Joomla 1.5.15 was released last week and as always, it is a good idea to keep your site current. I have previously explained how to do this manually, but let's have a look at how to update Joomla using a free extension.
A handy, but often overlooked feature of Joomla is Archive. If your site contains articles that become out-of-date, but you don't want to delete them, you can move them to a different area of your site as follows.
Joomla does not provide a way to format the text that appears in an article heading (such as italicising a word as I did in this article's heading). If you try to insert HTML code, this is removed when you save the article.
If you build a standard feedback form using Joomla, it's only a matter of time until you start receiving spam submissions. The way around this for most developers is to use a different form builder that includes a method you're probably familiar with called CAPTCHA. That's a bit of a shame as the Contacts component provides an easy way to create simple forms. So here is a way around this using a free extension.
This post includes a video tutorial.
Google Images is a useful resource that allows searchers to find images on the web related to their search inquiry. Your images may also show up in the standard Google results.
The standard location that Joomla uses to store images is /images/stories. If you don't like this, you can change it.
This post includes a video tutorial.
Last week, I demonstrated how to speed up your site using Joomla's cache feature. Here's a second speed tip:
It is crucial to provide a positive experience for your site visitors and an easy way to do this is to speed up your site so pages are displayed more quickly. Here's one way to do this:
Your website content is divided into what I call "Primary" and "Secondary" content. Your Primary Content are your articles that appear in the main part of the page and these are handled using Article Manager in the Administrator. Your Secondary Content items are pieces of information that appear in other positions such as the header, footer, left and right. These are handled using Module Manager. However did you know that you can place a module into an article? Here are the steps.
This post includes a video tutorial.
