The World's Fastest Joomla Template

Introducing the fastest template in the world!

From our popular Joomla template tutorial series, we are proud to announce that CSSTemplateTutorial2 clocks in at under 30KB, making it the fastest joomla template in the world!

And its free!

Read more: The World's Fastest Joomla Template

Joomlashack Gets 2nd place in iContact API Competition

iContact have recently released the second version of their API, and along with it, we upgraded our popular email component for Joomla we call JContact.

iContact were running a contest for API applications, and we are excited to announce that we grabbed second place!

Email marketing service iContact announced the winners of their API Challenge, a contest for partners and customers of iContact that asked them to build an integration between third party applications and iContact.

2nd place was given to Joomlashack, a team of designers, developers and technicians in the Joomla community, which came up with JContact. They received $2,000 cash. Barrie North, a user and designer of JContact explained: “We have been long-time fans of iContact. We built a component called JContact that leverages the new iContact API to integrate Joomla registration with iContact, and uses best industry opt-in practices to do so. We also gave it away for free!”

Read more: Joomlashack Gets 2nd place in iContact API Competition

Save $150 on Joomla Training in Hartford CT

Today and tomorrow are the last chances to get the early bird pricing for the beginner/intermediate Joomla training class in Hartford, CT on September 17th.

If you book now, you'll get $150 off the regular price and reserve a spot for only $249.

As well as a full day of expert Joomla instruction, all students will leave with goodies worth over $400!

Read more: Save $150 on Joomla Training in Hartford CT

How To Get the World's Fastest Joomla! Admin Template

Today, the self-proclaimed "Fastest Joomla! Admin Template" was released to the public. What makes this especially exciting, is that it was released for free! The team at JoomlaPraise developed a 'lite' version of their ground-breaking AdminPraise2 Joomla! administrator template, called (you guessed it) AdminPraise Lite.

How To Get the World's Fastest Joomla! Admin Template

Read more: How To Get the World's Fastest Joomla! Admin Template

Tell us our next template and get a free copy

A few weeks ago we blogged about our adoption of Uservoice to get feedback from you to help us better meet your needs.

We have been working hard on some new Joomla templates, both free and commercial, but we also want you to tell us what kind of templates you want.

Simply head over to our template feedback and share your ideas for themes, site types, colors, extension, whatever you'd like to see.

joomlashack.uservoice.com/pages/20904-joomlashack-templates

We'll be be selecting 3 people at random for a free copy of our upcoming release!

Read more: Tell us our next template and get a free copy

Most popular Joomla sites debated

What Joomla-powered sites have the highest Google PageRank? (Hint: Joomlashack's PageRank is 9. Think we made the top tier?)

How many Joomla-powered websites in the world are there? And how many of them are highly trafficked, really successful sites?

A group of Joomlaheads led by Alex Red has set out to answers these any many other questions about the size, depth, and characteristics of the Joomlaverse. Their site is www.joomla.me

Joomla.me is a directory of Joomla-powered websites. The team analyzes and makes some interesting claims using data from the directory, including:

Read more: Most popular Joomla sites debated

10 Steps to Mastering Joomla

So you want a website, and you have heard some of the buzz about open source.

Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress have all been mentioned, but you are lost and confused.

No problem, this guide is an easy 10 step process to getting started with building a website with Joomla and some insider tricks and tips to make sure you are making best use of it.

We are going to look at the following things:

  1. Why do you need a website, and why use Joomla?
  2. What actually is Joomla?
  3. How do I install Joomla?
  4. How should I set up my site?
  5. Picking a Template
  6. Organizing Content
  7. Creating Navigation
  8. How can I add features to my site?
  9. How can I make Joomla better for SEO?
  10. How do I keep my site updated, and what lies ahead (Joomla 1.6)

You think you need a website... but why?

Joomla vs Drupal vs Wordpress

Unless you have clear goals, your website will not have any focus, and not contribute to your organization's goals.

  • A restaurant might want to increase onsite foot traffic
  • A non-profit might want to increase donations
  • A consultant might want to increase sales leads
  • A school might want to communicate better with parents

But unless you identify your goals, you are building your site blindfolded!

But what shall I use?

Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress?

Why Use Joomla?

Joking aside, Joomla is an excellent solution that lies in the middle of Wordpress's ease of use and the flexibility of Drupal.

Resources


Joomla is an open source content management system.

So what does that mean?

  • Open Source means that anyone can contribute to the code, improve it, or distribute it. This means the platform is a living project being created and improved by a community of developers all over the world.
  • A content management system uses a database to place content into designated places on the web page. Its dynamic and in real time.

Let's look at a forum as an example

Example of a database website

Joomla works the same way, the template creates "buckets" or "placeholders" for content, and then the CMS pours content into them as needed.

Example of a database website

Here, the articles are being dynamically generated as well as the bottom lists of links.

Joomla is

  • Easy
  • Powerful
  • Cheap (not free!)

Barrie North's 80/20 rule

  • 80% of what you want to do will take 20% of the effort
  • You don’t really know what your site visitors want

Resources


To install Joomla, you need a web account with a MySQL database.

Or you can set up what is know as a localhost.

  1. Download Joomla files
  2. Either
    • Upload file package to server then extract
    • Extract then upload individual files
  3. Create a database
  4. Browse to site and run installation wizard
  5. Pray to all you hold holy that permissions are ok
  6. Delete installation folder

Resources


One of the hardest parts to Joomla is setting up the site. To start, there are so many options it an be overwhelming.

The three elements of a Joomla site are:

  • Template (the look and feel)
  • Content (the "beef")
  • Modules (the gravy round the outside)

Elements of a Joomla website


Joomla comes with three templates:

  • Milky Way
  • Beez
  • Purity

To get started, just use one of these, then you can graduate to a 3rd party template of which there are thousands. You can get free ones or professional ones ranging from $25-$70

Of course www.joomlashack.com, but others of mention:

  • www.joomlapraise.com
  • www.rockettheme.com
  • www.joomlart.com
  • www.joomlajunkie.com

Commercial innovation has driven Joomla templates much quicker than some other content management systems.


The main "meat" content is made up of articles.

Content, or articles need containers, these are called Sections and Categories, and must be set up first.

  • Section
    • Category
      • Article

Joomla content structure - sections and categories


Nothing can been seen on the webpage until it is linked to. Next you must set up navigation.

There are no Joomla pages


Joomla has thousands of 3rd party extensions, from forums and shopping carts to lacrosse league managers or women's menstrual cycle trackers.

Some are free, some are commercial. Some are GPL, some are proprietary (no, these are not the same thing!)

Lets add some extensions!

Resources


Joomla holds its own for SEO!

Joomla has something called SEF (Search Engine Friendly URL's) that turns complex url's into easy to understand ones.

Google doesn't care now anywhere, so SEO is not SEF.

Joomla SEO is not SEF

  • Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)
  • Global Link Popularity of Site (4.5)
  • Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)
  • Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure (4.1)
  • Age of Site (4)
  • Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)
  • Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)
  • Keyword Use in Body Text (3.9)
  • Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.7)
  • Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.6)

Source:https://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

Concentrate on creating relevant titles for your articles

Create Relevant Article Titles

This will mean your pages have a strong foundation for SEO and will be accessible and usable.

Good Article Titles mean good SEO and usability

Resources


One of the challenges of open source is keeping up to date with the more frequent patches and security fixes. Someone on your team will have to know how to do these.

Joomla.org releases patches which are a bunch of files that need to be applied/ftp'ed onto your server.

Major releases come around every year or so with many new features. The current version is 1.5 and 1.6 will be released in the next 12 months.

There are some extensions and services that will keep you site updated for you.

Resources

Tell us what you want

What you really... really want!

Last week we launched our new promise of our 100% satisfaction guarantee.

This week we take another step in improving ourselves to better meet our customers needs.

We have launched our Uservoice feedback forum for the Joomlashack community. We want you to tell us what you'd like to see from Joomlashack, and we'll do our best to make it happen.

For general feedback, please post in our core forum: joomlashack.uservoice.com

Read more: Tell us what you want

Join the Joomlashack Email Test

There are lots of email marketing services: iContact, Mailchimp, Aweber etc etc.

But I don't think there has been a scientific test and review of how well they deliver, all of them give their deliverability rates, but how can we compare them?

I need your help to do this very test and compare these services, here's how...

Read more: Join the Joomlashack Email Test

Joomla 1.5 turns 12

Joomla 1.5.12Last week the Joomla Project team released Joomla 1.5.12, codename "Wojmamni Ama Woi." No explanation for the Swahili meaning was given, but this version's various security and bug fixes are easily explained by checking out the project's 1.5.12 release.

The notes on Joomla.org points out that the version of the WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE received an important upgrade in this release, which reminded us to remind you that if you aren't using WYSIWYGPro, you're mising out on the best editor available for Joomla 1.5.

Nonetheless, be sure to do your updates early and often, as there are likely bad people out there trying to hack your Joomla site. You can also check out SecureJoomla, which will add another layer of protection on top of the great work by the Joomla Project guys.