A new site for you, launched this weekend using Joomla and a custom integration with Joomla maps.
This site aims to find a New Years Eve party in every country in the world. 243 countries in which to find some celebrating. You can add your own party and see if they can make it to every country in 35 days.
The purpose of the site is explained here and you can read more at NYEFun.com
Since IE7 has come out, a lot of people have noticed that Suckerfish dropdown menus are allergic to it. The principal problem is that once they've dropped down, they refuse to scroll back up again. This affects a lot of Joomla sites using Suckerfish variations and also the Extended Menu module.
The solution is thankfully, simple. If your list menu ID is called "topmenu", you only have to add the following lines of code to your css:
#topmenu li:hover, #topmenu li.hover {
position:static;
}
Thanks to Built from Source for the original tip and to Sam from Site Coffee for Joomla implementation.
Joomla is a great CMS, but its Search Engine Optimization (SEO) capabilities leave a lot to be desired. This problem is well-know however, and a lot of developers are beavering away on solutions. Here are 6 essential tools to get your site off on the right foot:
Its key benefit is that it allows you more control over the <title> tags. Instead of simply being "Home" or "Frontpage", you can add a more descriptive and keyword-rich title.
2) JPromoter (Commercial)
Allows you to generate meta data and titles for each page individually.
3) Open-SEF or SEFAdvance (Commercial)
The two most useful tools of all. Instead of mywebsite.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 you can have a URL such as mywebsite.com/index.html. Not only is this easier to remember but Google has more trust in sites with static links. Dynamic links, marked by the inclusion of a ? allow websites to deliver different pages to different customers. Some sites use this to try and trick the Search Engines.
Instead of having your long articles marked as "Read More", this mambot allows you to use the real article title.
5) Linx
A great component to allow reciprocal linking. It reduces the time you need to spend building links for Joomla SEO.
6) Site Map
Joomap is our favorite, although there are plenty out there.
As we keep looking into Joomla SEO techniques, we'll add to this list. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or ideas you have.
For over a year now we’ve run freelancer websites for Drupal and OSCommerce. Drupalancers.com and OSCFreelancers.com help people find experts from anywhere in the world.
This week we’re starting to provide the opposite service by launching DrupalYellowPages.com and OSCYellowPages.com. These sites will help you find experts in your own neighborhood. We know a lot of companies want onsite training and to meet face-to-face with their developers.
Hopefully these sites will help boost the growth of these two excellent open source projects.
Are you fed up with little square grey boxes saying "login" and then "logout" on your Joomla site. Here's how to liven up your login box.
1) Make 2 little graphics – one saying "login" and one saying "logout". 70 pixels wide and 20 pixels high is a nice size. Upload them to the /images folder as login.gif and logout.gif
2) Go to /language/english.php and replace DEFINE('_BUTTON_LOGIN','Login'); with DEFINE('_BUTTON_LOGIN',''); and also replace DEFINE('_BUTTON_LOGOUT','Logout'); with DEFINE('_BUTTON_LOGOUT','Logout'); This means no text will sit on top of your images.
3) Upload the new mod_login.php to your /modules folder. Click here to download it . If your files are png or jpg instead of login.gif, search the code and update with the new extension.
And you're done! 3 simple steps to a livelier site.
One of the great things about working in technology is that exciting developments occur so frequently. Some ideas are gone within months whereas others change the business completely. Whether the events of October 2006 go down as boom or bust might not be known for several years, but I thought it might be interesting to revisit two events that have the potential to reshape the World Wide Web.
The Launch of IE7 and of .mobi are the key items in this month’s featured article. Read the whole article.
There are some extensions that are so lightweight and versatile, so funky yet practical, that we use them on the majority of sites that we make. The KL_Rssfeed mambot is one of those plugins. Install it to your Joomla site via the Mambot installation area and with a few clicks you produce one line of code that can be used to place as many news articles as you want on your site. To give just two examples, we use it on Pune.in and Nagpur.in among many others. So few lines of code, and yet so useful. KL_RSSFeed – you are the Alledia Extension of the Month for November 2006. Congratulations and thanks to Jean-Marie Simonet from http://www.info-graf.fr
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For the same price as a new component or a template club subscription, you can get all the following benefits:
Use this subscription if you simply want to comment on blog posts or download files.
The One Site Subscription costs $75, lasts for one year and gives you:
Use this subscription if you run one main website that you really want to improve. Its a great way to learn more about Joomla SEO and get specific feedback on your site.
The Pro subscription costs $250, lasts for one year and gives you:
Use this subscription if you run several sites or if you’re a developer who want to resell SEO advice to clients.
One of the great things about working in technology is that exciting developments occur so frequently. Some ideas are gone within months whereas others change the business completely. Whether the events of October 2006 go down as boom or bust might not be known for several years, but I thought it might be interesting to revisit two events that have the potential to reshape the World Wide Web.
Internet Explorer 7
Throughout the history of the Internet there has been but one way to surf the Internet – using Roman characters. If you’re language used any script other than A to Z, then you were stuck trying to navigate through a world that made little sense to you. If you wanted to visit a website you would need to type in a foreign language.
All that is slowly changing and the process recently received a huge boost from the release of the first version of Internet Explorer. Version 7 is the first to support IDNs (International Domain Names) so it is now possible to search for “DVD Player” or “Digital Camera” in your native language rather than in English. It means that numerous Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Arabic-speaking people who previously had difficulty in surfing the web will now have the opportunity.
This new generation of consumers shopping and interacting online will present a large new market for those companies savvy enough to take advantage.
Both China and India are on course to have more Internet users than the United States by the end of 2007 and the launch of Internet Explorer will hasten that event.
Mobi
“Isn’t that whale?” “Wasn’t that a dance music DJ?” Its easy to make fun of the name but the launch of the .mobi domain name extension has the potential to accelerate the number of people who use the internet on their phone rather than their P.C.
Those of you who surf from your BlackBerry or cellphone already know that many sites do not work on the small screen. In comparison. .mobi has restrictions ensuring that all websites with a .mobi ending will work correctly on the move. Essentially, the aim of the extension is to take the guesswork out of using the mobile Internet. If you go to a .mobi site you will get a site that works.
There are still financial and technological problems to overcome. Surfing via a cellphone is still not easy or within the price range of most people but that is likely to change within the next two or three year.
Flowers.mobi sold for $200,000 and Fun.mobi fetched $100,000 at a recent auction and those sales have only increased the excitement about the possibility that .mobi could become the next .com. Already 4 handheld devices are sold worldwide for every 1 desktop computer. The future of the Internet is mobile. Many people are hoping it will also be .mobi.
Here it is, Ladies and Gentlemen… Joomla 1.5 (in Beta form at least).
You can read the official posting here: http://www.joomla.org/content/view/2088/74/
The long and the short of it is that 1.5 is a developer-friendly leap forward from the older framework. Non-coders won’t see a huge difference in how Joomla operates until developers start putting forward their new components. Then the potential of the new software will hopefully become apparent.
This is a crucial release for Joomla that will go a very long way to deciding whether it continues its current, impressive momentum: