Steve’s Blog

Solve the Most Common Joomla SEO Problem

What’s the one crucial Search Engine Optimization mistake made by many of the most prominent Joomla sites? Mistake: Mis-using Global Configuration metadata. In the last few weeks I’ve seen many websites harm their SEO chances by having the same description and same keywords for every page.   Its tempting to fill in those boxes, but think about it this way….Is there really a description and keyword set that can apply to every page on your site? Does you frontpage really contain the same information as your site map?  Does your "Contact Us" page really merit the same description as your…

Read MoreSolve the Most Common Joomla SEO Problem

A to Z of Hard-Earned Business Advice for Web-Designers

  Accountant – get one. You build websites. The mathematics in your code doesn’t mean you can do your books. A good accountant can save your business. Backup everything. Backup your sites, backup your databases, backup every computer everyday. Take the backups off-site if you possibly can. Take them into the next room if you work from home. You’ll be surprised at how many years of work can disappear with one crash. Charge by the hour. You need to make sure you can pay your bills. Hobbyists can set a project price and stick to it. A business needs to…

Read MoreA to Z of Hard-Earned Business Advice for Web-Designers

Interview with Anthony Olsen from JoomlaBamboo.com

We’re delighted to welcome Anthony Olsen from JoomlaBamboo.com to the interview hot seat. Although it may not look like it, Joomla is a only one of the strings to Anthony’s bow, as he told us last week…. 1) Could you tell us a little about yourself? How did you come to Joomla? What’s your background? I have a fairly mixed background actually – with a few different areas of interest. My main focus (read day job – although web design is fast becoming my other day job!) is in alternative medicine specifically Chinese Medicine and Feng Shui (Ive been an…

Read MoreInterview with Anthony Olsen from JoomlaBamboo.com

Top 6 Joomla SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Using your keyword list as a meta title. "Dogs, Boarding, Grooming, Pets, Pooches, Kennels, Food" is not a decent meta title because search engines see these as separate keywords. Dog Boarding – Dog Grooming – Dog Kennels is much better. Not redirecting the www and non-www versions of your site to the same place. Barrie North blogged about this recently and provided an easy .htaccess hack to avoid this. Not checking to see how many pages you have indexed in Google, MSN and Yahoo. This is a simple way to test for potential crawling problems. We had one client recently with…

Read MoreTop 6 Joomla SEO Mistakes to Avoid

February Update to Search Engine Optimization Test

As reported in earlier posts (launch post and first update) we’re running a test comparing the search engine optimization capabilites of Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.  We created three sites, Jabalpur.net.in (WordPress) Amritsar.net.in (Drupal) and Vadodara.net.in (Joomla). Each website was created with a similar amount of content, similar Overture results and a similar domain name. Within two weeks the WordPress site was so far ahead that it looked as if they competition was over. Slowly however, Drupal and Joomla have recovered until they now lead the pack. The Joomla site is now #1 for 6 of its 9 keywords in Yahoo…

Read MoreFebruary Update to Search Engine Optimization Test

Joomla Blogs Everyone Ought to Read

As today is Valentines Day I wanted to send love out to some of the excellent Joomla bloggers giving back to the community with news, tutorials, advice and opinions. Below is a list of Joomla blogs, all of which are worth subscribing to. The criteria for inclusion is that they focus primarily on Joomla, are largely informative rather than commercial, and that they are updated at least one a week on average. I believe those three are important factors in keeping a blog fresh and informative. Most but not all of these are available together in one place – the…

Read MoreJoomla Blogs Everyone Ought to Read

Changes to Alledia Blog Comments and Subscriptions

Hi All Thanks indeed to all of you for reading and providing so much positive feedback during our first six weeks of daily blogging. There are two changes we’ve implemented today that its good to be aware of:   You now need to register in order to post comments. The upside is that theres no more moderation for member comments and you get your own profile page just like this one: There are new ways to subscribe in the right hand column. You can now subscribe to our daily blog via Email (Feedblitz), RSS (Feedburner), and if you click…

Read MoreChanges to Alledia Blog Comments and Subscriptions

Interview with Patrick Gillock from Isara.org

This week, we’re delighted to welcome Patrick (PK) Gillock from Isara.org to the interview chair. Isara is a charity based in northeastern Thailand that uses Joomla as a platform for their innovative fundraising efforts. Instead of asking for money, they only ask that people use the tools they have online (such as bloghosting, short URLs and more) so that they can raise money from advertising.   You have fun – they raise money for their humanitarian work. Currently their sites are:   Isara – Main Portal IsaraPIX – Image Hosting IsaraBLOG – Blog Hosting IsaraURL – Short URLs IsaraCards –…

Read MoreInterview with Patrick Gillock from Isara.org

Joomla Statistics – Don’t Turn Your Database Into Another Statistic

During the last couple of weeks a new client has been complaining to us that their site was always running slow and timing out. The problem got so bad that they asked us to move it from their hosting company to ours in the hope that things would improve. Over the weekend I had the pleasure of moving the site. There was only one problem – it had had a Joomla statistics component running inside it for over a year. The database was, without exaggeration, about twenty-five times the normal size of a Joomla database. It took several minutes to…

Read MoreJoomla Statistics – Don’t Turn Your Database Into Another Statistic

What Everyone Needs to Know About SEF URL Components

One of the questions I get asked most frequently during SEO work is, "Which component should I use for search engine-friendly URLs with Joomla?" There are currently three available: Open-SEF from J-Prosolution.com (Free) Artio SEF from Artio.cz (Free) SEF Advance from Sakic.net (40 Euros)   Its not easy for many people to understand the differences between them and to my knowledge no-one has currently written an adequate comparison of all three (if they have – I’ll be happy to link to it, if they haven’t – I’ll write one for an upcoming post).   So, without a detailed list of…

Read MoreWhat Everyone Needs to Know About SEF URL Components