Joomla Blog

Virtuemart has long been the preferred e-commerce solution for Joomla sites as it is feature-rich, there are a lot of extensions available and it's free. However, it is often criticised for lack of updates and difficult configuration. So if you want to sell something online, here are some alternatives to consider:

Rightly or wrongly, web developers feel a sense of ownership over their finished work. In the past, whenever a website update was required, the website owner asked the developer to make the change and all was good. Joomla allows site owners to make their own updates but developers get cranky when their hard work is ruined by the site owner. Keep your developer happy (and your site visitors too) by avoiding the following common mistake.

The latest addition to the Joomla website is People. This is a social site with features similar to Facebook. Here you can mix with other Joomla people to learn more, make friends and simply experience the enormous size of the Joomla community. I encourage you to register and when you have logged in, head over to my profile and add me as a friend.

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

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.

When you installed Joomla, you were asked to specify a password to access the Joomla Administrator. However the username of 'admin' was automatically assigned. To reduce the chances of someone hacking in to your Administrator, it is a great idea to change your username from 'admin' to anything else. 

There are no rules with web development but there certainly are some principles that most sites should follow. Last week I discussed the importance of capturing your visitor's attention quickly. Let's follow on from that by discussing your site navigation.

This article is somewhat more technical than usual but it addresses what is probably the most common problem that people experience with Joomla. Joomla can be successfully used with a number of hosts all of whom have different setups. But once you start installing extensions, you may encounter difficulties with file permissions. If you're not technically minded, you don't know where to begin to solve these problems and spend hours tearing your hair out trying things that don't work or even wrecking the rest of your site.

The term bounce rate is the percentage of people who arrive at a page on your site but don't view any other pages. This is a great metric to measure using Google Analytics because it shows if you are attracting the right people and most importantly, if you are doing a good job convincing them to look at your site.

One aspect that was lacking in the Joomla community was an easy way to find people to help you with your Joomla project. The Joomla Resource Directory has now been released with listings such as hosting, support and development. If you are involved in supporting Joomla in any way, you should get yourself listed now.