Joomla install & config

How to install and configure Joomla with minimum effort, tuned for speed, SEO, security - and top performance.

Add article title to Read More links

the competition for SERP's (Search Engine Ranking Positions) is fierce. The slightest advantage you can gain can make the difference. Good navigation is key here - and part of this is to give some extra info to your visitors of what they will see if they clicking on a given link. Adding the article title to your Read More links is a way to make this happen.

Setting up an automatic Smart Search indexing

In another article I've praised the Smart Search core extension and recommended you to use it. But there is a problem with this extension - you need to re-index your site after you add new things manually to get the most out of it. Although the Smart Search index is automatically kept up-to-date whenever content items are amended, there are some circumstances where you need to re-run the indexer. You can do this manually using the Index toolbar button in the Manage Indexed Content screen. Or there is another way to do it?

Give a boost to your site's search speed

When one needs something, usually want it fast' and with large, complex Joomla sites that may be a problem. Sometimes the search takes... okay, not forever, but long enough to think about how you can give it some extra speed. Here are some tips and tricks to accelerate Joomla search speed:

Help! My editor background is coloured!

Yep, that's something you can experience with any of your new templates, especially the ones with colored/dark background. Why this happening? And more important, how you can fix it?

The answer to the first question is simple: the 'WYSIWYG' editors used in Joomla are just doing what the name implies: are taking the template's CSS file and rendering the newly entered content to be as close to what will be shown on the site as possible. And if your template's background is colored or an image file is used to fill your background, then that will be used there too. The fix is relatively easy in the case of most current editors. Almost all of them have the possibility to use a special CSS file in the editing pages. Here we will show you the recipe that works for the family of editors based on TinyMCE editor, delivered by default with Joomla (as JCE), but the solution is similar or can be easily adapted for all such advanced editors.

Give a boost to your Joomla site

One of the problems any webmaster is facing that the site may be not fast enough to meet his expectations. How you can squeeze up that last drop of extra speed from your site? We published lots of tips on this theme, but let's reorganize and update them with possibilities of the latest Joomla implementation (1.5.10 as the original article was written, 1.7.3 on last update I wrote this). I try to present them in decreasing order of importance/effectiveness, but the actual order reflects mostly my personal experience - which may be different from yours - and not some rigorously measured facts. But, believe me, I have a good nose for this. Some of the tips are easy to implement - and some may need advanced knowledge. But I mixed them up there to let you know what you may need to check - or what you may need ask from your programmer/web developer.

Turn caching on!

To improve your Joomla website's performance, just turn on "caching" on the "Cache" tab from Joomla's Global Configuration. When caching is turned on, Joomla creates a static file or "cache" of your website data on the disk. When the static file is found, the system retrieves the data from the disk rather than from the database. This improves performance because it saves system resources by not making redundant SQL calls to the database. And it will also speed up the display time of the pages.

You can set cache refresh rate in seconds. If you don't constantly update your contents, you might want to set it longer. And to further improve it, go to all your modules configurationand select "yes" to cache option (not available in all modules).

Subcategories

How did you find this site? Did you asked yourself the question how a site can be found on the net? Watch your own habits, and you'll see: you are looking to the sites found on first page of the Google results for a given search term. Must be something very important, to go down to the second, and even to the third page. What else you use to find new web content? Social media? Recommendations from friends? Links on pages you like and visit? Do you know, that less, than 1% of existing web-pages are reaching the first page of the Google results for some search term? do you know, than less, than 17% of existing web-pages are even spidered regularly by the major search-engines? If you don't get spidered and/or you don't reach the magic first 3 pages for at least some search terms you are interested in - you aren't exist. And I can't believe, that anyone building a web-page plans to remain hidden... So, how you can get there? Enter the art of SEO. You will find some interesting, Joomla-specific ideas here which may help you learning it! And never forget: SEO is about what you do every day. SEO is a long term strategy - not a quick fix.

Joomla is safe!! - you can heard in every forums. Is indeed safe enough? Yes, the core Joomla, if properly configured and deployed is a reasonably secure environment. The difference can be made by several factors. and first of these factors is YOU, the webmaster. But there are others, like the hosting environment, the addons used, and couple of others. Watch your back! And keep your site safe!

... and not only. Sometimes you don't know, why your Joomla site isn't working as you want it. Here you can find some tips wich might help you finding your way!

And, remember: everyone was a beginner!

Yesterday your Joomla site worked just fine. Today is misbehaving. And you're clueless... Right? Hey, you're not the first one having this experience. You're on the good site where you might find the cure for your problem!

All kind of software tools you should have to be productive. From local development environments to programming tools, resources, tips and tricks wich can help you build your Joomla siter faster, easier.


 

Basic tricks to make Joomla work for you. Things you can solve using various configuration areas of your Joomla, your hosting environment or your components.