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Joomla install & config

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

The directory /components/libraries/cmslib/cache/ is filling up and is eating my server space!

Today one of my clients asked me to find out why he is running out of available disk space, despite the fact that has an average Joomla 1.5 site with nothing extraordinary installed, and a generous 2 Gigs server space. In couple of minutes I found the first clue, the /components/libraries/cmslib/cache/ directory has a whopping 700 Megs plus worth of content consisting by outdated cache files. From there finding the culprit was easy - it's the Jom Comment component which is filling up the server space with unneeded cache files. The fix was promised sometime back in 2009, but seemingly was never implemented - at least not in the Joomla 1.5 versions.

What you can do?

Duplicate Template Fix for Joomla 2.5

Since the release of Joomla 2.5 there has been a particularly annoying “duplicate template” bug that becomes clearly evident when you install or update a template. This has caused a great deal of confusion and consternation among Joomla users, but nobody offered an easy to use fix until recently. As anyone else in this business I hit the wall with this bug, until I found a cure for it on RocketTheme's blog.

PHP Warning: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings....

With recent upgrade of a great number of servers to PHP 5.3.8 may clients reported that their site began to show error messages like

Warning: strtotime() [function.strtotime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings

or

Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings

Cannot modify header information - headers already sent

This warning message is produced by PHP if a program attempts to send an additional HTTP header after the separator (and hence all the headers) has already been sent. In the HTTP protocol a server response consists of a group of headers followed by a body, separated by a single blank line (i.e. a line containing only a carriage-return).

GoDaddy's Joomla blues

A while ago I wrote a tip about problems geting SEF URL's work on 1&1-s servers. Back then I didn't realized, that the problem is the same - or at least fairly similar - on GoDaddy's servers too. Not everywhere, I have a site running on GoDaddy with sh404SEF without any need of tweaking the .htaccess file, but recently I had issues with another site.

So, the trick above solves the problem, but what is the cause?

Why my Joomla site is this slow?

Joomla generally is running at an acceptable speed -  users aren't seeing differences between an average Joomla site and another CMS'es. But what if they do? What can cause the (sometime unbearable) slowness of some Joomla sites?

Subcategories

Joomla SEO Article Count:  21

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.

Secure Joomla Article Count:  22

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!

Tips for beginners Article Count:  187

... 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!

Joomla Troubleshooter Article Count:  55

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!

Developer tools Article Count:  6

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.

 

Configuration tricks Article Count:  15

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.