Some time ago, I explained how to insert multiple articles quickly using an extension called Mass Content. Unfortunately the developer seems to have disappeared and the extension is no longer available. However, someone has been kind enough to include a copy in the Joomla forums so grab it while you can. You will need to register with the forum and login, in order to download it.

There are dozens of Joomla extensions that play MP3 files but I love Simple MP3 Bar as it is indeed simple and in many cases more than adequate. Of course MP3's are great for music but why not consider adding an audio introduction or audio instructions on your site? Your audience might appreciate hearing you rather than reading a lengthy explanation. The following instructions assume you already have an MP3 file, but if you don't, check out Audacity which is a free audio editor.

Joomla includes a site search feature, but the results are not always as relevant as you might expect. Here's a way to display better search results by replacing the standard search module with Google powered search.

Previously, I told you about the Joomla Community Showcase where you can view a selection of great Joomla sites and submit your own.

Websites can include a small image called a Favicon that appears in your web browser to help identify a site. You can create your own as follows:

The Joomla Administrator includes an HTML editor that allows you to format your article text, insert images, create links and more. This editor, called TinyMCE, is lightweight and easy to use but it does lack some useful features. Consider replacing this with the Joomla Content Editor (JCE) and enjoy a better experience with these features:

In a previous article, I explained how to insert a random image on your Joomla site. Random content is useful for displaying testimonials, quotations, jokes, portfolios and anything else that helps your visitor get a better idea of what it is you do. In this post we will look at how to insert random text.

Keep your website looking fresh and interesting by including random content on your pages. This week I will show you how to do this with images and next week I will cover random text.

One of the biggest mistakes made by new web developers concerns resizing images. When you insert an image into an article, you can resize it, but this only changes the display size of the image. The actual file size remains the same. For example, let's say your original image is 3200 x 2400 pixels which results in a file size of 3MB. This would be far too big to display in an article, so when you insert it, you might resize the dimensions to 320 x 240 pixels. This will look better, but the file size of the image remains at 3MB and as such, it takes a very long time to download.

I get a lot of emails asking how to fix a particular problem in Joomla. Problems can arise for all sorts of reasons and are often caused by some incompatibility with your host or an extension. The following suggestions are very basic but I know many people are giving up too soon, so if you run into trouble, I hope you'll find this helpful.