thing going here at Alledia. All Andy and I can ask of everyone here at Alledia is to come check us out at JoomlaStorm when you get a chance. Take advantage of our free resources and if you find a theme you like, just get a membership and add your name to the list of possible winners for that awesome MacBook Pro we’re giving away soon! We can only succeed in our dreams with you and others working with us!
I’ll leave you all with the following words of wisdom, "The meaning of life is to give life meaning."
One of the most interesting Joomla developments in 2007 has been a new magazine created every week by one man – Brian Teeman, a former member of the Joomla core team.
Each weekly release has the following features:
It really is a labor of love for Brian and that attention shines through the PDFs.
You can read the discussion about each issue in the Joomla forums and you can download each issue from the Joomla forge.
Issue #7 is due out tomorrow (Sat, Feb. 23rd) and the theme is going to be "Television". It would be great if as many Joomla people as possible could subscribe, contribute and support to Brian in his work.
The other day I’d been doing some testing on the search features for client’s site and I came up with some interesting results. This website, based around sports, was pulling up results headed “Mambo”, “PHP.net”, “MySQL.com”.
I checked on Alledia.com and the same thing was happening:
I’d forgotten something really simple … by default Joomla comes with the “Search Newsfeeds”, “Search Weblinks” and “Search Contacts” mambots published. If you never get around to deleting all the newsfeeds and weblinks, they’ll then turn up in the search results.
So, I unpublished those mambots, and also those the called “Search Sections” and “Search Categories”. I figure that people are looking for individual content items rather than general folders on a subject.
A small change, but hopefully it will speed up the search results and also make them more useful.