The Joomla Chick

WARNING!!  PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR JOOMLA GLOBAL CONFIGURATION SETTINGS AFTER UPGRADING!

I have been using Joomla 1.5 for a while now and absolutely love it.  It wasn’t until I was adding a site to a Facebook group and saw the Joomla description that I realised something wasn’t quite right.  I knew that I had put my proper description and keywords into my global configuration when setting up the site and yet they weren’t there.

What had happened is that I was in Fantastico in my site and upgraded my Joomla installation to the latest version.  Even although I know I should check the settings, I didn’t.  What a mistake!  What happens when you upgrade is that it puts the global configurations back to default and you need to put everything back in as it was.  Therefore I would advise you before upgrading your Joomla website to copy all your keywords and description from global configuration so that you can paste them back in after you’ve completed the upgrade.  The upgrade itself is very simple to do, one click and you are done!

Another thing is that if you have search engine friendly (sef) urls on, through the Joomla core extensions, then they will default back into not working.  It’s extremely important to change these back asap as the search engines will start sending your visitors to 404 error pages as the search engine friendly (sef) settings have been turned off.

The good news is that you can carry out the upgrade and resetting of the global configuration in less than 5 minutes so don’t let my warnings put you off upgrading!  Upgrading is a necessary part of using Joomla as the majority of the upgrades are security upgrades, making your site more secure, and we love that!

Many Joomla users create their websites and don’t upgrade their sites as they are using their sites just to promote their business and don’t update their information.  This is such a waste of such a wonderful content management system and they are losing out on web traffic visitors and increased profits.  If this is you, and you are not alone, then please consider upgrading and using Joomla as it can be used.

I’ve been asked recently to do site reviews for a few websites and was amazed (although I am not sure why) that they were all Joomla 1.5 sites.  Does this mean that more and more business owners and website developers are using Joomla as their website platform preference?  As you know it’s mine!

I love Joomla!  Joomla offers both website developers and business owners a great content management system (cms) which allows a great deal of freedom on what you have on your site as well as great Joomla 1.5 templates that make your website look very professional, instantly.

The one thing I have found with Joomla 1.5, although it is much easier to use (in my opinion) than it’s Joomla 1.0 counterpart, you still have to retrain your brain into geek mode to be able to figure out the logic.  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s just something to be aware of.

I’ve given countless hours of Joomla training and once people understand the basics, away they go happy in the knowledge that they know how to build their own website using Joomla and that they now have control over their website.  If they need a paragraph added or a new article added, they can do it themselves, without having to pay a website developer or designer to change it, not to mention having wait to get it done instead of being able to add it there and then.

There are other content management systems out there, infact there are quite a few sites build using Wordpress which is a great platform for blogging and basic sites but doesn’t give you the functionality that Joomla gives.  There is also Drupal and PhpNuke as well as a few others.  I haven’t tried to build sites on other platforms other than in html coding and Joomla is sooooo much easier that doing that, even with the learning curve you need to go through to learn how to use it.

Although Joomla is a self contained content management system you still need access to either cpanel or plesk or which ever control panel that is on your hosting account.  Why do you need access to your control panel?  Most, if not all, of the templates when you edit any of the css (cascading style sheet) files they lock the file so you can’t edit it again.  A problem therefore if you need to change it again and you don’t have access to your control panel or file manager.

I am presently creating a series of training videos which should be ready within the week to demystify the world that is Joomla!  I also offer Joomla training, at the moment I have individual training packages available and group training is planned for March.  Let me know if you are interested.

I used to use a GetResponse module to allow the visitors to The Joomla Chick to sign up for my mailing list.  Yes it worked but it wasn’t a great signing up experience nor did it allow you to tailor the visitors experience or add some internet marketing techniques to fully monetise your list.

Today I changed it!

GetResponse needs you to set up a few pages when you set it up.  You can use their default pages but why advertise GetResponse when you can advertise your own business?  However, it isn’t as simple as using a search engine friendly url like html websites.  Joomla works a little bit differently, as if you didn’t know!

The extra piece of information that you need to make the link to

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=xx&Itemid=yy

Where the xx is the article id, each article you create in Joomla is given a unique id.  The yy is the menu id, again each item that you attach to a menu is given a unique id.  When you put each of these unique numbers together in the xx and yy space you get a unique page that you can create for your GetResponse autoresponder.

Importantly, as don’t want your GetResponse pages to show up on the search engines, you need to create a hidden menu.  All you do is create a new menu and call it “hidden”, mainly so you can easily find the menu and add any other hidden items to it.  DON’T enable the hidden menu as a module.

You will need to create an article and a menu item for 3 pages:

1.   The page that your signup is directed to initially after entering their details but before they have confirmed their details.

2.   The page that your signup is directed to after they have confirmed their email address.  On this page you can have any incentives that you used to encourage your visitors to sign up to your mailing list.

3.   An error page incase there is any type of error in the signup process.  The easiest thing is just to ask your signup to use their browsers back button and try again.

If you really want to see it in action you can always sign up for The Joomla Chick Tips Newsletter!

I’ll be creating a how to video and accompanying workbook to show you step by step how to do it so watch this space for details.

I have always known that having a blog was an essential part of having an online business and have struggled for a while to find the right blogging solution for my Joomla sites.  I did install a Joomla blogging extension and start using that, however I then found out it had serious security issues and uninstalled it.  Don’t get me wrong, there ARE Joomla blogging extentions and they are probably great but I knew what WordPress could do and wanted something equally as good.  There is also a Joomla extension where you can integrate Joomla into Wordpress for $59.99 per year but I guess I just wanted WordPress to work like WordPress and have it’s full functionality.

Drum roll please …….

So I installed WordPress and linked all the menu’s to match the Joomla menus and my Joomla blog entry to WordPress, did some creative Photoshop editing, clever css amendments and hey presto, a site I am very, very pleased with.  All I need now is to continue to write a blog post every few days at the very least and watch my rankings go up.  Well that’s the theory anyway.

My motto is, and always will be, if in doubt – cheat!

The Joomla Chick is my baby.  It’s something that was born out of my frustrations at finding straightforward instruction on how to use Joomla to build a fantastic site.  I’d bought videos in the past, however they were very basic and didn’t teach me anything that I hadn’t already picked up before.  Joomla really is an amazing content management system and once you get the hang of it, it’s really simple to use.  So yes, I will be cheating a bit with my blog being WordPress, however WordPress is the King of blogging platforms and as The Joomla Chick also teaches about internet marketing, we have to use the best tools available.  Joomla will, I am sure, come up with fantastic, integrated blogging extensions but for now I am happy with doing my blog using WordPress.

If you don’t have many technical skills to edit a WordPress template to link with your Joomla site, then you can either use a Joomla blogging extension or hire me to integrate it for you.  Do whichever way you are happiest with.  Personally I love this way, as I get to test out both Joomla and WordPress with my Google Analytics data to see how each platform performs.

I just love the fact that I get paid to play with Joomla and WordPress, as well as testing different internet marketing theories and practises and watch my bank balance increase.  Anyone can do it, but it does take time, patience and perseverence.

If I can help you in anyway with your Joomla site or learning about Joomla then please feel free to contact me using my contact form.  I will reply, unless of course you are spamming me!