# https://joejoomla.com - Full LLM Training Data Generated on: 2026-09-13T06:01:22.693Z Total pages: 73 This file contains complete article content for deep AI indexing. --- ## Page 1: Home URL: https://joejoomla.com Date: 2012-06-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ## Read The JoeJoomla Blog News, tips and how-tos from JoeJoomla [_The JoeJoomla Blog_](/blog) [ ![Joomla Community Magazine](/images/stories/blog/2026/2026-jdayusa-speaker-1920x1080.png) ](/blog/preparing-for-the-future-of-joomla-a-deep-dive-with-joejoomla-at-joomladay-usa-2026)[_Preparing for the Future of Joomla: A Deep Dive with JoeJoomla at JoomlaDay USA 2026_](/blog/preparing-for-the-future-of-joomla-a-deep-dive-with-joejoomla-at-joomladay-usa-2026) ### Websites We create great looking high-performance websites that are easy to use and produce results. ### Maintenance Have your website looked after by professionals. We have maintenance packages to suit your needs. ### Blog Everyone has an opinion, read ours and tell us yours? ### Websites | Content Management Systems ## Experience We've been building Joomla websites since 2005. During that time we've also been deeply involved with the Joomla project. JoeJoomla has been an integral part of the Joomla open source community by serving on the board of directors for the project leadership. You can see Joe’s volunteer profile here. We've shared our knowledge and experience with the community at large all over the word at both large and small events. We do this because we are passionate. We are in his for you. Our reward comes from doing a great job for you. ## Creative We are highly creative but not at the expense of your brand. Some designers just want to create pretty looking websites but that’s not us. The awards we have won for our websites are not just because they look good, it is because the whole package, purpose and tactics made sense for the client. We approach the creative process with your goals in mind. We create great looking websites that are easy to use and bring you business. Isn’t that what you are looking for? ## Production You’ll enjoy working with us. We are fun and easy to get along with. We have experience from the simplest of projects to large, complex and customized solutions. ## Value We specialize in Joomla! It’s open source software free from expensive licensing. Why spend your dollars just for the privilege of using the software? Wouldn't you rather be investing your money into branding and content? ### Click the button now to get in touch with JoeJoomla about web design services: [_Click here for a free first web design consultation meeting_](/free-consultation) ### World Class Joomla Maintenance Services ![Joomla Service Provider](/images/joomla_service_provider_square.png) Have your Joomla website looked after by Joomla professionals. We have maintenance packages to suit your needs. Three plans which include free high performance web hosting. Each plan is tailored to your website requirements starting at $99 per month. [_Click here to see the plans_](/services#packages-maintenance) --- ## Page 2: Feature Block JoeJoomla Speaking At Joomla Day USA 2026 URL: https://joejoomla.com/feature-block-joejoomla-speaking-at-joomla-day-usa-2026 Date: 2026-03-09 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ## Read The JoeJoomla Blog News, tips and how-tos from JoeJoomla [_The JoeJoomla Blog_](/blog) [ ![Joomla Community Magazine](/images/stories/blog/2026/2026-jdayusa-speaker-1920x1080.png) ](/blog/preparing-for-the-future-of-joomla-a-deep-dive-with-joejoomla-at-joomladay-usa-2026)[_Preparing for the Future of Joomla: A Deep Dive with JoeJoomla at JoomlaDay USA 2026_](/blog/preparing-for-the-future-of-joomla-a-deep-dive-with-joejoomla-at-joomladay-usa-2026) --- ## Page 3: Preparing for the Future of Joomla: A Deep Dive with JoeJoomla at JoomlaDay USA 2026 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/preparing-for-the-future-of-joomla-a-deep-dive-with-joejoomla-at-joomladay-usa-2026 Date: 2026-03-09 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. As the digital landscape shifts, staying ahead of CMS trends is vital. This year, the Joomla community is coming together at [Joomla Day USA 2026](https://www.jdayusa.com/) (JDayUSA) in Delray Beach, Florida, from April 29 to May 02, 2026. Sharing the stage with the stellar speakers listed for this event will be seasoned developer [Sigrid Gramlinger](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/march-2025/leadership-interview-production-department-coordinator-sigrid-gramlinger), popular YouTuber [Tim Davis](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/november-2024/tim-davis-from-pastor-in-life-to-joomla-evangelist?highlight=WyJ0aW0iLCJkYXZpcyJd), and [JoeJoomla](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/january-2025/a-glimpse-into-a-joomler-joejoomla?highlight=WyJqb2Vqb29tbGEiXQ==), who will discuss Joomla's current code and future innovations. ## Why Are We Talking About The Future Of Joomla? Knowing where the Joomla CMS is headed is crucial for making informed decisions that future-proof your technology. Ignoring this puts you at risk, and you may pay a steep price. To make smart choices, it's essential to understand the CMS's trajectory. But how can you stay ahead of the curve and ensure your path aligns with Joomla's? ## Who Is On Our Panel Of Experts? Don't miss JoeJoomla's panel discussion, "[The Future of Joomla](https://www.jdayusa.com/sessions/the-future-of-joomla)", where he'll be joined by community favourite Tim Davis. You might know Tim from his popular YouTube channel, "[Basic Joomla Tutorials](https://www.youtube.com/@Basicjoomla)", or his regular appearances in the "[Website Design Company Owners - using Joomla](https://www.facebook.com/groups/7290653694341766)" Facebook Group. If you've tuned into one of Tim's sessions, you're familiar with his warm closing remarks: > As usual, I hope that wherever this finds you, be it morning, evening, afternoon or tomorrow, that you are well. Until the next time, enjoy your Joomla! sites and God bless Joining JoeJoomla and Tim Davis on the panel is [Sigrid Gramlinger of webgras.com](https://www.webgras.at/), the current coordinator of the Joomla Production Department. As a highly active member of various Joomla teams, including Pizza Bugs and Fun, Certification, and CMS Release. Sigrid is uniquely positioned to share insights on the Future of Joomla. Having presented on this topic at European events, Sigrid will bring a hands-on perspective to the discussion. This promises to be an engaging and informative event, with potential for lively debate as we explore the future of Joomla together. ## Here are some things that will be covered in this session - Who are Joomla's stakeholders? - What are the target groups for Joomla? - Are hobbyists a target group? - How does Joomla as a project function? - What are Joomla's priorities? - What are Joomla's biggest challenges? - Who decides what gets into the core of Joomla? - How can I have a voice in the Joomla project? ## Join Us in Person at Del Ray, Florida, or Online for JoomlaDay USA ## The Future Of Joomla Click this link to:**_ [The Future Of Joomla](https://www.jdayusa.com/sessions/the-future-of-joomla)_** [![The Future Of Joomla Card](/images/stories/blog/2026/the-future-of-joomla_2026.jpg)](https://www.jdayusa.com/sessions/the-future-of-joomla) ## Do You Have A Question About The Future Of Joomla? Join the conversation! We'll be taking questions about the future of Joomla and sharing our insights with you. Want to ask a question? Submit it ahead of time using the form below, and we'll compile the most popular ones to discuss with the panel. We'll have a list of questions ready to go, so be sure to get yours in and be a part of the discussion! #### Why Submit a Question? - Get your Joomla questions answered live - Join the panel discussion at JoomlaDay USA 2026 - Learn about the future roadmap - Be part of the Joomla community ## Submit Your Question Have a question about the future of Joomla? Send it directly to JoeJoomla and get answers at the JoomlaDay USA 2026 session. Thank you! Your question has been submitted. Sorry, there was an error. Please try again or email us directly. ## Do You Want A Discount For The Event? Don't miss the chance to learn from the best in the industry. Secure your spot at JoomlaDay USA today and help us shape the future of our favorite CMS! Do you like discounts? I have five 10% off discounts for both the 2 Day Virtual and 2 Day In Person tickets. If you'd like a discount code send me an email, I'll give the first 5 people in each of the 2 different ticket types a code to register for the event with a discount. #### Discount Details - Five 10% off codes for 2 Day Virtual tickets - Five 10% off codes for 2 Day In Person tickets - First come, first served - Codes sent via email within 24 hours ## Request Your Discount Code Select your preferred ticket type and we'll send you a 10% discount code if available. Thank you! Your discount request has been submitted. Check your email for the code! Sorry, there was an error. Please try again or email us directly. --- ## Page 4: Book a Consultation URL: https://joejoomla.com/free-consultation Date: 2025-06-05 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ## _Your First Consultation Is Free!_   ### Click on one of the following for a calendar: [Schedule a meeting](https://zcal.co/joesonne) ![Responsive image](/images/stories/book-a-consultation/smiling_blonde_lady.jpg) ## Your first consultation A first consultation is simply being introduced to one another and getting the big picture overview of where you are today and where you want to be in the future. We would like to get to know you and how we can help you. We both need to know if we will be a good fit for each other. You can book a first consultation meeting, which is free of charge, to talk about what you are looking for. We will put aside 1 hour for you to listen to what your needs are and what you are trying to accomplish. ## Get the most out of it To get the most out of the consultation you should be prepared with the following: - What is your main business strategy? - What are the things that you are doing that support your strategy? - How do you currently measure the success of your efforts? - What do you believe needs to change? > ### I told them I knew one of the best Joomla guys in North America; _Joe Sonne_ > > ~ Scott Baker > Executive Vice President of Crawford Technologies > ### He's timely, considerate, respectful, easy to work with and exceptionally knowledgeable and skilled. > > ~ Dr. Dani Babb > Founder and CEO Of The Babb Group --- ## Page 5: Joomla Community Magazine January 2025 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-community-magazine-january-2025 Date: 2025-01-22 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. _The following article originally appeared in the Joomla Community Magazine on Monday, January 20, 2025 here: [_https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/january-2025/a-glimpse-into-a-joomler-joejoomla_](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/january-2025/a-glimpse-into-a-joomler-joejoomla)_ Article written by: [Emmanuel Lemor](https://magazine.joomla.org/authors/exlemor) 4 minutes reading time (889 words) Having been around the JoomlaSphere in some capacity or another for years, what keeps me around and coming back are the wonderful and super helpful people that I have encountered over the years... some stay, some go, some comeback and some don't but they are collectively the pillars of the Joomla! project no matter in what way they participate, or contribute... One such person is Joe Sonne a.k.a. JoeJoomla, a humble gentle soul that is always pleasant and willing to lend a helping hand, not just as part of the JoomlaDay USA team but also in other ways: being a speaker, trainer, writer and more... Let's learn a bit more about Joe... ### What inspired you to get involved with Joomla? I discovered Joomla when I was helping to digitize the Canadian branch of a large International non profit. This is in the early 90s and I was helping them get their entire business 'online' as well as  improve their enterprise processes… at that time, I was trying a few things, playing around with PHP Nuke and things like that… and I was pointed to Joomla by a web developer when I asked him about "what he would use to build websites today if he had to do it all over again and get results like the nice website he had"… and he pointed me to joomla.org… I created an account with Joe Joomla… and the superman S avatar… I started putting up questions around how to use Joomla on a Mac... there were not a lot of people doing that at the time I guess or I was faster at answering my own questions, and I started replying to/answering my own questions in the forum and pretty soon after, Joe Joomla started becoming popular. ### What has stayed the most consistent and changed the most for you in the last almost 20 years of using Joomla? The thing that originally appealed to me is that you could deploy a Joomla site quickly and it would look great and people were making great templates that gave you variety……  and that has stayed true to this day… and what has changed the most, Joomla’s core capabilities: now you have layout overrides, bootstrap, child-templates, custom fields, tags, and so much more, you can really great things if you want to delve in a bit…. Joomla went from being a very capable hotrod to an exotic racing car these days… ### What have you used Joomla for over the years? I have created many Joomla micro-sites as intranets and was able to help organizations communicate better… in 2009, after years of going to events, I was able to start making a living with Joomla and since then I have worked on many different types of projects from small to enterprise level - as Joomla has really garnered a lot of features in the core over the last couple of major versions (4 and 5), this makes such projects even easier… ### What advice would you have for someone coming into or wanting to learn more about Joomla today? Become as knowledgeable about Joomla as you can on how it works and who makes it work by connecting with the community on Mattermost. A lot of these people are very visible and charitable with sharing their knowledge. If you are passionate about it, you can have deep conversations with the people that actually code Joomla! itself... - that’s the beauty of the Joomla! community, there is flexibility: you can play around with Joomla! as a hobby or spend all of your time making money with developing solutions in and around Joomla!. ### What have you seen lately and think about the future of Joomla? Going to Joomla in-person events is what made the real difference for me... I have participated in every major Joomla World Conference and JBeyond event - "it’s nice to see more events lately coming back such as JoomlaDay USA", which I volunteer for. Meeting people in person, building those relationships makes all of the difference in the world. Connect with the very helpful Mattermost Joomla! community is a piece of advice that Joe repeated several times during our interview. "I see Joomla! always existing in the future and always being a very capable open source software that lets you do whatever you need to do with it - you just have to learn a bit about it and if you don’t want to learn that’s fine too: you can use something out of the box, you’ll just be restricted to what that extension defines or offers for you… if return on investment is important to you, then going with a very capable tool like Joomla! is the logical way to go, you just need to have the capabilities or the people around you to adapt it to your needs just like I did with quite a few enterprise projects." “_The greatness of Joomla is experienced when you master these two things: Joomla! core and Bootstrap. There is no better open source content management system for building websites than this_." thinks Joe Sonne / aka JoeJoomla. * * * It was a pleasure spending some time with Joe learning more about him, his passion, his path in, through and around tech and Joomla! I wish him many more wonderful years as part of our great community! --- ## Page 6: Why Every Joomla Front-End Developer Needs to Learn PHP URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/why-every-joomla-front-end-developer-needs-to-learn-php Date: 2024-07-02 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. Years ago, in a conversation with one of the founding members of Joomla, he said to me, 'Stop being lazy and learn how to code.' > Stop being lazy and learn how to code. I remember being very conflicted and at a loss for words in response to his comment at the time because I was balancing so many things on my plate. I was newly self-employed, running my own Joomla business, and it was challenging especially after many years of better paid employment working in a different industry. I was already dealing with HTML, CSS, web servers, sales and marketing, project management, people management, accounting, etc. Many of the people reading this blog might be able to relate to this. Despite confidence in my own front-end skills, this person was clearly superior, even though he rarely did front end work. I observed him effortlessly write JavaScript for a Joomla drop-down menu in real time. Then he generously handed it over for use on my website. When I asked how he could write code freehand he simply responded, "Code is poetry." In that moment I realized my poetry skills were lacking. > Code is poetry. Whenever I attempted to learn PHP through many of the free courses I found online, I would make some progress, but the demands of life, including earning a living, would invariably disrupt my focus and the discipline required to complete them. Years would go by and although from time to time I would do some PHP related things I had little understanding of how it really worked. In Joomla v3.7 when custom fields became a thing I wanted to use them in layout overrides and I wasn't able to figure it out. I read articles and tutorials about custom fields and layout overrides but I still struggled with them. I turned to third-party extensions and complex page builders, which I noticed many Joomlers adopting. They produced nice looking sites. However, I was uncomfortable about becoming reliant on these tools. I didn't use them on my most crucial website - my personal Intranet - it remained predominantly stock Joomla. I was constantly adding information, updating, and experimenting on my Intranet. Then, one day, something intriguing occurred. > How can I use custom fields in a layout override? I posted a general question in a Joomla Slack Workspace where there were lots of really good Joomla developers, including the guy that told me to stop being lazy. The question was, "How can I use custom fields in a layout override?" To show I wasn't just trying to get someone to give me something for nothing without any effort on my part I posted some code that failed to work. A person I didn't recognize reached out to me in the Slack channel and offered to help. He sent some code and showed me how to use it in a PHP file and it worked! I was really grateful for the help. I was hoping to find him chatting around in the Workspace some more but didn't. I got busy again and went merrily on my way now that I had a tiny bit of knowledge on how to use custom fields in a layout override, and boy did I use that code a lot! ![Joomla and PHP](/images/stories/blog/2024/joomla_and_php.jpg) Layout overrides using custom fields unlocked my creativity, I was doing some really cool things, but still only within my Intranet. When it came to client websites, I continued to rely on extensions and page builders. > A trip to JoomlaDay Austin Texas was the turning point I used the JoomlaDay USA 2022 event in Austin Texas as an opportunity take a bit of a break and made a road trip out of it with my wife. We drove from Canada to Texas over the course of a couple of days stopping along the way to see some things of interest. We did the JoomlaDay event and headed back home for the drive. By this time I knew a bit more about the guy that helped me in the Slack forum. His name was Adam Melcher and he lived near Nashville. Adam's Joomla centric business is called [New Line Web Design](http://newlinewebdesign.com/). We would be passing nearby where he lived and I thought it would be really nice to meet him. We were literally 3 hours away from his place when I texted him and asked if he would be willing to meet me in person for a coffee. He responded with an invitation to visit his home, which we accepted. We ended up spending a night at his beautiful residence and had a great visit with Adam and his wife. Our interaction was brief, yet we instantly hit it off. Now I regarded Adam not only as a fellow Joomler but also as a personal friend. However, this relationship evolved to be much more significant. Adam is the reason I am finally learning PHP. Adam showed me some of the things he is doing with Joomla and I only knew of a couple people in the Joomla community, mostly overseas, that were doing anything at all with Joomla like he was. He showed me what he was doing with just the Joomla core that everyone else I knew was using extensions and page builders to do. This really appealed to me because I hated the onerous task of updating to new major Joomla version on sites that have several third party frameworks and dependancies. > Here's what made the difference Adam offered to share his time to help me learn how to work with Joomla and PHP. I took him up on it with a lot of trepidation because of my previous failed attempts. We started doing Zoom sessions together. We'd schedule one hour but often it would go three or fours hours straight and I would be mentally exhausted by the time we ended. Adam stuck with me and encouraged me and made me believe that doing what I had failed to do several times before was totally doable as long as I stayed the course. I kept at it because a very talented person, whose time is valuable, was willing to share his knowledge with me. He is a busy guy and I have no idea how he is able to do what he does as well as squeeze me into the mix. When I asked him why he was doing this with me, he explained that someone had once helped him, and this was his way of paying it forward. I feel fortunate to be the recipient of this philosophy. After a long struggle, I am finally liberated from total dependency on 'helpers.' I can now harness Joomla's core capabilities which are formidable. It's made a massive difference and I'm only getting started. Before this adventure I had already made up my mind that I was going to build my own Joomla template for Joomla 4 and 5. I created the HTML for one using Tailwind which was easy for me me since I was already comfortable with CSS. Then I built a CSS Grid only version thinking it would be a better choice. When Adam got a hold of me he said, "just use what is already in Joomla". This happens to be Bootstrap and it's really well documented online. Once I came to terms with this then everything started to click. With a lot of help from Adam I now have a custom website theme based on the stock Cassiopeia template that comes with Joomla. Working this way has reignited my passion for Joomla and my creativity has exploded. > Just use what is already in Joomla I got Adam involved with the JoomlaDay USA team and he has been branching out to show North American Joomlers how to do things with core Joomla. Here's something that you might like: ![mysite](/images/stories/blog/2024/mysite.jpg) Adam Melcher of [New Line Web Design](https://newlinewebdesign.com/) has made a core Joomla 5 template available for anyone to use. You can get it here: [_Go to mysite.jdayusa_](https://mysite.jdayusa.com/) Why should every joomla front-end developer Learn PHP? By learning how to work with Joomla's core PHP files you can unleash your creativity and do things the way you want to do them. You will be learning PHP in a way that tangibly benefits you. It's hard work, but it is work that will make a huge difference down the road. Imagine the day when the developer of that extension or template you depend on decides they no longer want to continue with it. When that day comes, you won't be in a big crisis even if you are using their code because you will know how to deal with it. This is what open source is all about. Joomla vapourware shouldn't surprise you. Consider the numerous technology companies, like Google and Apple, that have developed products only to discontinue them after users have grown dependent on them, due to a change in their strategic direction. > Without knowledge of PHP, you're unaware of the opportunities it can give you, but substantial benefits come from the strength of your PHP knowledge. Joomla is developed using PHP so if you want to be really good at Joomla and not just someone who is dependant on others it behooves you to learn PHP. If you are using Joomla then you are already in an open source environment and community where others will help you make it through the PHP learning curve so you can become comfortable with it. Am I a PHP developer now that I know how to do some things with core Joomla? Not at all, I still have a long way to go but when I look back at what has been accomplished I am really happy. I hope you find someone to help you along the way to learn how to work with core Joomla files and PHP. The Joomla Community has people like Adam in it who will help if you are willing to pay the price in time and sweat just like they did. Then you will get to a place where you are able to fearlessly tackle Joomla core and PHP. This will make you better and more valuable at what you do with Joomla. --- ## Page 7: Services Request A Quote URL: https://joejoomla.com/services Date: 2024-04-14 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. # JoeJoomla Services JoeJoomla is a division of The Joe Sonne Group [ ### Business Consulting ](/free-consultation) ## Website content management systems by JoeJoomla We specialize in Joomla! It’s open source software free from expensive licensing. Why spend your dollars just for the privilege of using the software? Wouldn't you rather be investing your money for branding and content? We can provide website solutions for the simplest to largest and most complex installations. We have what it takes to build a successful site for you. Do you need someone to help train your staff how to maintain your site? Contact JoeJoomla for training packages customized for your requirements. Click the button now to get in touch with JoeJoomla! [_Click here for a free first web design consultation meeting_](/free-consultation) ## Packages of World class Joomla Website & Maintenance Services Have your Joomla websites professionally maintained by experts. Optimized SSD Web hosting and support included. ## Service Packages Designed For Your Business Needs We treat your business like it was our own. Three different packages are available based on the requirements of your website. Our Silver and Gold Packages are for busier sites that require more hands on deck. Here below is the comparison chart of our three offerings. If you require a custom package not shown here simply contact us and let's talk. #### Bronze # $300/mo - 2 hours of support per month - Web hosting included - Managed backups - Uptime monitoring - 1 Website URL included - Core Joomla Updates - 3rd party extension updates #### Silver # $600/mo - 4 hours of support per month - Web hosting included - Managed backups - Uptime monitoring - 2 Website URLs included - Core Joomla Updates - 3rd party extension updates - Sandbox site - Phone support #### Gold # $1080/mo - 8 hours of support per month - Web hosting included - Managed backups and restoration - Uptime monitoring - Up to 3 Website URLs included - Core Joomla Updates - 3rd party extension updates - Sandbox site - Phone support --- ## Page 8: JoomlaDay USA Nashville 2024 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomladay-usa-nashville-2024 Date: 2024-03-29 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. The fourth annual [JoomlaDayUSA](/) is almost here! JoomlaDayUSA 2024 marks only the second occasion of the event being hosted in person. Last year's event was amazing and this year is going to be event better. You don't want to miss this party! > I’m Not The Only One Who Is Pumped About This Event When I heard this event was going to be held just outside of Nashville, TN, I got really excited. Nashville is an amazing place. My good friend Adam Melcher joined the JoomlaDay USA Team this year to help set it up at the Williamson, Inc, Chamber of Commerce Building. I’m not the only one who is pumped about this event. There are several high profile Joomlers from overseas coming in person such as: - **Crystal Dionysopoulos** the current OSM President from Greece - **Nicholas Dionysopoulos** from Akeeba Backup (who happens to be married to the lovely Crystal D) - **Elisa Foltyn** from Germany, a top notch Joomla Yootheme Pro website builder - **Eoin Oliver** from the UK, one of the Joomla communities favourite presenters - **Carlos Cámara** from Spain, premier Joomla developer and author There’s also going to be some very influential North Americans there too. Besides Adam, a big portion of the event organizers will also be there such as Laura Gordon, Olivier Buisard, Robin Clapp, Josh Gilson, and myself. Several people who were at the event last year in Austin TX have also purchased an in person ticket too. We had a lot of fun making the promo video which you can see here. What’s special about this video is that it was edited by Nathan DiGesare of [_SCRIMSHAW PRODUCTION_](https://www.scrimshawproductions.com/) **Cool fact about Nathan:** he played keyboards for the legendary Donna Summer. He's coming to the event too. > If You Can’t Come In Person, Come Virtually! This event is both an in-person and virtual event. A lot of work has gone into organizing everything to ensure both the in house and virtual participants have a great experience. Laura’s team keeps getting better every year at organizing JoomlaDay USA. Several new people have joined the JoomlaDay USA team. They know a good thing when they see it. > Read More About This Event On Joomla.org There's an article published on the Joomla Community Magazine website about JoomlaDay USA Nashville and the various sessions including the other events that will take place there which you can see here: [https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/march-2024/joomladay-usa-2024-nashville-live-virtual-event](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/march-2024/joomladay-usa-2024-nashville-live-virtual-event) ![JoomlaDay USA Nashville 2024 promo image](/images/stories/blog/2024/joomladay_usa_2024_banner_1280x720.png) The sponsors have come on board for JoomlaDay USA 2024 nicely and we really appreciate them especially hearing recently that one of Europe’s biggest Joomla events, JandBeyond, got cancelled due to financial shortfalls. Their loss unfortunately is our gain since several people that budgeted to attend that one are now coming to the USA for our event. Get your ticket now! [https://jdayusa.com/tickets](https://jdayusa.com/tickets) --- ## Page 9: How To Find The Absolute Path URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/how-to-find-the-absolute-path Date: 2024-03-26 Description: This article explains how to find the absolute path on your web server. ![Information sign post pointing in all directions](/images/stories/promotions/directions.jpg) Have you ever been stumped in a configuration file or some other installation for a web based program when asked for an absolute path? The thing that you are installing will not work because the application insists on you entering the absolute file path yourself which you simply do not happen to know. There's no way around it, you have to get absolute path to the file or folder where items are going to be stored or used by the application. You are thinking to yourself 'why can't the stupid program figure it out on it's own?' That's not going to be helpful though, you just have to know how to find absolute paths. ## If the path is unknown to you things won't work. Step 5 in the installation process when installing Joomla! is the FTP configuration. If you want to 'Enable FTP file system layer' in this step it requires that you input the FTP root path. There is a button labelled 'Autofind FTP Path' but it doesn't always work. It has never worked for me when setting up a local install environment on my Mac using MAMP. Fortunately you don't need this step in order to get Joomla! to install, but if you want the FTP file system layer set up you are going to have to type it in the field required for it. Once you type the absolute path in the FTP root path field there is a button to 'Verify FTP Settings' which does verify the settings when they are correctly input. You can not get past this step with a relative path, it must be the absolute path. It can be really frustrating to find the absolute path. Web hosting services have all kinds of different set ups on how they serve domains on their servers. The path you need can literally be hidden from you. ![404 it just can not be found](/images/stories/promotions/404-it-just-can-not-be-found.png) ## What is the purpose of the absolute path? So what is the purpose of the absolute path? The absolute path is a path containing the root directory. The system can find all the other sub directories relative to the root directory once it knows its location. An example of an absolute path vs relative path on a web server would be: **Absolute Path:** `/home/thedomainname/public_html/cgi-bin` **Relative Path:** `public_html/cgi-bin` So this absolute path is what helps the application or system find it's way. Fortunately there is an easy way to figure out what the absolute path is. Joomla! is a php open source content management system. What we need is a php script that will help us determine where the absolute path is on the server. You can easily make this script yourself using the very handy free text editor TextWrangler application from Bare Bones Software. Don't use MS Word for this. You want a simple text editor that will not add, remove, or change characters you type in. * * * ## Here is a php script you can use to find the absolute path: JoeJoomla and Karen Dunne of Maven Design Studios Will Be Presenting There's a fantastic lineup of speakers who will be presenting at this event including JoeJoomla! Joe will have a guest presenter, Karen Dunne of [Maven Design Studios](https://mavendesignstudio.com/), sharing with him. The topic they will be presenting is: _[IDEAS FOR JOOMLA BUSINESS MAINTENANCE PLANS AND SERVICE OFFERINGS](https://jdayusa.com/sessions/session-2023/april-22/slot-2-5/ideas-for-joomla-business-maintenance-plans-and-service-offerings)_ Joe and Karen's session will be from 1:00pm CDT (18:00 UTC) to 2:00pm CDT (19:00 UTC) on April 22, 2023. Both will be presenting live and in person. > Joe Will Also Be A Guest Of Tim Davis's Session 4 - Joomlers: Balancing Joomla and Real Life Tim Davis is Mr Cybersalt himself of [Cybersalt Consulting Ltd.](https://cybersalt.com/) in Vancouver, Canada. Tim has a popular YouTube channel called [Basic Joomla Tutorials](https://www.youtube.com/@Basicjoomla). His JoomlaDay USA session runs from 1:00pm CDT (18:00 UTC) to 3:00pm CDT (20:00 UTC) on April 21, 2023. Tim is doing 4 - 30 minute sessions each session will be with a different guest. Joe will be Tim's final guest of the session. > Be Sure To Check Out The Full JoomlaDay USA 2023 Speaker Schedule The lineup of speakers for JoomlaDay USA 2023 is really impressive. You can check out the lineup for yourself by clicking [HERE](https://jdayusa.com/sessions). --- ## Page 15: SEVEN: Final Step, Making Both Sites Look The Same URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/final-step-making-both-sites-look-the-same Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![completed](/images/stories/completed.gif) This is Part 7 of [Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS](/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms "Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS") Final Step: It's time to get the images and CSS files from the live server and copy them to the localmachine. If you are using a custom template then you will need to download some files from its folder. So lets go to the 'templates' folder inside your **Joomla!** live server site. You'll find that in your 'public\_html' folder of your server: public\_html/templates \[note - the path may be different for you but essentially you need to navigate to your site root level where your **Joomla!** folders and files are found\] --- ## Page 16: SIX: Bringing Adobe GoLive Into The Mix URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/bringing-adobe-golive-into-the-mix Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Adobe GoLive](/images/stories/adobegolivecslogo.jpg) This is Part 6 of [Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS](/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms "Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS") In order for our localmachine **Joomla!** install to look the same as the live server site we need to get the images and the CSS files from the server. The method that I am going to use to get them is through FTP (file transfer protocol). **The following instructions are optional**. They describe setting up your localmachine **Joomla!** site inside a web authoring program such as **Adobe GoLive**. You DO NOT need to do this. You just need a way to get your live server files to your localmachine. So if all you want to know is what files you need to download from the live server then skip this step and go to the next article for a list of the files and folders to transfer to your localmachine. --- ## Page 17: FIVE: Getting That Live Site Export Into Your Localmachine Site URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/five-getting-that-live-site-export-into-your-localmachine-site Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![mysql](/images/stories/mysql_logo.gif) [This is Part 5 of Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS](/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms "Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS") You already have **Joomla!** installed in your **MAMP** environment including any custom templates that your sever site is using. This is important because if your site uses a custom template the SQL information is going to be looking for that custom template to put its information into. Now it's time to import this SQL file into your local site. Launch your **MAMP** application. When it is running, your web browser goes to the 'Welcome to MAMP' page. Click on the link that says '**phpMyAdmin**' at the top. This is now becoming a familiar looking page to you. On the left side under the heading 'Database' select from the drop down menu your **Joomla!** database. The page refreshes and you are looking at a page of the tables names with the 'jos\_' prefix. In order for you to import the tables from the live site you will need to 'Drop' the existing tables in the Database. You could do an export of the localmachine DB first if you like so that you can restore it later if you wish, but we are trying to import the live server site database so that everything looks the same on the localmachine as it does on the live site. So we have to drop the current tables in order to import the new tables exported from the server. So along the top menu links is the 'Drop' link at the right side. Click that. You will get a dialog box asking you if you are sure you want to 'DESTROY' a complete database!' Click 'OK'. When the page refreshes, your localmachine database is gone. Now you need to recreate a new blank database in your localmachine site to import the tables exported from the live site. Don't worry, this will only take a couple of seconds. --- ## Page 18: FOUR: Exporting Your Live Server SQL Database For Use On Your Localmachine Site URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/exporting-your-live-server-sql-database-for-use-on-your-localmachine-site Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![phpMyAdmin logo](/images/stories/pma_logo.jpg) This is Part 4 of [Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS.](/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms) Now that we have a copy of **Joomla!** running on our localhost machine we can get the information and images from the live server so that our two sites are synchronized. We'll do the export of the live site data with **phpMyAdmin**. This tool is usually available on your server through your cpanel or you can have **phpMyAdmin** as a stand alone install on your server. This IS NOT the **phpMyAdmin** that is in your **MAMP** program. This **phpMyAdmin** has to be residing on the server where your live site is. Hence you have a version of **phpMyAdmin** in **MAMP** which is your localmachine site and also one on the live server. In my cpanel I have to click on **MySQL** databases icon to I find a link to **phpMyAdmin** which is on the next screen at the very bottom. If you do not have **phpMyAdmin** available for you it is something that you should install. It is a very valuable tool that you can upload to the server. If you do install **phpMyAdmin** on your live site you must ensure that you protect the directory where it is found. You do not want anyone else having access to **phpMyAdmin** on your site since it allows users to make, delete, and edit databases on your server. --- ## Page 19: THREE: Installing Joomla! On Your Local Macintosh Using MAMP URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/installing-joomla-on-your-local-macintosh-using-mamp Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Joomla logo](/images/stories/joomla_logo.jpg) This is Part 3 of [Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using **MAMP** and **Joomla!** CMS.](/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms) Now that you have **MAMP** installed on your Macintosh computer (if not, [see part 2](/mamp-series-main/setting-up-the-mamp-environment-on-your-macintosh-computer) of this tutorial) you can put as many installations of **Joomla!** on your computer for development as disk space permits. Developing and testing **Joomla!** on your localmachine before making changes to your live server site can save all kinds of headaches, not to mention unwanted disruptions to your site in the case that something doesn't go the way you intended it. OK, lets get on with the **Joomla!** install inside **MAMP**. Do not forget that **MAMP** is an application. It has to be running in order for anything to work. So launch the **MAMP** application. When **MAMP**is running you will get a web page come up titled 'Welcome to MAMP' with a URL of `http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English` --- ## Page 20: ONE: Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS. URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![MAMP logo](/images/stories/mamp%20logo.jpg) Developing and running a content management system (CMS) web site for your business, association, or your own personal use has never been easier. Open source systems such as **Joomla!** are easy to install and maintain both on your local computer and also on a live or dedicated servers. Installing **MAMP** on your Macintosh computer takes all the pain out of the set up of the web server, database, and PHP preprocessor programming language needed to run **Joomla!** on your computer. **MAMP** stands for 'Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP'. These are the tools that are needed to work together for fully functioning database driven dynamic web sites. Over the next fews weeks I will describe each step in the process. We'll set up **MAMP** on the Macintosh, install **Joomla!** to run locally on your computer, and synchronize it with a live server version of a **Joomla!** CMS. --- ## Page 21: TWO: Setting up the MAMP Environment On Your Macintosh Computer URL: https://joejoomla.com/mamp-series-main/setting-up-the-mamp-environment-on-your-macintosh-computer Date: 2024-03-15 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![MAMP](/images/stories/mamp%20logo.jpg) This is Part 2 of [_Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using **MAMP** and **Joomla!** CMS._](/mamp-series-main/web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms) In 2004 **webEdition Software Ltd.** released MAMP, a free, open source tool enabling Mac OS X users to install Apache server, MySQL and PHP easily on their computers. **webEdition Software Ltd.**, is a subsidiary of **webEdition Software GmbH**. The latest Macintosh OSX computers come with an Apache web server built right in. You could go through the steps to install and set up the needed SQL, PHP, and other resources for a local web server environment and do it all yourself but installing **MAMP** on your Macintosh computer is the fastest and easiest way to set up to run and develop **Joomla!** and many other web based applications on your computer. As stated on the **MAMP** home page "The abbreviation **MAMP** stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X!" MAMP is an application and will not interfere with any existing Apache installation already running on your OS X. The intended use of **MAMP** is as a PHP development environment for the Macintosh computer. If you want to run a live webserver for the Internet you do not use **MAMP**. --- ## Page 22: Installing Joomla 1.5 On Your Local Macintosh using MAMP. URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/installing-joomla-15-on-your-local-macintosh-using-mamp Date: 2024-03-13 Description: This is step two in a series dealing with how to develop Joomla! 1.5 on your Macintosh computer using MAMP. ![Joomla](/images/stories/joomla-1.5-and-mamp/joomla_160x160.png) ![MAMP](/images/stories/joomla-1.5-and-mamp/mamp_160x160.png) # Joomla Development On Your Mac Computer Using MAMP The following article was originally published July 14, 2009. Both MAMP and Joomla versions have both advanced since then but the basic fundamentals of using MAMP and Joomla remain the same to this day. * * * Introduction ![Joomla 1.5 And MAMP](/images/stories/joomla-1.5-and-mamp/joomla-1.5-and-mamp.gif) The simplest way to develop a **Joomla!** site on your local Mac OS X computer is by using **MAMP**. **MAMP** is short for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, PHP. **MAMP** works just like an application. It is released under the GNU General Public License. You can download **MAMP** from [Living-e AG](http://www.living-e.de). The download page can be found [HERE](http://www.mamp.info/en/download.html). Current **MAMP** versions require Mac OS X 10.4.x. If you're running Mac OS X 10.3.x you can download an earlier version of **MAMP** 1.4.1 (universal binary), for Intel and PowerPC. Previously this site covered installing **Joomla!** 1.0x in the **MAMP** environment on your computer. Now that **Joomla!** 1.5 is available as a stable release you may want to install version 1.5 site on your Macintosh computer using **MAMP**. The two versions of **Joomla!** install methods are very similar but there are changes to **Joomla!** 1.5 that you can get familiar with here. As of this writing **MAMP** is a Universal Binary version 1.7.1. The download is a 127 MB disk image. There is also a **MAMP Pro** version that you can read about [HERE](http://www.mamp.info/en/mamp-pro/index.html). This article will deal with the regular and free version of **MAMP**. **MAMP** is installed on your computer in your 'Applications' Folder. In order to work properly the **MAMP** folder must be located in the Applications folder. You should also have at least 250 MB of free space on your hard drive. Once **MAMP** is installed on your Mac you are now ready to install **Joomla! 1.5**. Get the latest full install of **Joomla!** from [joomla.org](http://joomla.org). On the home page of [joomla.org](http://joomla.org) There is usually a banner with a button to download **Joomla!** When you click that download button you may be taken to a page which offers a couple of compressed install package options. The install packages come compressed as a .zip, .tar.gz, and .tar.bz2 compression. Your Macintosh OSX computer can deal with any of these compressions. Pick the one of your choosing and download that to your computer. ![Joomla](/images/stories/joomla_logo.jpg) Let's say that you chose the .tar.gz package. Your download will likely be called 'Joomla\_1.5.11-Stable-Full\_Package.tar.gz'. Note that '1.5.11' will change as newer releases of **Joomla!** are made available. Uncompress this package on your hard drive by double clicking it. Your Mac OS X computer will expand the package into a folder with all the folders and files inside that you require for your install. You can change that expanded folder name into something simpler like Joomla1511 for instance. That's what we'll use for this article. Move this entire Joomla1511 folder and its contents to the **MAMP** application and put it inside the folder called 'htdocs'. The path to the 'htdocs' folder will be /Applications/MAMP/htdocs. * * * Welcome to MAMP ![Welcome to MAMP](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/welcome_to_mamp.jpg) Now you are ready to install **Joomla!** 1.5. You can start **MAMP**, the application is inside the **MAMP** folder. It's simply called 'MAMP'. When **MAMP** starts up it should launch your web browser, if it isn't already running, and take you to a start up page with a URL of http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English. Before you navigate to the **Joomla!** web installation page you are going to need an MySQL database for **Joomla!**. This can be created using **phpMyAdmin** which is included with your **MAMP** install. You can get to **phpMyAdmin** from the startup page in **MAMP**. Get to the startup page either by clicking the button 'Open start page' on the **MAMP** startup interface screen or open by typing the following URL in your web browser: http://localhost:8888/MAMP * * * Create New Database The page that appears has a navigation toolbar near the top of the page. You will find a button for **phpMyAdmin** on it. Click this link. When the page refreshes you will be on the **phpMyAdmin** screen. About half way down the page on you will see in bold text 'Create new database' and a field for you to type in the name you want to use for your database. For this article we are going to call the database 'joomla1511' (without the quotes). The default settings of this page should be fine to use. Once you type in the name of your database click the 'Create' button. When the screen refreshes you will see the results 'Database joomla1511 has been created.' There will be no tables for this database and you do not need to create any because your **Joomla!** install will create the necessary tables You still need to create a username and a password for the database. So lets make a username and password for our joomla1511 database. Click the home icon button in the left column of the phpMyAdmin screen. When the screen refreshes you should see your database name 'joomla1511' with (0) beside it. Turn your attention to the middle of the page near the bottom and look for 'Privileges'. Click the Privileges link. ![Create Database](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/create_database.jpg) * * * Create Username and Password ![Add A New User](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/add_a_new_user.jpg) Next screen, about the middle of the page, is a link to 'Add a new user' - click this link ![Add A New user 2](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/add_a_new_user_2.jpg) Here is the screen where you will fill in the Username, Host, and Password for your database. You could use 'root' for the username and password but I don't do this. By making a specific username and password for the database you establish good security habits. - In the User name field type a username for your database - In the 'Host' field type in 'localhost' (without the quotes) - In the 'Password' field type a password for your database - In the 'Re-type' field verify your password by typing it again exactly as the field above A little further down the page is 'Global privileges' You can click the link 'Check All' and checkmarks will appear in the Data, Structure, and Administration boxes. Once you have done this go to the bottom right corner of the screen and click the 'Go' button. After the screen refreshes you should see 'You have added a new user.' results. Now you are ready to complete your **Joomla!** 1.5 installation. * * * Step 1: Language To get to your Joomla! web installation in **MAMP** use the following URL: http://localhost:8888/Joomla1511 Note: if you changed the name of your Joomla! folder to something else, put it in the place of 'Joomla1511' in the above URL. This URL will take you to Step 1 of the web installation page for **Joomla!** 1.5. The first page is the language selector. Pick the language of your choice from the list on the right side of this page then click the 'Next' button on the top right of this page. ![Step 1: Language](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/Step_1a.jpg) * * * Step 2: Pre Installation Check ![Step 2: Preinstallation Check](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/Step_1b.jpg) Next screen is Step 2: Pre-installation Check. You'll see a list on the right side of the page with information about the installation environment. You want to be seeing green and not red results to the right of the directives. If there are items marked with a red 'No' would need to correct them. Since this is a **MAMP** install there shouldn't be anything marked with a red 'No' so you are good to go. Click the 'Next' button on the top right of this screen. * * * Step 3: License Next page is Step 3: License. This is the **Joomla!** GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. You should become familiar with the license. When you are done here click the 'Next' button on the top right of this page. * * * Step 4: Database Installation Next screen is Step 4: Database. The right side of the screen is where you need to fill in information about the database. - By default the Database Type is mysql. We will leave it set to this - Host Name - In this field type in 'localhost' (without the quotes) - Username - Here you will type in the username that you created for the database earlier. I used 'joomla1511user' (without the quotes) - Password - this is a password for the database username. Type in the password you used when creating the username and password in **phpMyAdmin** earlier - Database Name - This is the name of your database. I used 'joomla1511' (without the quotes) when creating the database earlier in **phpMyAdmin** Below the Basic Settings are Advanced Settings. In the Advanced Settings you can choose to Drop Existing Tables of an already set up **MySQL** database you might be using with a Joomla! install. You can also choose the option to Backup Old Tables. Since this is a new **Joomla!** install with a new database being created we there is no need to make any changes here. When you are done here click the 'Next' button on the top right of this page. So if you have all the information filled in the fields you can click the 'next' button on the top right of this screen to take you to step 5. ![Step 4: Database Configuration](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/database.jpg) * * * Step 5: FTP Layer If the information was filled out correctly on the previous screen you will be presented with Step 5: FTP Configuration. If instead you get a screen telling you there was an error, go back and complete the previous steps correctly. The FTP basic Settings are set by default to 'No'. You can click the radio button and set it to 'Yes' if you like to Enable the FTP file system Layer. I use this in my **MAMP** environment to enable the use of an ftp program to update the **Joomla!** install when there is a new version of **Joomla!** released. Since you set the Enable FTP file system Layer you will need to fill in the FTP User, FTP Password, and FTP Root Path fields. - FTP User - The FTP User for your local computer should be the short name of your computer login name, or the name that appears beside the 'Home' icon in your finder window. If the name of your User account on your Mac is 'Joe Joomla' then your username will likely be 'joejoomla' (without the quotes). This is the name you will put in the FTP User field. - FTP Password - In this field you would put your user login name for your computer. This is the name you type in the login screen when you have logged out of your computer. - FTP Root Path - The root path to your **Joomla!** install inside **MAMP** will be: /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/joomla1511 If you used a different named for your **Joomla!** install folder then use it instead of joomla1511. You should click the 'Verify FTP Settings' button to ensure that the information you filled in is correct. You will get a confirmation message telling you the settings are valid if the information is right. Under the Basic Settings is 'Advanced Settings'. In the fields you will see FTP Host with 127.0.0.1 filled in. You should change this to the IP address of your computer. You can find the IP address of your computer in the Network preferences pane of your System Preferences. The IP address of your computer may change depending on how your computer is set up. If you use DHCP to get an IP address when connecting to the Internet, then you will need to keep an eye on this and change it in the **Joomla!** admin Global Settings screen when necessary or you can simply leave the Basic Settings for FTP Configuration set to 'No' on this screen. You won't be able to use FTP layer if you do this but you can always enable it later, if needed, in the **Joomla!** Global Settings. When you are done these steps click the 'Next' button on the top right corner of this screen. If all the information was filled correctly you will go to the next screen: * * * Step 6: Configuration ![Configuration](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/configuration.jpg) Step 6: Configuration - On the right side of the screen are fields to fill in. - Site Name - Put whatever name you would like to use for your site in here - Your E-mail - Put in your valid email address. **Joomla!** can send notification emails to you - Admin Password - Put a password in here. This will be the password that you will need to login to the backend administration screens for Joomla! - Confirm Admin Password - It must be typed in exactly as the Admin Password field above Below these fields is a radio button to Install Default Sample Data with a 'Install Sample Data' button. It is a really good idea to let Joomla! to install sample content for your new install. It helps you to see how things work in Joomla!. You can unpublish or even delete this content later as you add your own content to your site. We will leave the migration script area alone for this article since this is a new Joomla! install. When you are done on this screen click the 'Next' button on the top right side of the screen to get to: * * * Step 7: Finish Step 7: Finish - Congratulations! **Joomla!** is Installed. Before you can click either the 'Site' or 'Admin' buttons on the right top corner of this screen you will need to visit the htdoc folder where your **Joomla!** folder is and go inside that folder and delete the following from the **Joomla!** folder: - Folder - installation folder - delete the entire folder from the directory - File - INSTALL.php - delete the file from the directory Once those two items are removed from the Joomla! installation folder you can then visit your front page or your **Joomla!** admin area. ![Finish](/images/stories/mamp_and_joomla/finish.jpg) --- ## Page 23: Why Use Joomla URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/why-use-joomla Date: 2024-03-12 Description: Why use Joomla!? There's many advantages of using a content management system (CMS) over a static page built web site. ![Joomla logo](/images/stories/why_use_joomla/joomla_logo.gif) Building websites using static web pages becomes unwieldy once the content starts to add up. They are also often difficult to update. Finding content on the site is harder since a static site usually doesn't have a search function. Another big problem with a static website is the navigation. When you need to add another navigation button to introduce a new section or category to your site you generally have to rebuild the entire navigation system for the whole site just to accommodate the new section. For this reason alone a content management system like Joomla! makes much more sense to use. Joomla! is a powerful yet easy to use open source content management system to build websites. It is one of the most popular web site software available. But what is an open source content management system? Open source software can be described as software that is developed by peer-based collaboration and generally released as open-source software. Open source software is usually free from licensing fees associated with commercial software. Good open source software like Joomla! is developed and constantly improved by highly skilled individuals volunteering their time to work together for the benefit of everyone who uses the software. The source code of the software is available for everyone to examine so you can know exactly what you are getting as opposed to commercial software which is not open to scrutiny. Since the software is open many developers can create components and extensions to greatly enhance the functionality of a website. Commercial software can be very expensive to achieve the same capabilities that good open source software like Joomla! affords you. A content management system for a website is a system whereby the HTML for the pages is created dynamically by scripts run from the server as needed. You don't have multiple HTML pages sitting on the server waiting to be viewed. The content of the website is stored as text in a database and is separate from the design. This gives you the ability to create and manage much more content faster than you possibly could using static pages. You can also change the design of the site without disrupting the content and even have different 'themes' or looks for different parts of your website. Adding sections and categories along with new navigation for your site is simple. You can even reorganize your site's content handily and all content is searchable. Content management systems like Joomla! allow users to add and edit the content without needing to know HTML or have technical expertise in Web design. Making your website look great is so easy with Joomla! There are an abundance of professionally designed themes, many are free, that you can use with your site. Themes can be used as is or even modified to give your site a unique look or conform to your graphic brand as needed. The money that you save on development of a website by using a system like Joomla! can be put into graphics and content for your site. Best of all, there is a very large and active community of Joomla! volunteers and users willing to exchange information about how to do just about anything that you need to do with your website. So what are you waiting for? Why don't you download a copy of Joomla! from joomla.org. While you are there visit the forums and introduce yourself to the Joomla! community. In just a short time you'll be on your way to becoming a webmaster superhero! --- ## Page 24: How To Rename The 'htaccess.txt' File To '.htaccess' On A Mac URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/how-to-rename-the-htaccesstxt-file-to-htaccess-on-a-mac Date: 2024-03-12 Description: How to rename the 'htaccess.txt' file to '.htaccess' on a Macintosh computer. ![Renaming the htaccess file](/images/stories/making-the-htaccess.txt-file-invisible/rename-htaccess-file.gif) Recently someone in the JoeJoomla forums who is using MAMP to develop Joomla! websites wanted to know how to rename the 'htaccess.txt' file to '.htaccess' which makes the file invisible on the Mac. The 'Finder' application in Mac Leopard OS will not let you rename the htaccess.txt file with a dot in front of it. If you try you will get a dialog box that comes up and tells you: _You cannot use a name that begins with a dot ".", because these names are reserved for the system. Please choose another name._ So what do you do when you want to change the 'htaccess.txt' file to '.htaccess'? Why would you want to do this anyway? In order to have search engine friendly URLs in Joomla! you need to change the SEO Settings in the 'Global Configuration' of the 'Control Panel' which can be found under the 'Site' menu in the back end administration (Site>Global Configuration). The SEO settings in 'Global Configuration' are changed by clicking No/Yes radio buttons. One of the three SEO settings is 'Use Apache mod\_rewrite'. This has a warning symbol beside it. If you want to switch this to 'Yes' the warning tells you that you must first rename the 'htaccess.txt' file in the Joomla! root directory to '.htaccess'. By doing this on the Mac you will be making the file invisible. The 'Finder' application on the Mac will not let you put the dot in front of the file name but there are several programs that will do this for you. I use an application called 'Transmit' from panic.com for an ftp client. Transmit will let you rename a file with a dot in front of it. Transmit is not a free program. Unless you already have it there is no need to buy it just to rename files. Another program which is free that I use a lot is 'TextWrangler' from barebones.com. This is a text editor that has many useful functions suitable for web development. Among other things it will allow you to rename a file with a dot in front. The Mac's free TextEdit program will also let you do this. With either of these applications when you try to rename the file with a dot in front you will get the following warning: _You cannot use a name that begins with a dot ".", because these names are reserved for the system. If you decide to go ahead and use a name which begins with a dot the file will be hidden._ Right below the message you will be presented with with two buttons, the one you want is 'Use "." Once you rename that file it becomes invisible just like it warned you. You will not be able to see it in the folder anymore. It really doesn't matter that you can't see it because once you have renamed it and made it invisible you are then able to change the SEO settings in Joomla. 'Transmit', however, will allow you to view invisible files. So will other Mac programs like 'Path Finder' which is also a commercial program. Another free solution on your Mac would be to install the 'eXtplorer' GPLv2.0 component in Joomla! which can be found at http://extplorer.sourceforge.net/. This component is rated highly in the Joomla! Extensions Directory. 'eXtplorer' is a web-based file manager that will allow you to go through the back end administration component in Joomla! and rename the 'htaccess.txt' file to '.htacess'. It also lets you see invisible files in the Joomla! directories. I use 'eXtplorer' on the live servers of some of my Joomla! websites. I have not had much success with the more recent versions of the 'eXtplorer' component on my Mac inside MAMP. It doesn't install properly probably due to a timeout during the install process. My Mac PowerBook may not be fast enough to get through the install process in time since it is a large install. Since I have other ways to rename files with the dot in front of the filename I have never bothered to try and solve the 'eXtplorer' issue on my Mac. You might have better luck with it than I do. --- ## Page 25: Joomla 1.5 Website Development On A Macintosh Computer Using MAMP URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-15-website-development-on-a-macintosh-computer-using-mamp Date: 2024-03-12 Description: This is the first article in a series dealing with how to develop Joomla! 1.5 on your Macintosh computer using MAMP. ![Joomla and MAMP](/images/stories/joomla-1.5-and-mamp/joomla-1.5-and-mamp.gif) Previously on JoeJoomla I wrote a series of articles called '[Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS](/news-mainmenu-46/1-latest/34-web-development-on-your-macintosh-computer-using-mamp-and-joomla-cms.html "Web Development On Your Macintosh Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS")'. These articles have been very popular and many people continue to send me messages saying that they are the best instructions on how to install Joomla! in a localmachine development environment. The articles were specifically related to the original version of Joomla! 1.0x which is still very much in use on the Internet but no longer officially supported by joomla.org. --- ## Page 26: Install MAMP to Run Joomla 1.5 On Your Macintosh Computer URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/install-mamp-to-run-joomla-15-on-your-macintosh-computer Date: 2024-03-12 Description: This is step one in a series dealing with how to develop Joomla! 1.5 on your Macintosh computer using MAMP. ![Joomla and MAMP](/images/stories/joomla-1.5-and-mamp/install-mamp.gif) We are going to walk through the steps that it takes to start developing Joomla 1.5 on your Macintosh computer using MAMP. The first step is to install MAMP on your Macintosh computer. MAMP was created by [Living-e AG](/news-mainmenu-46/1-latest/94-installing-joomla-15-on-your-local-macintosh-using-mamp.html "Installing Joomla 1.5 On Your Local Macintosh using MAMP.") primarily as a PHP development environment for the Macintosh computer. It is free and released under the GNU General Public License. It is the fastest and easiest way to emulate a web server environment right on your computer. It's a lot easier than setting up the Apache web server along with the SQL and PHP packages that are needed to run dynamic database web applications on your computer. MAMP is an abbreviation that stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. To date the current version of MAMP is 1.7.2. It was published on August 27, 2008. The download is a universal binary dmg file approximately 130 MB in size. Click [Here](http://www.mamp.info/en/downloads/index.html) to go and get a copy of MAMP. You are going to need Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher to run MAMP. Here is what is in MAMP 1.7.2: - Apache 2.0.59 - MySQL 5.0.41 - PHP 4.4.8 & 5.2.6 - APC 3.0.19 - eAccelerator 0.9.5.3 - XCache 1.2.2 - phpMyAdmin 2.11.7.1 - Zend Optimizer 3.3.3 - SQLiteManager 1.2.0 - Freetype 2.3.4 - t1lib 5.1.1 - curl 7.18.2 - jpeg 6b - libpng-1.2.18 - gd 2.0.34 - libxml 2.6.32 - libxslt 1.1.24 - gettext 0.17 - libidn 1.9 - iconv 1.11 - mcrypt 2.5.8 - YAZ 3.0.6 & PHP/YAZ 1.0.14 Once you have downloaded MAMP unpack it and put the folder called 'MAMP' in your Applications folder. Everything that you need to run Joomla 1.5 is in that folder. Launch MAMP by double-clicking the application icon. You'll see the program start up screen and a green indicator will appear beside 'Apache Server' and 'MySQL Server' to indicate they are running. A web browser start page should open up that says 'Welcome to MAMP'. The address will be http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English in your browser. Before you go any farther, go back to the MAMP control panel. This is the startup screen. Click on the 'Preferences...' button, then click the 'PHP' tab in the next window. Click the radio button for PHP 5 and then the 'OK' button. MAMP will restart it's Apache and SQL servers. Joomla 1.5 is best run with PHP 5. Most modern web applications have moved to Version 5 of PHP. Visit the MAMP folder in your Application folder and locate a folder inside called 'htdocs'. This is where you will put all your Joomla installations. You will be able to have as many Joomla sites as you want inside that folder. You'll likely have many different Joomla websites that you will be working on and you can keep them all separate by having them each in their own folder inside 'htdocs'. Next step: [Installing Joomla 1.5 on your local Macintosh using MAMP.](/news-mainmenu-46/1-latest/94-installing-joomla-15-on-your-local-macintosh-using-mamp.html "Installing Joomla 1.5 On Your Local Macintosh using MAMP.") --- ## Page 27: Joomla and MAMP - Enabling The FTP Layer URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-and-mamp-enabling-the-ftp-layer Date: 2024-03-12 Description: This article shows you how to enable the FTP layer in your Joomla! and MAMP website. ![Joomla and MAMP](/images/stories/enabling-the-ftp-layer/joomla-1.5-and-mamp.gif) One of the best ways to develop Joomla! websites on your personal Mac computer is using MAMP. MAMP is an application that provides all the resources needed to run a content management system. Once you download MAMP to your computer you can install as many Joomla! sites as you have hard drive space for and do all your development and experimenting in this safe environment just as if it was on a live server. During the installation of Joomla! you are given the option of enabling the FTP layer of Joomla!. You can simply skip this step and Joomla! will run without it. If you want to enable the FTP layer it can be a little confusing what the proper settings are for it in the Joomla! configuration settings of your MAMP localmachine website. So what is the FTP layer of Joomla! intended for? The FTP layer in Joomla! is there because some web hosting services don't give customers the ability to change owner permissions of files and directories when needed, and for users having the PHP safe\_mode setting on. The FTP layer in Joomla! is only for sites hosted on Linux and does not apply to sites that run on Windows servers. FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol. It is one of the most popular ways to transfer files between computers on a network, such as the Internet. Since an FTP host name or number is required along with a username, password, and port number, the server permits FTP to upload folders and files to install things for your site. On your localmachine Joomla! and MAMP website you have easy access to all the directories on your computer. This makes it easy to put files and folders where you want them in the Joomla! install. It is nice, however, to have the FTP layer enabled on your localmachine Joomla! site especially when you want to run things from inside the Joomla! administrator back end the way you would on a live server. The settings for enabling the FTP layer in a Joomla! and MAMP website are very different than the settings for a live web server. Let's look at the FTP Settings in Joomla! for the MAMP website: ![Joomla FTP Settings](/images/stories/enabling-the-ftp-layer/joomla-ftp-settings.png) FTP Settings Enable FTP No Yes - This is an easy one, just set the radio button to 'Yes' FTP Host - This is for the IP address of your computer. It will be something like 192.168.1.4. In order to find out what your Mac OS X IP address is Open the Network settings of your System Preferences, click on the 'Advanced...' button, and then the TCP/IP tab. There you will see the 'IPv4 Address: xxx.xxx.x.x This is the number that you want to put in the FTP Host field. Another simple way to find the IP address of your computer is to click on the apple icon on the top left of your Finder bar, and go to 'About This Mac', click on the 'More Info...' button which opens the System Profiler application. In the left column click on the word 'Network' and on the right side you'll find the IPv4 Address. FTP Port - This should be port 21. Port 21 is the standard port for FTP. FTP Username - Here's where most people get tripped up when it comes to the Joomla! and MAMP website. In this field you are going to input the short name of the Username for your computer account. This is the name of your 'Home' folder. Open a window in the Finder. See that little house icon in the left sidebar of the window? The name beside it is your short user name. This is the name that you put in the FTP Username field. If you don't see a left bar in the Finder window, click on the button at the right top of the Finder window and it should appear. Usually when you make a new Finder window the window opens in your 'Home' directory. The short username of the account is at the top of the window beside the house icon. FTP Password - In the Joomla! and MAMP version of your website your computer password goes in this field. This is the password that you use to login to your computer with. It needs to be the one that is used with the short username of your user account. FTP Root - The path to your Joomla! and MAMP website will be '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/your-website-folder-name' (without the quotes). You also need to change 'your-website-folder-name' to the name of the folder that the Joomla! website resides in. This is the Joomla! folder inside the 'htdocs' folder of MAMP. Alternately you can also input this information directly into your 'configuration.php' file in the Joomla! install. Here's how you would do it: Let's use some dummy information for this example. Say the following is the setting information for the FTP layer: Enable FTP - Yes FTP Host - 192.168.1.4 FTP Port - 21 FTP Username - joomlahottie FTP Password - mybigfatcomplexpassword FTP Root - /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/CoolSite Make sure that the permissions on the file 'configuration.php' allow you to make changes to it and put the information directly into the file as follows. Remember to put your own information into it, this information is just an example. var $ftp\_enable = '1'; var $ftp\_host = '192.168.1.4'; var $ftp\_port = '21'; var $ftp\_user = 'joomlahottie'; var $ftp\_pass = 'mybigfatcomplexpassword'; var $ftp\_root = '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/CoolSite'; Now you know how to enable the FTP layer inside your Joomla! and MAMP install! --- ## Page 28: The Future Is Bright For Joomla! In The Enterprise World URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/the-future-is-bright-for-joomla-in-the-enterprise-world Date: 2024-03-12 Description: The future is bright for Joomla and open source developers in the enterprise world. ![Toronto skyline](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-bright-future.gif) If you are a .php developer or designer involved in Joomla!, or any other good open source content management system, the future is bright for you. You won't hear this from everyone but do yourself a favor and don't forget what I just said. Don't cave to the naysayers. They are wrong. If you are a Microsoft Certified developer who is near the end of your career you don't need to change. There's lots of business for you. However, if you are young and talented, early in your career and want to make a name for yourself, then you should get involved in open source. A couple of years ago I was involved in the implementation of a major enterprise system for a national association. It was a large membership based project, feature rich, with very complex access levels. The financial component was designed to work with Canadian banking systems. It had to communicate, interact, and transact, with other international entities that were similar but not identical in their business structure. This was a very expensive project. The developers of the system were senior .ASP and .NET developers. The main architect of the system was hightly experienced with a Microsoft background and stellar track record. In previous ventures he headed projects that involved thousands of developers for major American financial institutions. During that project I was the only person in a management position who was a fan of open source technologies. I had built open source cms web sites with bulletin boards mostly for personal projects. I had also just discovered the Joomla! community. The core developers of Joomla! had only recently split from Mambo and were just settling into their new name. When I brought up the topic of open source with the enterprise crowd that I was working with it was met with disdain. I was given a long list of reasons why I should not even consider open source for any piece of an enterprise system. Among them were things like unreliability, insecure code, amateur approach to development, and such. Open source simply had no place or future in business environments. I was told that the world had an abundance of highly qualified and proven Microsoft certified developers who would always be able to deliver what business needs. The opposition to open source was insurmountable. I continued to be involved with Joomla! and other open source projects on a personal level. Many websites were built for friends and smaller associations that didn't have the means to spend large amounts of money on commercial content management systems. These open source systems were doing a good job for which they were being used for and they looked great. They were every bit as good as the commercial systems and in some cases had superior functionality to them. When I suggested implementing similar features and functionality that I saw available in Joomla! with it's components and extensions, the path to achieve them was arduous and the price tag was prohibitive for the enterprise system. The enterprise system was far from perfect. It wasn't handling certain things very well. Multilingualism was really clunky. The administrative back end of the enterprise system was causing grief for the staff that were trained to work with it. For the most part it was accepted that this is the way it is. At the same time I could see that the open source community was handling multiple languages much better with their projects. The backend of Joomla! was much nicer to use than the enterprise system. The speed of improvements happening in the open source community was impressive. It wasn't perfect either but it was looking pretty good for its age. I began using Joomla! for some micro sites in the workplace and also put together an Intranet system using Joomla! for the office staff separate from the enterprise system. This exposed the value and worth of open source to everyone. The rapid deployment of a Joomla! site done with low cost, managed and maintained by less technically qualified staff, got everyones attention. Time went by and I moved on from this position and went out on my own. Then something really interesting happened. I was invited to the United States to speak to some Microsoft developers who have plenty of experience in the enterprise world. The object of the meeting was to bring attention to open source and show that it is a coming force to be reckoned with, and that it will not fade away. They heard that there are many very talented open source developers doing great things. My position was that open source is a game changer. They asked a lot of questions and brought up all their objections regarding open source. It was a good discussion. Did it change their opinion of open source? Perhaps not. Issues about earning a living as a developer were where the dicussion concluded. There are not a lot of things that can't be done using open source technologies. In the areas where open source is lacking, someone will come along and make it strong. All that it is going to take is for the developers of open source to be supported financially, just like the .NET guys. Right now the .NET guys have the advantage and clout with the business community by virtue of the volume of their accomplishments. That's no small advantage but as time goes by it will be met with the achievements of the open source community. It won't be long before open source is a viable alternative to traditional enterprise system development. The business community has lots to gain by supporting open source systems like Joomla. The payoff in business will be huge. So if you are contemplating a future as a developer then open source warrents your consideration. I'm sure you'll also find lots of Joomla! there too. Toronto skyline photograph courtesy of David Sonne --- ## Page 29: Four Steps To Take Your Under Performing Website To The Next Level URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/four-steps-to-take-your-under-performing-website-to-the-next-level Date: 2024-03-12 Description: Four steps to take your under performing website to the next level. I have been guilty of not keeping my own advice and It's time to change that. I'm going to bare my soul. This blog post could just as well be titled '_How I Got Sick And Tired Of An Under-performing Website And Decided To Do Something About It_'. ### Got focus? With all the clutter that is online these days people are hard pressed to keep up with information. If you are going to get and keep any one's attention you need to be straightforward and very clear about what your website is all about. You have only a few seconds to make that first impression. Are you doing it right? > ## What's The Purpose Of Your Website? At a recent JUGT (Joomla! User Group Toronto) meeting one of the member's there commented that he had no idea what I was trying to accomplish with joejoomla.com. The website didn't look like it was selling anything and it was all over the place and very confusing. It was embarrassing to be told this but it was true and he did me a big favour by telling me. I could have argued with him that I was too busy to define a proper strategy and focus for the website. I could have told him that the original focus of the site had changed over time and needed to be updated. I could have told him that I was like the shoe maker whose children shoes had holes in them. That's would be just a giant cop out. I needed the criticism straight up to jolt me to take action. > ## Without goals and objectives website statistics don't mean anything to you When JoeJoomla was first launched Amy Stephen and a few other good Joomla! people were actively involved and we discussed what the purpose of the website should be. We tried a few approaches that didn't really take off and over time things fizzled like a tire running out of air pressure. I wound up on the side of the road by myself looking at the JoeJoomla flat tire. The site had lost it's way, didn't have a clear message and purpose anymore. Some might tell you that perhaps it never really did. I didn't define goals and objectives for the site. Without goals and objectives website statistics don't mean anything to you. The JoeJoomla website was doing well enough to pay for server space for my general website projects and for me that was enough to keep it going. That's like running a car into the ground, just keep it going until it stops. It's going to stop on it's own eventually if you let it. ## Identify Any Currently Valuable Assets That Support It's Purpose You need to find your web-site's valuable assets if it has any. My website had became a clutter of disconnected articles and infrequent content. At the time it didn't matter much because I wasn't dependant on JoeJoomla for financial support. I had a great job and Joomla! was more like a professional hobby. The site's traffic was slowly but steadily increasing primarily due to an article series I wrote about [Joomla! and MAMP](/news-mainmenu-46/1-latest/91-install-mamp-to-run-joomla-15-on-your-macintosh-computer.html "Joomla! and MAMP"). JoeJoomla still has a [number one Google ranking for Joomla! + MAMP](https://www.google.ca/search?q=joomla+%2B+mamp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a "Google - Joomla + MAMP"), but the site was becoming frustrating and what was once fun wasn't anymore. > ## Is it valuable to you or not? If it is, you'll take better care of it. All of this was my fault. It's like not taking care of something. Is it valuable to you or not? If it is, you'll take better care of it. When I looked at the statistics of the articles on the site, several of them had tens of thousands of unique hits associated with them. I wasn't paying attention to that. Now that I am enlightened to this I need to leverage these assets. > ## Make The Message Clear If you don't make the message clear you get very unpredictable results. I wrote an article for another site awhile ago about making your message clear called '[Clarify Your Agreement](http://sonne.ca/news-mainmenu-2/15-sales-a-marketing/7-clarify-your-agreement "Clarify Your Agreement")' which is a very funny story that is not so funny for the person that travelled halfway across the country only to be disappointed and embarrassed because of miscommunication over an unclear agreement. There's no excuse for this. In the case of the website this is also true, there is no excuse. > ## If you really want it to work, you can do it. It just takes some honest work. There are all kinds of Joomla! professionals and experts sharing their knowledge online. Some of their knowledge is free and some of it is not, but there's simply no lack of information about how to make a Joomla! website work for you. If you really want it to work, you can do it. It just takes some honest work. I'm just getting started. I call this my pre-spring cleaning stage. It's like attacking that unorganized garage full of stuff that you can't get the car into anymore. Maybe you've noticed the [new JoeJoomla home page](/index.php "JoeJoomla Home Page")? Most of the clutter is gone and it's a much simpler page now. There are more changes to come but this is the start. > ## Make It Easy For People To Engage With You In Your Purpose If you make it hard for people to engage with your website they'll find somewhere else to go fast. Is the content that they are looking for really easy to get to? If you are selling a product or a service are you turning customers into pretzels and making them go through hoops to do business with you? > ## Coasting along online is the equivalent of dying a slow digital death So coasting along online is the equivalent of dying a slow digital death. No more coasting, form a strategy and have a purpose. Remember, here's the four steps you need to do: 1. Decide what the purpose is for the site. 2. Identify any currently valuable assets that support it's purpose or create some. 3. Make the message clear 4. Make it easy for people to engage with you in your purpose. Sounds simple doesn't it? It's not, simplicity is the ultimate complexity. If it was so easy everyone would be doing it. If your site is under-performing determine that you are going to do something about it. If it seems like an overwhelming task get some help. You'll be a lot happier about your site when is it doing well. > ## Just because you have a good website online why should anyone care? This is just the first level. We haven't even talked about making your site popular and easy to find. Just because you have a good website online why should anyone care? I'll have more to say about this later. For now, if you are in the same boat that I have been in, you have a lot of work to do in order to take your website to the next level. Might as well get started now. Have you been through a website transformation? You're welcome to share your thoughts and tips on it here. --- ## Page 30: Joomla! Beginner Training In Toronto With JoeJoomla URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-beginner-training-in-toronto-with-joejoomla Date: 2024-03-12 Description: Beginner Joomla! training with JoeJoomla in Toronto this January. ![Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal training](/images/stories/news/learn-joomla.jpg) ### Learn Joomla! with JoeJoomla ### On January 19, 2011 All day beginner training level classes will take place at: #### Ascend, 25 Watline Avenue, Suite 201, Mississauga, ON L4Z 2Z1. Lunch and all the equipment you need is provided - you can turn up empty-handed! The class runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ### Along with expert Joomlatraining you will receive the following bonuses: - 6 months of guaranteed same-day Joomla support after the class ($99 value) - Free membership to the Alledia.com SEO Club ($99 value) - Free copy of the Alledia.com Bolt and Breeze templates ($120 value) - Easy Joomla installs for P.C. and Mac computers plus many high-quality Joomla extensions Class size is limited so register early to get your seat. You can pay by credit card online. The price is $299 For more information, and to register, go to [http://www.joomlatraining.com/](http://www.joomlatraining.com/toronto/ "Joomla! Beginner Training In Toronto With JoeJoomla") --- ## Page 31: How To Upgrade MAMP URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/how-to-upgrade-mamp Date: 2024-03-12 Description: How to upgrade MAMP to a newer version. ![MAMP](/images/stories/sound_off/mamp-sm.jpg) **MAMP** is one of the easiest virtual server applications for developing websites on your local computer. Simply download the application which contains all the resources you need for running your website just as if it was on a web server on the Internet. You do not have to be a technical genius and configure a server environment from scratch on your own. It's all done for you. MAMP is an acronym for "Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, and PHP". These are the main resources to run database driven websites like Joomla. > Are you just getting started with MAMP? If you are just starting out and need to know how to develop websites on your computer using MAMP there are a series of articles [HERE](/news-mainmenu-46/1-latest/90-joomla-15-website-development-on-a-macintosh-computer-using-mamp.html "Joomla 1.5 Website Development On A Macintosh Computer Using MAMP") that will help you get started. The articles pertain to working with Joomla! 1.5x but the fundamentals are the same if you want to develop Joomla! 2.5x websites. > The regular version of MAMP is all most people will need MAMP has a regular version and a 'pro' version. I have never found the need to use the pro version of MAMP. The regular and free version of MAMP is sufficient to do website development on your computer. So everything we are talking about here relates to the regular version of MAMP. Just like any other software, MAMP gets upgraded from time to time. Each new version will have upgrades of it's resources. Some upgrades are a major leap such as when PHP goes from version 4.x to version 5.x. Newer versions of Joomla! require higher versions of PHP in order to run properly. > When it's time to upgrade, how do I preserve my > website projects? When it's time to upgrade MAMP what do you need to do to preserve your sites, databases, and users? Fortunately it's really easy. Here's what you need to know: > Rename your current MAMP folder ![MAMPOLD](/images/stories/sound_off/mampold-A.jpg) MAMP is an application that normally resides in your Application folder on the hard drive of your computer. In anticipation of upgrading, the first thing you should do is rename your MAMP application folder. You could rename it to MAMPOLD for example. This will ensure that the application doesn't get overwritten and you lose your websites and databases when you install the newer version. > Download the new version of MAMP [Download the new version of MAMP from http://www.mamp.info](http://www.mamp.info "Download MAMP") Be aware that MAMP is a 116 MB zip archive that you will be downloading. Once you have downloaded it unzip the archive. You will be presented with a disk image that you double click to mount. Then you will be asked to agree with the License Agreement. Once you have done that you can then drag the MAMP folder to your Application folder. > Copy your website projects into the new MAMP htdocs folder ![htdocs folder](/images/stories/sound_off/htdocs-folder.jpg) When MAMP has been copied to your Applications folder you will want to copy all the folders from your MAMPOLD htdocs folder into the htdocs folder of the new MAMP folder. These folders inside your htdocs folder contain all your websites directories and files, each within it's own folder. > Copy the contents of your db folder to the new > MAMP db folder ![db folder](/images/stories/sound_off/db-folder.jpg) Next you will copy the contents of the database folder called 'db' from your MAMPOLD folder into the 'db' folder of your new MAMP install. This folder contains all your databases and database username information. > That's all there is to it, MAMP is now upgraded! Now you can start the new MAMP application inside the MAMP folder, click on 'Open start page'. When the start page comes up, put this URL in your web browser window; http://localhost:8888/ and you will see all your directories of websites that you have been working on. Click one of them and it should load up your website ready for you to work on! Happy website developing on your local Apple computer using MAMP! --- ## Page 32: JoeJoomla To Present A Session At J and Beyond In Germany URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joejoomla-to-present-a-session-at-joomla-and-beyond-in-germany Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla will be presenting at a Joomla and Beyond session on the topic of Secrets of getting an A plus Joomla reputation and attracting A plus clients ![JAB2012](/images/stories/sound_off/jab_2012_264_x_220.jpg) Coming up in May I will be presenting a session at [J and Beyond](http://jandbeyond.org/ "J and Beyond") 2012 (JAB2012). The session will be called "**Secrets of Getting an A+ Joomla! Reputation and Attracting A+ Clients**". J and Beyond is an annual International Joomla! Conference now in its third year. This year Joomla! developers and site builders from over 30 countries will gather in Bad Nauheim, Germany, near Frankfurt, right in the heart of Europe. As usual there is an impressive line up of speakers at this years event. J and Beyond is where your hear the latest and greatest about all things Joomla. > J and Beyond is where you meet the Joomla! rockstars JAB is the place to meet many of the people you hear and read about who are involved in one way or another with the world's best website building platform. This is the "Mars Hill" of Joomla. All the giants of Joomla! gather at JAB to share ideas, network, inform and brainstorm the future of Joomla. > Elvis was here The venue for JAB2012 is the Dolce Bad Nauheim Hotel and Conference Center. Elvis Presley lived in Bad Nauheim during his time with the United States Army in Friedberg. He even sang a song called "Bad Nauheim Medley" which appears on two CDs; "Forever in Love" 1997 and "Elvis in Deutschland" 2008. > How did JoeJoomla wind up here? Being a speaker at a JAB session came about rather suddenly. This past February while visiting with Dianne Henning and Alice Grevet of [Open Source Matters](http://opensourcematters.org "Open Source Matters") I was strongly encouraged to attend JAB2012. Dianne said it's the place to be and meet the who's who of Joomla. She convinced me about the importance of the event so with a little more encouragement from my wife, known as MrsJoe, I bought my ticket and booked a hotel. > Initially it never occurred to me to submit a proposal Shortly thereafter I received an email from [Brian Teeman](http://brian.teeman.net/ "Brian Teeman") suggesting I should present a proposal to do a session during the event. It never occurred to me to be a presenter at JAB. I thought it was exciting enough just to be going for the first time. So I put together a proposal and to my delight it was accepted! > So what are the secrets of getting an A+ Joomla reputation and attracting A+ clients? So what are the secrets? If I told you it wouldn't be a secret anymore. You'll just have to come to my session at JAB2012 or wait until it's over and posted online. > Make sure you connect with JoeJoomla at JAB2012! If you are going to be at JAB2012 make sure you connect with me. I'm looking forward to seeing you there! --- ## Page 33: Joomla! World Conference 2012 and Geeks Gone Wild URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-world-conference-2012-and-geeks-gone-wild Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. I did some really dumb things at the first Joomla! World Conference in San Jose, California. But what’s a big event without memorable stories? First though, this was an excellent conference attended by an International audience of developers, integrators, and users. The speakers were impressive. I was really excited about going to this conference. Many of the people behind the latest innovations in Joomla! were there in person. I felt like a kid on my way to a candy store with a credit card. This was going to be a great weekend. The venue was eBay’s Town Hall in San Jose, California. Some of the top Joomla! talent is employed at eBay. It’s an inspiring place to meet. It’s going to take a long time to watch the videos of all the sessions I didn’t get to go to in person. > These are talented people who work hard and play hard Throughout the weekend there was all kinds of networking, working on code together, and lots of socializing. A real community spirit of co-operation and fun was evident at this event. Joomlers know how to have a good time. Even for those who have too much of a good time someone is always there to help out. One such developer, who will remain nameless, was helped to his room and tucked safely into bed for the night by a friend who rescued him after he was found bouncing off the walls trying to get around. “Pinball” is my new nickname for him. > My session was fun and it went well [![joomla-world-conference-2012-lg](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-world-conference-2012/thumbnails/joe-jwc12-presentation-sm.jpg)](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-world-conference-2012/joe-jwc12-presentation-lg.jpg) This was the third time I have given a presentation at a large Joomla! event. My session was titled **Secrets of Getting an A+ Joomla! Reputation and Attracting A+ Clients**. Afterwards and throughout the rest of the weekend people told me how much they enjoyed it and what they got out of it. I am grateful for the feedback because it shows there is a need for this kind of information, especially for those trying to grow their Joomla! businesses. Talks like this may be the best way that I can personally give back to the community. > Here are three really dumb things I did during this event So how did I mess up? Let me count the ways… It’s been said that things happen in groups of three. I'm starting to believe it. I didn’t plan on being an idiot, it just happened. There may have been more but here are three good ones from the weekend: ![Number 1](/images/stories/one.jpg) ## Do you have a business card? [![OSTraining guys](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-world-conference-2012/thumbnails/ostraining-guys-sm.jpg)](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-world-conference-2012/ostraining-guys-lg.jpg) On Thursday afternoon I arrived at the hotel where a lot of the people from the conference were staying. I joined a group of people that were standing around and talking. A few minutes later a really tall guy walks over, looks me right in the face and says, “Hi Joe”. I said hello back and continued with the group conversation. The tall guy wandered off a couple of minutes later. He seemed a bit shy and didn’t join in the conversation. The next morning while everyone was waiting for the sessions to start the same tall guy walks right up to me and says, “Hi Joe, I’m Steve”. I said hello and we started talking. I asked how his journey to the conference went and other superficial things that you say when you are meeting somone for the first time. About 5 minutes into the conversation I asked him if he had a business card. He gave me a funny look and then took one out of his wallet and handed it to me. It was an OSTraining card with the name “Steve Burge” on it. I looked at the card and asked him, “Why are you handing out Steve Burge’s business card?” He replied, “I’m Steve Burge”. I was so embarrassed. I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize Steve. I’ve talked to Steve on the phone, texted with him on Skype, and been hired by him to do OSTraining in Toronto. Then I fumbled and said he didn’t look like his picture. Apparently a lot of people made the same comment to Steve during the conference and I noticed his Twitter picture has been changed since then from the one he’s used for so long. ![Number 2](/images/stories/two.jpg) ## At least I didn’t ask this guy for his card [![Joomla! World Conference 2012](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-world-conference-2012/thumbnails/oliver-norbert-rod-martin-joe-sonne-sm.jpg)](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-world-conference-2012/oliver-norbert-rod-martin-joe-sonne-lg.jpg) Friday morning was registration. A lot of people were lining up at the entrance to get their security badges. I had mine and was now huddled in the middle of a large group of people. Suddenly someone yelled out, “Hey Joe!” I turned toward the sound. It came from about 15 feet away. Right by the front door entrance was the guy who yelled it. I didn’t recognize the face. He was looking right at me, and still I turned around to see who the Joe was he was hollering to. No one responded to him. Sometime later this very same guy came up to me and said “Joe!” I still didn’t know who he was until he said, “I’m Rod Martin!” I couldn’t believe it. I’ve met Rod no less than three times in person before. He’s the guy who handed off the JoomlaTraining classes in Toronto to me for OSTraining. ![Number 3](/images/stories/three.jpg) ## I’m already feeling dumb for not recognizing people that I should know One one of the days during lunch I was sitting in the main room with Alan Langford and Ian MacLennan who are both from Canada. Behind me was this really nice guy with reddish hair who was talking to us. We had been talking together for about 40 minutes. Then I opened my program to see what sessions were coming up. I happened to flip to a page that had a picture of the guy who was sitting behind me. So that’s what Sam Moffatt looks like. Duh. Sam Moffat and Ian MacLennan are both on the Production Leadership Team. I have seen Sam's picture all over the Joomla! community and have used his extensions for Joomla! for years. > Lots of great information at JWC12 but even more laughter One of the my favourite things about going to these big events is the laughter. Some of the most talented people in Joomla! are also the funniest people I know. I met Eddie Tabush, the owner of Joomlashack, at JoomlaDay Chicago earlier this year and here again at JWC12. Eddie could have another career as a professional comedian. In Chicago he had me laughing so hard that I was literally crying. Here at JWC12 he was at it again telling his stories and I loved every minute of it. Eddie’s sense of comic timing is amazing. You simply have to hear him when he gets going. There are other people who tell great stories that make you laugh but Eddie is the guy who makes me laugh the hardest. I could go on for hours about all the fun. Jump in and tell some of your stories in the comments below about Joomla! World Conference 2012. I’m already looking forward to the next big Joomla! event. --- ## Page 34: Joomla! Extensions Advice URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-extensions-advice Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Risk](/images/stories/sound_off/risk.jpg) Extensions are one of the reasons that Joomla! is so popular. They add value and functionality to your website by extending the ability of Joomla! beyond it's core. Extensions are not without risk. Anything that you add to a Joomla! site increases risk. Risk management is highly important for the sites you build. Nothing is worse than a hack or fatal error that brings that beautiful website you worked so hard on to a standstill. Not to mention how everything else now takes a back seat until the emergency caused by these situations are resolved. > Why would you install an extension you don't know where or who it came from on your site? You don't invite strangers into your house, why would you install an extension you don't know much about on your site? Some extensions are poorly done and greatly diminish the value of your site by the problems they cause. Don't be swayed by the promise of some cool or flashy thing that an extension will do for you. Make sure it's tried and true. When an extension is poorly done it is potentially the doorway to security and other problems for your website. Malicious hackers exploit vulnerabilities of extensions to subvert your website in a way that will be annoying and embarrassing for you. Before you install something on your site make sure you know a lot about it and who created it. If you don't, get the advice of knowledgable and trusted Joomla! developers in the community who can tell you if an extension was done properly. Even when a new extension arrives on the scene that was done right it doesn't guarantee that it will be good over the long term. Some extensions get abandoned by their authors and become problems over time. If your site depends on an extension that's not maintained and upgraded to work with the latest versions of Joomla! it may become a real hassle when you need to migrate to a new version of Joomla! in the future. > Good extensions can make a Joomla! site great You can do lots of things with Joomla! right out of the box but good extensions can make a Joomla! site great. Make sure that the extensions you install on your site are from good developers. This will go a long way to minimize your risk and help keep you out of trouble. Even good developers are not perfect. Sometimes things are discovered about an extension requiring a security patch and upgrade to alleviate a weakness. The good developers respond quickly to these situations. You need to be paying attention to your Joomla! site. Don't just build a site and ignore it. It's a responsibility just like a bricks and mortar building. You wouldn't let your building get old and crumble unless you didn't care about it. In the same sense you need to keep on top of the changing technology and how it affects your website. > Support good developers that you want to see be there for you in the future Good developers give you valuable support. They are people who help make your Joomla! site great. They deserve to be supported and compensated for their skills and hard work. Don't be cheap and get extensions from disreputable sites that bypass the developer. Not only are you making it harder for good developers to stay in business but you put yourself in serious jeopardy of getting an extension or a template that contains malware code inserted by inscrutable sources. There are no license fees to use open source software. Because of this you are saving a lot of money leaving you more to spend on your content which includes good extensions. > When you support good developers you are helping to keep Joomla! strong for the future Many of the developers who create great extensions for Joomla! also contribute code to the Joomla! project. Some sponsor Joomla! events around the world and others inspire Joomla! to be one of the best software systems for building websites anywhere. So don't let strangers into your Joomla! website. By using and supporting good extensions created by reputable Joomla! developers you are ensuring that Joomla! stays healthy for the future. Joomla! is making it easy for you to build great websites. Let's make sure it's here for the long run. --- ## Page 35: Joomla! Investment Advice - JandBeyond 2013 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-investment-advice-jandbeyond-2013 Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. [![JandBeyond 2013](/images/stories/sound_off/JAB13/jab_2013_264x220.jpg)](http://jandbeyond.org "J and Beyond 2013 | An International Joomla! Conference - May 31st - 2nd, 2013, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands") Need a hot Joomla! tip? Make an investment in yourself and go to JandBeyond 2013. [One year ago I spoke at JandBeyond in the The Dolce Hotel in Bad Nauheim, Germany](/) and lots of great things came out of it. Now I am on my way to Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, to talk about Joomla! once again. # 2012 Presentation in Bad Nauheim, Germany Secrets of Getting an A+ Joomla! Reputation and Attracting A+ Clients At JandBeyond all kinds of Joomla! experts share their knowledge, tricks, and experience in a spirit of open source friendlness and fun, and do Joomlers know how to have fun! Last years event was amazing and I wouldn't miss this event. So here we go again, what shall we talk about this time? > Five Minute Lightening Talk Of Joomla! Truisms On day 3, the final day of the event at 9:15 am, there will be four - five minute "Lightening Talks". I'll be sharing my **"Joomla! Truisms"** during one of these talks. What is a Joomla! truism? It's something that I have found to be true about Joomla! that you can bank on. I've picked up things along the way about Joomla!, some I learned from others and some I learned from the school of hard knocks. In this five minute session I'll put these truisms out there for everyone. I wish I knew some of these truisms when I first got started with Joomla. Maybe some of these truisms will save you a world of trouble or simply make your Joomla! adventure more fun. Here's an example of one of my Joomla! truisms: > Just because you did a backup doesn't mean you > have a backup Everyone knows you need to backup your website but just because you did a backup doesn't mean you have a backup. Backups are useless unless they are restorable. Even if they were restorable, but they were on the sever that just went down, you still might not have a backup. I'll tell you how to ensure you have a real backup and give you a few more great Joomla! truisms you can take home from this session with you. > The Joomla! Business Dream **"The Joomla! Business Dream"** is a regular one hour session on the final day of the event at 12:15 pm. If you dream of having your own Joomla! business one day or just simply want to be in a Joomla! business full time you should attend this session. The things I will share in this session can be applied to any business. I've seen several very talented people fail in their business dream. Things I call dream robbers are what they fell prey to. The damage that can happen by getting zapped by a dream robber can be long lasting and affect your future. In this session I'll explain what dream robbers are, and how to avoid them. The intent of this session is that you come away pumped and enthused about being successful with your Joomla! business dream. > Will I see you there? I was talked into going to one of these events the first time by a few good Joomla! friends. I looked at how much it was going to cost me to go. I had to fly across the Atlantic ocean just to get there. But my friends were looking at what it was going to cost me if I didn't go and they were right. It is worth every effort that it takes to be involved in this kind of gathering. You are going to hear and get to meet some of the very best people in Joomla! at JandBeyond. Did I mention that Joomlers also know how to have a really good time? If you are still undecided about coming to JandBeyond have a little faith and make the investment in yourself. The payoff for you could be huge. --- ## Page 36: We're Heading to JandBeyond 2013 for the week of May27 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/we-re-heading-to-jandbeyond-2013-for-the-week-of-may27 Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![sundial](/images/stories/news/sundial-264x181.jpg) On Sunday May 26th we'll be heading out to Amsterdam. We plan to visit various locations in Europe and then return to the office on June 17. During that time Joe will be speaking at **JandBeyond in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands**. There's no need to worry if you have an ongoing project with JoeJoomla. Our professional associates will take good care of you while we're away. Joe will be staying in contact with our associates and your work on a regular basis while traveling. He can be reached as usual by email. We expect to return from our trip with fresh new ideas and connections from our Joomla! friends and associates in Europe. --- ## Page 37: JoeJoomla Speaking at Harvard During Joomla! World Conference 2013 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joejoomla-speaking-at-harvard-during-joomla-world-conference-2013 Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Joomla World Conference 2013](/images/stories/news/jwc13-250x250.jpg) [The Joomla! World Conference 2013](http://conference.joomla.org/) will be from November 8th to 10th at Harvard University. JoeJoomla will be doing a session on the topic of **"SEO From A Client Perspective"**. It will be informative and entertaining. We're excited to be involved for the second straight year of this annual conference. People from around the world will gather for three days of Joomla! learning, connecting and sharing. There's a great line up of speakers and of course the open source community have great social events. If you can make it to the event drop us a line. We'd love to connect with you while we're there. ![Hawaii](/images/stories/news/hawaii.jpg) ## From Harvard to Hawaii Right on the heels of the Joomla! World Conference we are heading to Hawaii to spend a couple of weeks doing water and sun activities. Our office will be closed from November 7th until we return on November 27th. --- ## Page 38: Important Announcement Regarding Joomla! 1.5 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/important-announcement-regarding-joomla-1-5 Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Joomla! 1.5 Admin Login](/images/stories/news/joomla-1.5-admin.jpg) As of January 1, 2014 Joe Sonne Marketing will no longer provide services for Joomla! 1.5x websites with the exception of those clients who have already made arrangements and set dates to migrate their websites to Joomla! 2.5 or 3. Joomla! 1.5 was released in 2008 and it's official Long Term Support by the Joomla! developer community ended on December 1, 2012. It is no longer under active development. Joomla! 1.5 is dependant on PHP version 5.3. It will run on PHP 5.2. Joomla! 1.5 will not run on web servers using the currently supported versions of PHP 5.4 & 5.5. At sometime in the not too distant future web hosting services will upgrade their servers to the new versions of PHP and your Joomla! 1.5x website will no longer be able to run on them. If you have website(s) running on Joomla! 1.5, we'd like to urge you to make the upgrade to Joomla 2.5 or 3.0 in order to receive continued professional support. --- ## Page 39: JoeJoomla In Germany At J and Beyond In From May 26 to June 3 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joejoomla-in-germany-at-j-and-beyond-in-from-may-26-to-june-3 Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![JandBeyond 2014](/images/stories/news/jab-2014-250.jpg) ## We Are Away In May: JoeJoomla, a division of Joe Sonne Marketing, will be in Germany attending Joomla leadership meetings and the J and Beyond conference from May 26th to June 3rd. Although we will be really busy attending meetings we will keep an eye on our email during the week. We have some great people back home that can step in for us and look after you. We're looking forward to catching up with the latest developments in the world of Joomla and seeing all our good friends from around the world this week. I'm sure we'll have some new things to share with you when we get back. --- ## Page 40: Joe Sonne elected to the board of Open Source Matters URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joe-sonne-elected-to-the-board-of-open-source-matters Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Trumpets heralding](/images/stories/news/announcement.jpg) ## ANNOUNCEMENT: At the Open Source Matters Inc. (OSM) summit meeting in Boston on November 6, 2013, the directors of the Board of OSM, admitted Joe Sonne as a member of the organization and directors of the board. Joe takes on the role of Capital Committee team leader. The original announcement on OSM can be found here: [http://opensourcematters.org/news.html](http://opensourcematters.org/news.html) --- ## Page 41: Back On Board! URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/back-on-board Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Trumpets heralding](/images/stories/news/announcement.jpg) At the **Open Source Matters, Inc.** (OSM) Board meeting of 22 September 2016, **Joe Sonne** and **Ronni K. Gothard Christiansen** were added as Director’s of OSM Inc. Then on Thursday, October 20, 2016, Joe was elected to the position of OSM Secretary. Both Joe's and Ronni's terms will end when a new board gets elected sometime in the coming months after the work of the Transition Team is completed. ### Transition Team The Transition Team has done a formidable amount of work behind the scenes to get ready for a new leadership voting process. This includes a new Volunteers Portal which will be part of the formal process. The new bylaws for the organizational structure will soon be registered with the State of New York City. This will take place after they have been approved at an OSM board meeting scheduled this October. Upon approval of the bylaws the lawyer for OSM will submit them to the State of New York. --- ## Page 42: Joe Will Be At The Joomla World Conference This November! URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joe-will-be-at-the-joomla-world-conference-this-november Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Joomla World Conference 2016](/images/stories/news/jwc16-250x300.png) For the very first time ever the **Joomla World Conference** will be held in Canada. It will take place from Novemeber 11 to 13 in the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia. Joe Sonne will be attending and he is also on the program schedule for Friday afternoon to do a session on **"Web Development On Your Local Computer Using MAMP and Joomla! CMS"** If you do a Google search using the terms “Joomla + MAMP” one of Joe’s articles in a series of MAMP tutorials comes up as the very first result! Joe’s presentation will be to demonstrate how to download and set up a virtual server on your computer so you can start developing Joomla websites locally on your desktop. You can also expect some great tips on working locally while building those great Joomla sites. The Joomla World Conference always attracts some of the top developers and personalities of the Joomla community from around the world. This is a great place to get connected and discover the latest news and experience some of the exciting developments of the Joomla CMS. The World Conferences are also legendary for having a great time as well. Why not be there! Tickets are only $299 USD for the event if you purchase them before October 31. It’s going to be a great event. --- ## Page 43: The Joomla! Super Sprint In London England URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/the-joomla-super-sprint-in-london-england Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Big Ben clock in London UK](/images/stories/sound_off/big-ben.jpg) ### There's a reason they call it a Super Sprint! > ## All Joomla events should have some of the elements that this event had I've been to a lot of Joomla events, JoomlaDay's, World Conferences, JABs and JUGs. Many of them were excellent. The London Super Sprint had something extra for me in it. So what was that element? It was the interaction between the different teams that I have never experienced at an event before. This may have happened at events I haven't attended, but this was the first time I remember mixing it up with members of the Production Leadership Team (PLT), the Marketing Team (MWG) of which I was a part of, the User Experience Working Group (JUX), the Webmasters Team, the Joomla! Optimisation Team (JOT) and the Joomla.org Redesign Team. Everyone got to see and have input into what the other groups were working on. Also spread among those teams were individuals that are also part of other official Joomla teams that were not there specifically for the sprint. For example, I am currently an Open Source Matters (OSM) board member as well as a Capital Team member so there were opportunities for people at the sprint to talk about issues relating to OSM and Capital. This was great because everyone benefits by being able to ask questions and get information about things that are on their mind that relate to those positions. > ## Meeting people in person for the first time makes for terrific relationship building in an open source project like Joomla you know a lot of people from around the world. Most of the interaction is virtual. Sometimes communicating this way can cause unintentional misunderstandings. Personal interaction is far better. When you are face to face the things that you have in common are foremost. Disagreements on issues are usually handled in a more conciliatory fashion, often in a pleasant social environment. It's a lot easier to agree to disagree this way. There wasn't much disagreement at this event though. There was plenty of unity and willingness to work together. The respect for one another's professionalism was very evident. There were a number of people there that I have seen at other events and it was wonderful to see them again. I also met some people for the very first time such as this new contributor to the project, Lili Espinosa. Lili is a very talented graphic designer who worked long hours during the sprint contributing her skills creating imagery for Joomla website properties. Another person I hadn't met in person before is the very talented Ufuk Avcu. Ufuk sat beside me in the Marketing Team conference room and I got to know him a little. While we were all busy doing the things we went to London specifically to do, he quickly showed me a few things I could improve on one of my own websites which was a big bonus for me. Ufuk also showed me code examples from a framework that he uses which I am now learning and looking forward to working with on a future website. Thank you Ufuk! Sandra Thevenet was also there. I see her contributing all the time via the virtual channels. She's really talented and it's great to be around these kinds of people. They help lift your own game higher. I think some of this is magic. > ## The social events were great too, Joomlers know how to have fun One thing I know for sure is that Joomlers work hard and they also know how to have a great time when they get together. I haven't had a good laugh in a long time like I did while sharing a drink and a story with Mark Smeed from the Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED) Team one night. Everyone at the table we were sitting at all turned to see what was so funny. it was refreshing and I needed that. Oh and the humour, both dry and not so dry, that came from the guys and ladies who get together in the 'smoking lounges' here and there. I'm no smoker but I went out of my way to hang out a bit with them. It was cold in the smoking lounges in London in January but the fun and jokes are well worth it. > ## The bottom line Lots of stuff got done at this sprint. I went there purposefully to work with the Marketing Team and specifically to move the ad server project forward. The Joomla ad server is a project whereby we will be able to manage all the advertising for Joomla website properties from one location. We will also sell advertising packages directly to sponsors. We've wanted to do this for a long time but sometimes things in the Joomla community happen on Joomlatime. That's volunteer time. Things got done over this weekend which might have taken many more months to accomplish and it was mainly due to working together in person. The way things came about wasn't specifically what was preplanned, it actually worked out better because of the dynamics of people interacting with one another and a sense of urgency to accomplish things because of the short amount time that we had to be together. I firmly believe the value of this sprint was well above the money spent. All kinds of progress was made from each of the teams there. This is like a shot of adrenalin for the project. I hope we do many more of these Super Sprints. Lot's of people contributed to my being able to be at this event but I would like to give a special thank you to Rowan Hoskyns Abrahall who put her heart and soul into making this event happen. Thank you Rowan, I appreciated all the work you put into this. You made me feel special in London, I know I wasn't the only one who felt this way. --- ## Page 44: Joe Heading to Las Vegas to Represent Joomla at WHD.USA URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joe-heading-to-las-vegas-to-represent-joomla-at-whd-usa Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. WorldHostingDays is a global event series for the cloud services and internet infrastructure industries. It’s where leaders come together to understand how digital technologies fit together to shape our future. WHD USA is the main industry event in North America. It is a two day event featuring keynotes from industry leaders, sessions on the latest business practices and trends, an exhibition hall featuring cutting edge technologies and services, and networking events. The event takes place on **September 11th & 12th, 2017** this year. The Joomla project is being represented by Robert Jacobi, President of Joomla.org, who will be one of the keynote speakers for the event. Three other Joomla Capital Team members will also be there, Mike Demopoulos, Treasurer of Joomla.org, Jay Blaq and Joe Sonne. Jay and Joe will be manning the Joomla booth (#48) in the exhibition hall. We’re expecting to raise the profile of the Joomla project and provide opportunities for event attendees to get involved with Joomla as sponsors. --- ## Page 45: Joe Attending The 2017 Joomla World Conference This November! URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joe-attending-the-2017-joomla-world-conference-this-november Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Joomla World Conference 2017](/images/stories/news/jwc17.jpg) Joe Sonne Marketing and JoeJoomla will be closed from **Monday November 13 until Tuesday November 21, 2017** while we are attending the _[Joomla World Conference](https://conference.joomla.org/)_ (JWC) 2017 in Rome, Italy. We would love to see you there! This is the first time the JWC will be held in Europe. Joomla experts and newbies will gather there for three days of keynotes, presentations, workshops and sessions in both English and Italian with simultaneous translation ensuring that the broadest content is accessible to all. ## Why not come! **This is a quote from the conference website:** > _JWC is an annual user conference aimed at users of the award winning Joomla! content management system. Joomla! powers over 3% of the entire world’s websites and is used by individuals, multi-national corporations, governments and charities to serve and manage their online presence in an efficient, flexible and expandable way. With over 10,000 extensions to further extend Joomla! capabilities as well as a support network of thousands of developers, integrators and designers, the JWC is the place to be to meet, learn, share and connect._ Get your tickets here: [_Tickets for Joomla World Conference 2017_](https://conference.joomla.org/buy-tickets.html) It’s going to be a great event. --- ## Page 46: Joe At NamesCon GLOBAL 2018 in Las Vegas URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joe-at-namescon-global-2018-in-las-vegas Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. Joe Sonne Marketing and JoeJoomla will be closed from **Monday January 29 until Thursday February 1, 2018** while we are attending the **NamesCon GLOBAL 2018** Las Vegas, USA. Joe will be representing the Joomla project and meeting with sponsors, partners and advertisers. If you would like to be a sponsor or advertise on the Joomla.org website properties, get a hold of Joe live or by [Contact Us Form](/) to hear about exciting opportunities available for sponsorship. --- ## Page 47: Joe At JoomlaDay Chicago 2019 URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joe-at-joomladay-chicago-2019 Date: 2024-03-12 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. Joe Sonne Marketing and JoeJoomla will be closed from **Friday October 11 until Monday October 14, 2019** while we are attending **JoomlaDay Chicago 2019**. Joe is back on the speakers trail and will be presenting the first session of the day right after the Keynote Address by Jason Nickerson from CPanel. Joe's topic will be, **'Building a Successful Joomla Based Business'** Here's the topic description: Building a successful Joomla based business starts with a dream. How do you go from dream to reality? In this session you will hear inside stories of those that have built successful Joomla and other related businesses. We will identify some of the obstacles that pop up along the way and how to deal with them. There will be some surprising examples of those who overcame obstacles and became very successful. This is a motivational session that will be good for those getting started in their own business or for those who are stuck at a spot in their business and are having trouble getting past an obstacle. If you are in the Chicago area at this time you should [get a ticket](https://joomladaychicago.com/) for this event. [It's got a great speaker line up](https://joomladaychicago.com/). Drop us a line at JoeJoomla and let us know if you are going. Joe would be happy to meet with you in person. --- ## Page 48: JoomlaDay USA 2021 and an Announcement URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomladay-usa-2021-and-an-announcement Date: 2024-03-12 Description: Have your website maintained by Joomla professionals with our monthly maintenance plans. JoeJoomla is proud to be a sponsor of **[JoomlaDay USA 2021](https://jdayusa.com/ "JoomlaDay USA 2021 April 23-24")**. This is an online only event with a great speaker lineup. It will also be interactive so you will get to chat with attendees, presenters and some sponsors. The sessions are being recorded and will be available for those who bought a ticket. We have one ticket to give away for this event. JoeJoomla will also be releasing a new service offering and for those who purchased a ticket for the event we'll give away one month free to anyone that signs up for our new maintenance plans. > ## First - The New Maintenance Offerings JoeJoomla's product offerings are changing. We are no longer going to offer hosting packages, instead we will be providing free hosting with our new maintenance plans. Clients on our current hosting packages can remain on them or they can switch to our new maintenance offerings. Our new maintenance packages represent more value to clients. Good web hosting is available in lots of places. What you can't always get are Joomla professionals that really know what they are doing who can provide specialized services for you. That's what we do. You can check out our new plans here: [Super JoeJoomla Web Hosting Maintenance Packages](/services#packages-maintenance) > ## Now How Do I Get That Free Ticket? This year's **[JoomlaDay USA 2021](https://jdayusa.com/ "JoomlaDay USA 2021 April 23-24")** tickets are $20 for the Early Bird All Access Pass and after that the regular price goes for $25. ### SPECIAL OFFER FOR THE FIRST 100 ATTENDEES The first 100 registrants will receive a **#jdayusa SWAG Envelope** via mail, which includes: - A Custom Designed Protective 3 Layer **Face Mask** - **Awesome Joomla! Stickers** from our Sponsors to deck out your laptop with Only those who purchased a ticket will have access to recordings of the workshops so getting a ticket for free is a big deal. I'll be giving my free ticket away on the last day of the Early Bird pricing so drop me a line at: [email protected] and request to be put into the raffle for the ticket. --- ## Page 49: JoeJoomla Client Wins Award for Creative and Effective Website Redesign URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joejoomla-client-wins-award-for-creative-and-effective-website-redesign Date: 2024-03-08 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Colorado’s Business Marketing Association (BMA) recognizes CrawfordTech’s marketing team for creative and effective website redesign Crawford Technologies announced it has been awarded a ‘2015 Gold Key Award’ from the Colorado Chapter of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) for the redesign of Crawford Technologies’ website in 2014. "Envisioned and executed by our Marketing Communications Manager, Jonathan Malone-McGrew, the project was built from the ground up in collaboration with our website and SEO partners at [Joe Sonne Marketing](http://joesonne.com "JoeJoomla is the website division Joe Sonne Marketing") and Big Footprint Digital. The result was the ability to launch a responsive platform that will scale with our growth and allow us to communicate more effectively with our customers, partners and the industry well into the future." "With an emphasis on quality and results, the BMA Gold Key Awards are highly coveted by Colorado marketers." In the fourth quarter of 2014, Crawford Technologies new website generated a 38% increase in page views, 14% increase in organic search traffic, 21% increase in average pages per session, 7% increase in time on site, 7% decrease in bounces, 389% increase in social referrals and a 399% mobile and tablet traffic increase year over year. The original press release can be seen [here](https://whattheythink.com/news/73631-crawford-technologies-awarded-bmas-2015-gold-key-award-innovative-website-redesign/ "Colorado's Business Marketing Association (BMA) recognizes CrawfordTech’s marketing team for creative and effective website redesign"). --- ## Page 50: Is Blogging With Joomla! A Good Or Bad Choice? URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/is-blogging-with-joomla-a-good-or-bad-choice Date: 2024-01-11 Description: Is blogging with Joomla a good or bad choice? Should one go with Wordpress? ### Blogging with Joomla! ![Disqus](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-disqus.png) For the longest time I have resisted blogging in any significant way. The reason for this is because I want to stick with Joomla! and each time I looked for a total Joomla! blogging solution it proved to have some shortcoming, mostly in the way of a decent commenting system. Since I am a Joomla! guy I really don't want to run a different system for it. Blogging is a really important part of communications, public relations, and marketing. A blog without a comment system is blog flirting. You might as well just call it an article. WordPress is a good straight up blogging system but I didn't want to use it. > ## I don't dislike WordPress I set up a WordPress blog for my wife, customized her template, and I look after installing plugins and updating it. I made the decision for her to use WordPress. It does exactly what she wants it to do and it does it well. She doesn't need Joomla!, it's overkill for her. I have to admit I was sorely tempted many times to cave in and go with WordPress. It's got a great commenting system built in. How does the 'JoeJoomla WordPress Blog' sound? I notice that several top flight Joomla! guys blog using WordPress. That tells you something. There is nothing wrong with that at all mind you. It makes sense to use the best tools for the job. I'm running a Simple Machines Forum bulletin board on this site. There's few open source bulletin boards that are as good as it. > ## I still couldn't bring myself to use WordPress though So my blog entries remained comment-less until yesterday. After much stalling I finally committed to [Disqus](http://disqus.com "Disqus") for a Joomla! commenting system. Even some of the WordPress sites I've been reading lately are using Disqus instead of the built in commenting system. The jury is still out on this choice, I'm hoping I made a good one. What do you think? Is blogging with Joomla! a good or bad choice? --- ## Page 51: Tagging To Make The Joomla! Blog More Friendly Like WordPress URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/tagging-to-make-the-joomla-blog-more-friendly-like-wordpress Date: 2024-01-11 Description: Making the Joomla! blog more friendly by using tags. ### Blogging with Joomla! ![Tagging To Make The Joomla! Blog More Friendly Like WordPress](/images/stories/sound_off/tags.jpg) There have been plenty of discussions online regarding Joomla! vs WordPress when it comes to blogging. There are three camps: - Joomla! bloggers - WordPress bloggers - WordPress and Joomla! integration bloggers Those from each camp vigorously defend their positions. The justification for using one system or the other depends on who needs what from the blogging experience. Developers who look after clients are found in all three camps. Beginner bloggers or experienced bloggers who only need to blog prefer WordPress. Those that need more than just blogging go with either Joomla! or combine it with WordPress. Clearly I am in the Joomla! blogging camp. That's not because I don't like WordPress. I need a content management system and Joomla! is the system of choice for me. I only started blogging a short while ago. Blogging has become an important part of a website's popularity. The rise of social media has proven that people like blogs and bloggers. It is also easier to write a blog than it is to write an article. So of course I want to ensure that my Joomla! blog isn't at a disadvantage over a WordPress blog. > ## It doesn't matter what system is used for the blog From a blog readers perspective it shouldn't matter what system is being used for the blog. The content should be worth reading and the time on the site should a pleasant experience. The site should look nice, be easy to use, and there should be familiarity about it. That's why most of the malls around North America look familiar. Familiarity makes you comfortable. I noticed that a lot blogs using WordPress are fun and friendly. A lot of the Joomla! blogs tend to be technically oriented, you might even say a bit stuffy. Not all Joomla! blogs are stuffy. One of my favourite Joomla! blogs to read is [Brian Teeman's blog](http://brian.teeman.net/ "Brian Teeman's Blog"). He is a very technical guy but far from stuffy. He's got strong opinions and it makes for lots of debate and provocative thought. Prothemer lists '**20+ blogs about Joomla you should subscribe to**' on their site. These are blogs about Joomla! and not necessarily all Joomla! blogs. You can do a Google search on WordPress blogs and find all sorts of good WordPress blog reading online. > ## What does the tag bring to the blog? I don't want the '_JoeJoomla Sound Off Blog_' to be stuffy so I thought I would make it a little more 'WordPressy'. That's why I decided to start using tags on the site. Having a tag cloud is familiar to WordPress blog readers. They expect to see one. WordPress has all kinds of tag cloud plugins. It's tag mania in the WordPress world. So what does the tag bring to the blog? I think it brings a different attitude, sort of like left brain vs right brain thinking. Joomla! 1.5x system content is organized by Sections and Categories. A simple way to show how a categories works with sections is: Section: sports Categories: football, hockey, baseball, basketball, tennis Section: dance Categories: folk dance, ballroom dance, latin dance, swing dance, hip hop dance > ## Tags provide a more granular way of organizing content So categories tied to sections are all nicely structured when organizing a content management system. They are also restrictive. Not everything can be so organized. Sometimes trying to organize everything makes you crazy. Tags help you out in this area. Tags are unstructured and provide a more granular way of organizing content. Tags seem friendlier. You can freewheel when it comes to tags. Freewheeling is like being the life of the party at an event, or maybe the town fool. Either way you appear friendlier and less rigid. Tags like these give a perception of friendly social interaction: funny, cool, sad, social, happy, hot, whimsical Of course you could tie them all to a section called 'attitude' but then you are showing your need for rigid structure and I'm trying to loosen it up here. So now the JoeJoomla Sound Off blog has tags. Pretty soon you are not going to know the difference between this Joomla! blog and a WordPress one. Hopefully this helps make my blog a friendlier and a more familiar looking place for blog readers. If you are looking for the tags they are on the side. It's going to take me a bit of time to tag all the content on this site, so for now I'm starting with the blog entries. As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome. Let me know if you think tags make Joomla! blogs friendlier. --- ## Page 52: What To Do When Your Disqus Comments Link To The Wrong URL URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/what-to-do-when-your-disqus-comments-link-to-the-wrong-url Date: 2024-01-09 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Let's fix this problem! ![Disqus showing wrong comments](/images/stories/sound_off/disqus-comments-problem/wrong-url.jpg) Working offline helps you avoid screwing up your production site if something goes wrong. I discovered this workflow doesn’t guarantee there will be no problems to your live site in regards to using the Disqus commenting system. I got some complaints recently from people who clicked on my Disqus comments links after I posted notifications from my blog posts via Disqus to Facebook and Twitter. People alerted me to the fact that the linkback URLs were wrong. When they clicked on my Disqus links, instead of linking to the blog posts they were being served 404 pages because my links started with "http://localhost"[.](http://localhost".) How did this happen? I discovered the reason this was happening is because Disqus uses and stores the very first URL for it's links when you post a new article in Joomla. So if you are creating your articles and blog posts in your localmachine version of your website then your links are all going to start with "http://localmachine". What do you do when this happens? > ## The fix for this was found in a Disqus help article I discovered the solution in a help article at Disqus. Disqus has a tool accessible in the admin area of  your account that is used for migrating your comments. The migration tool is primarily used when you need to migrate your website and all it's Disqus comments to another server or domain. This tool can also be used when you need to correct or remap your URLs as in the case here where the "http://localhost" needs to be "http://yourdomain.com". > ## When you need to change the URL in your comments you use the Disqus migration tool The first step in the process is to go to your Disqus Admin, click Tools and find the Migrate Threads tab. Here's what that screen looks like: ![Migrate threads tools](/images/stories/sound_off/disqus-comments-problem/migrate-threads-tools.jpg) Not all my URLs were wrong on my site, just the last few articles. Using this tool would be a good opportunity to check all of the Disqus links to ensure there are not problems that I wasn't aware of. The migration tool presents you with three options. The first option on the page is a domain migration wizard. I'm not moving to a new domain so this one didn't apply to my situation. I selected the second option, which is to upload a URL map in order to change the link paths. The first part of the URL path, “http://localhost” is what needs to be changed. This option gives you a way to map the correct URLs for your Disqus comment links. > ## You start by downloading a CSV file of your current comment links You start by clicking “Start URL mapper”. A new page comes up called “Migrate Threads”. On that page there is a link to have Disqus generate a a CSV (comma-separated values) list of the URLs on your website. Once you click that link, a page comes up telling you that Disqus will send you an email when it has generated the CSV file and provide you with a download link to retrieve it. ![Download a CSV](/images/stories/sound_off/disqus-comments-problem/download-a-csv.jpg) When you retrieve the CSV file you can open it up in MS Excel to inspect it. The links to your Disqus comments will be listed in one column with the full URL path associated with them. It was really easy for me to find the comments that had the wrong link associated with them. Now you are able modify this CSV file with corrected URL paths and upload them to Disqus. > ## Put the corrected URL in a column beside the ones you need to change Now you can to edit the file that you downloaded from Disqus. In the first column are all the URLs for your website's Disqus comments including the incorrect ones. Type your corrected URLs in the column next to the incorrect one. This is the format that Disqus needs for your upload with the migration tool: http://example.com/wrong-path/article.html, http://example.com/corrected-path/article.html ![Excel file](/images/stories/sound_off/disqus-comments-problem/excel-file.jpg) Don’t just provide the corrected URLs, be sure that you include all the URLs for the site. If the URL in the left column is correct simply copy it to the column beside it. Change the URLs for the ones that need to be corrected and put those beside the incorrect ones. You will have two columns in your Excel file that will be uploaded to Disqus. > ## Upload your corrected CSV file to Disqus Now you are ready to upload a new URL mapping to Disqus. Click the "choose file" button and navigate to your corrected file on your computer. Select it and submit it. The next screen that you will see shows you a sample of the before and after URLs that your Disqus comments will be changed to. ![Submit migration](/images/stories/sound_off/disqus-comments-problem/submit-migration.jpg) Once you submit the new mappings Disqus will process and remap to the corrected URLs. You'll get a screen that comes up with "Migration Confirmed" message. It takes a little while for Disqus to process the changes but very soon your links will all be correct. Now there should be no more complaints from your Twitter and Facebook friends that the links are wrong. --- ## Page 53: Watchful - Remote Updates, Backups and Security Monitoring for Joomla! URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/watchful-remote-updates-backups-and-security-monitoring-for-joomla Date: 2024-01-09 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Watchful](/images/stories/sound_off/watchfully/watchful.png) It can be a daunting task to keep all your Joomla! websites up to date including the third party extensions. Each website is usually a unique mixture of components with their specialized functionality. Although you might only have a small number of extensions and plugins on any particular site, once you have many sites you have a long list of things to keep track of. For my websites I've done this by keeping a database record of each site so I remember which ones to login to when updates are required. It's far from a perfect solution and often a site will lag behind in an update. Now there is an easy way to monitor all your websites and be on top of updates and backups the way a responsible webmaster should be. > Watchful is a great solution for monitoring all your Joomla! websites **_[Watchful](http://watchful.li/ "Watchful")_** is a web based service which gives you a clean and pleasant looking central dashboard for monitoring all your Joomla! websites. It is an impressive service developed and maintained by two companies; [inetis](http://www.inetis.ch/ "Inetis") and . ![Watchful Dashboard](/images/stories/sound_off/watchfully/dashboard.jpg) From this central dashboard you can add all the Joomla! 1.5 & 2.5 websites that you maintain and watch everything. You can keep track of Joomla! core updates, extension updates, perform backups manually or schedule automatic remote backups. Watchful will send you an email notification if your server goes down. It scans your site every three hours and tracks changes in web services and file modifications. if your site is being hacked it will alert you as soon as the scan is complete. When there is an update available for any of your websites you are alerted by a red colored icon. By clicking the icon you can view and perform the necessary updates. > Keep an eye on updates for Joomla! core, components, modules, and plugins Watchful comes with monitoring for 1.5 and 2.5 websites. The buttons for upgrading are 2.5 specific since it uses the Joomla! notifier which is not available in Joomla! 1.5. Watchful is good for backups, monitoring, and logging for Joomla! 1.5+ ![Watchful Dashboard Updates](/images/stories/sound_off/watchfully/core-components-modules-plugin.jpg) In this site detail view the first column "Updates" shows you what updates are available for your site. It's as simple as clicking the button to do the updates. The "Components" "Modules" and "Plugin" columns gives you a list of each of the items on the website with their version numbers. One thing to keep in mind when you want to update everything is to backup Joomla! first. This way you can roll back your site if you need to for any reason. > Find those extensions! If you are aware of a particular extension that has been reported to have a security vulnerability Watchful has a search feature to locate any of your sites they are installed on. This is a big time saver especially when you have a lot of sites. > Backups are a breaze from Watchful Akeeba remote backups of your site can be scheduled via a cron daily, weekly, or monthly when you add a site in Watchful. By a click of a button you can trigger an immediate backup from here as well. It also shows you a list of the last 10 backups. Watchful keeps a log of all the activity done from the dashboard. ![Backups](/images/stories/sound_off/watchfully/backups.jpg) > Adding your websites to Watchful is simple Adding a website to the dashboard is simple, you install a component in the websites you want to monitor which generates a secret key that you use when adding the site to your dashboard. ![Add A Site](/images/stories/sound_off/watchfully/add-a-site.jpg) Give the site a name, enter it's URL, and pop in the secret key generated by your website's Watchful component. There are more options you can include: - Add an administrators URL if yours is different than the standard Joomla! admin URL such as when you use a plugin like the jSecure Authentication module which prevents access to administration back end login page without appropriate access key. - You can add a word from your site's homepage so that Watchful can monitor it and ensure your site is online - Cron scheduling of Remote Backups by Akeeba. Simply make sure you configure Akeeba on your site for remote backups and share the secret word from Akeeba with Watchful so it can trigger the backup on schedule. > What about security? Watchful uses a unique Secret Key to ensure that only authorized users can access and control your site remotely. It is secured with a 2048-bit, next generation Extended Validation SSL certificate. > What's the bottom line on this service? In my opinion Watchful represents great value. The time savings of keeping track through a central dashboard of all your site updates and their extensions is significant. Joomla! website maintainers can use Watchful to offer their clients monitoring services as a value added service. Large corporations with many sites will love Watchful. There's no need to roll your own solution. Watchful has great price points for 5 websites, 25 sites, 100 sites and over. There is a free trial of up to 5 sites for 30 days. I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I'll bet many others have too. For an initial rollout of this kind of service Anything Digital and inetis have done a great job. --- ## Page 54: Secrets of Getting an A+ Joomla! Reputation and Attracting A+ Clients URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/secrets-of-getting-an-a-joomla-reputation-and-attracting-a-clients Date: 2024-01-09 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![A Plus Clients](/images/stories/a-plus-reputation/a-plus-paper.jpg) In the business of Joomla! some have the A+ customers and others have clients from hell. This is an oversimplification of course but I’m talking in general terms. Unless all your clients are the A+ ones then you need an ongoing strategy to attract better clients. Spending a lot of time with clients from hell will greatly impact your ability to get the A+ clients. This is just one of the points in my upcoming talk for **JoomlaDay Chicago** in August. I delivered this message at **JoeJoomla's Session at J and Beyond 2012 in Germany**. My presentation in Chicago will be different since I have had the chance to watch the video from that presentation. Observing it from a listener’s point of view has shown me a few places where it can be better. > ## I learned this along the way… You don’t have to be the very best technologically to be successful and to acquire the best clients. I made a career out of getting great clients from companies that were technically superior to the ones I worked for. I explain how I did this in my talk. So expect to have fun and learn some things at my session. Here’s the video from J and Beyond: > ## We work hard so we might as well have fun when we can My presentations tend to be fun. After all, we work hard so we might as well have fun when we can. The J and beyond presentation was like that. Thomas Kahl, Managing director of VMX.Pro GmbH & Co. KG, and **VirtuemartExpert**, was in the audience for that session. Thomas is a highly skilled and respected Joomla!/Virtuemart developer and he had this to say about the session; > ## Joes insights about how to get A+ customers was > absolutely interesting ~ Thomas Kahl "Next to all the technical topics of the JAB12 sessions, Joes insights about how to get A+ customers was absolutely interesting. With some funny examples, Joe reminded the audience of some very basic truths that everybody should keep in mind when working with customers. The end result is that you have the customers (from hell) you deserve - if you offer A+ service, the A+ customers will find you! Thank you for reminding me!" > ## What qualifies me to speak on this topic? There are many different roads that you can travel and arrive at the community known as Joomla. I spend a lot of years as a professional salesman prior to becoming involved with open source software. My background is in design, advertising and sales promotion. I also worked in the printing industry and made the jump into the digital world before the general population embraced the Internet. At that time many of the smartest people in high tech didn’t understand the impact the Internet would have on their businesses. I was fortunate that the companies I worked for had really talented people doing cutting edge work. This made it easier for me to successful. Going to J and Beyond had a huge impact on my business. I met Jonathan Neubauer from [CNP Integrations](http://www.cnpintegrations.com/ "CNP Integrations") while I was there. We sat next to each other and talked over a meal. This is Jonathan in this picture here below on the right that I took with my iPhone that night: [![IMG_1331](https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7082/7302243850_911df6c831_z.jpg)](https://www.flickr.com/photos/8174218@N08/7302243850/ "IMG_1331 by JoeJoomla, on Flickr") --- ## Page 55: J and Beyond, A First Impression URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-and-beyond-a-first-impression Date: 2024-01-09 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Joejoomla at Joomla and Beyond](/images/stories/sound_off/joejoomla-j-and-beyond/joejoomla-joomla-and-beyond.jpg) It's a big deal to fly over the pond. A direct flight from Toronto to Frankfurt is seven and a half hours. Not to mention the drive to get to the Toronto airport which can be nasty if you have to travel during rush hour. So I headed towards Bad Nauheim, Germany, to attend J and Beyond wondering what the next couple of days was going to be like. You are suppose to sleep on a flight that goes through the night so you can hit the ground running when you get there. I got four hours sleep on the flight. Not four consecutive hours, just four hours collectively. Not a great start. Then I messed up other people's plans. Jeremy Wilken pre-arranged to meet me along with others for a ride from the airport straight to the conference hotel. They waited for me to show up as long as they could before heading off. My iPhone had been switched to Airplane Mode so I didn't get his messages telling me where they were. Apparently the coffee on the flight wasn't enough to keep me alert and focussed. Once again, sorry Jeremy, my bad. > You get one chance to make a first impression So I make my way to Bad Nauheim by train and arrived at the hotel at the same time that Dwight Barnard from South Africa did. Dwight was wearing a Joomla! related t-shirt and so was I. It made it easy to identify each other as Joolmla! community members. We were both staying at a hotel a little distance from the Dolce Hotels & Resorts where J and Beyond was being held. Dwight's smiling face and pleasant disposition helped set the tone for the weekend. You get one chance to make a first impression and the Pre-Event PARTY at die Scheune that night was it. What a great time I had! It was jam packed with J and Beyond attendees. I met so many people that night that I'd been following through the online social media sites. Everyone was upbeat and I could tell this was going to be a fun weekend. > The Dolce Hotel makes a good impression The sessions started the next morning. The Dolce Hotel was an excellent location for the event. Here are two really cool videos posted about the venue: ### J and Beyond Walkthrough with Jack Bremer ### Impressions From J and Beyond 2012 from joomlablogger ### Here's my Flickr photostream from the event: [![Joomla! and Beyond 2012](https://live.staticflickr.com/8001/7302231404_40c95e2e40_z.jpg)](https://www.flickr.com/photos/8174218@N08/albums/72157629969250574 "Joomla! and Beyond 2012") > Speaking of A+... I also got to present a session during the event. The presentation was a lot of fun to do and well received. Here's a slideshare of the presentation: > One more thing… I have an article "[Joomla and Beyond, My First Experience](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/june-2012/j-and-beyond-my-first-experience "Joomla and Beyond, My First Experience")" published over at the Joomla! Community Magazine about the event. There's more stories in it including how I got to be a Judge for the J!OSCAR awards. Why don't you check it out [HERE](https://magazine.joomla.org/all-issues/june-2012/j-and-beyond-my-first-experience "Joomla and Beyond, My First Experience") --- ## Page 56: Joomla Community Magazine URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-community-magazine Date: 2024-01-08 Description: JoeJoomla's latest article is published over at the Joomla Community Magazine. ![JoeJoomla on Joolmla Community Magazine](/images/stories/sound_off/joejoomla-on-jcm.jpg) This month the [Joomla! Community Magazine](http://magazine.joomla.org/ "Joomla Community Magazine") online has published a feature article by JoeJoomla. You do read the [**_Joomla! Community Magazine_**](http://magazine.joomla.org/ "Joomla! Community Magazine") don't you? If you haven't heard about it you need to go on over there and see the great articles, tutorials, and all the other fine stuff that the Community Magazine Team works so hard to put together for your benefit. Besides, it's the only way you're going to get to read my **"[Friendly Advice For Your Joomla Adventure](http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/Issue-Mar-2011/item/405-Friendly-Advice-For-Your-Joomla-Adventure "Friendly Advice For Your Joomla! Adventure")"**. The multi talented Dianne Henning works tirelessly behind Lead Editor Paul Orwig to put together one of the nicest, and most informative Joomla! magazines you are ever going to see. It's worth the read. You'll learn all kinds of really useful things about Joomla! in each edition. > The Joomla! Community Magazine is the nicest Joomla! magazine around Great graphics, professional layout and design, fabulous content - what else could you ask for? It's a showcase of what some of the top talent in Joomla! does. Designed and development by Fotis Evangelou, Chris Marinou, Chiara Aliotta, Ron Severdia, Cristina Solana, Dianne Henning, Babs Gösgens, Hilary Cheyne, Matt Lipscomb, and Paul Orwig. How would you like to have that bunch working for you? > Get yourself published! Do you have something of value to share with the Joomla! community? Do you want to be read by a large audience? Submit an article to the JCM. It's a great way to get known. If you are looking for an opportunity to get published, what are you waiting for? Here's where you can find out about becoming an author: [Author Resources](http://magazine.joomla.org/author-resources "Author Resources") . There's also a link on that page to register as an author. > You don't have to write code to contribute Having your article published in the Joomla! Community Magazine gives you recognition in the Joomlasphere. It's a great way for people to discover you and your business. It takes a lot of different skills to put a good Joomla! website together. Not just coding so don't feel like you have to be a coder to contribute. > Get notified when each new article appears You can subscribe by email and have all the latest JCM articles delivered to you. Now that's convenience. Having links to all the articles like a table of contents is very handy. Here's where you subscribe: [Subscribe](http://magazine.joomla.org/subscribe "Subscribe") > What are you waiting for? Have you read my article on the [_Joomla! Community Magazine_](http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/Issue-Mar-2011/item/405-Friendly-Advice-For-Your-Joomla-Adventure "Friendly Advice For Your Joomla! Adventure") yet? What are you waiting for? Let me know your thoughts when you do. Everyone has an opinion, I'd like to hear yours. --- ## Page 57: Joomla Rock Stars URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-rock-stars Date: 2024-01-08 Description: Joomla! rocks stars who enjoy celebrity status, or 'stardom' in the Joomla! community. ![Joomla Rock Star](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-rock-stars/joomla-rock-star.jpg) Rock stars are people who have celebrity status, or 'stardom' in their various industries. Joomla! has no shortage of them. Cory Webb, who I regard as a Joomla! rock star, described How to Become a Joomla! Rockstar in 3 Easy Steps. He stated the steps are simply (1) Build a website with Joomla. (2) Learn from your mistakes (3) Repeats steps 1 & 2. This sounds like basic three chord rock and will certainly get you started toward rock star status in the Joomla! world. Some Joomla! rock stars enjoy their celebrity and others loath it. For some it's all about the code and not about the people. For others it's about community involvement. Whatever you believe, Joomla! is as fascinating and colourful as any when it comes to it's culture. Behind it all are ordinary people and the rock stars. > So who are these Joomla! rock stars? So who are these Joomla! rock stars? There are some really obvious ones. Anyone who makes it to the Joomla! Leadership Team (JLT) certainly qualifies. You have to be a hotta in one way or another to be part of that group. The current Joomla! Leadership Team, in alphabetical order, are; Brad Baker, Chris Davenport, Christophe Demko, Mark Dexter, Andrew Eddie, Louis Landry, Matt Lipscomb, Ian MacLennan, Peter Martin, Sam Moffatt, Paul Orwig, Wendy Robinson, Ron Severdia, Jean-Marie Simonet, & Sandra Warren. An impressive and talented group that is. You can read a bit about them on the official Joomla! website [HERE](http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the-project/leadership-team.html "Joomla! Leadership Team") > That group above aren't the only Joomla! rock stars That group above aren't the only Joomla! rock stars. Others have been in that exclusive group in the past and have gone on to continue their Joomla! virtuosity in their continued ventures. One such rock star is Johan Janssens who brings the [Nooku](http://www.nooku.org/ "Nooku") framework to Joomla! which helps make things simpler for other developers. You'd also be crazy to write an article about Joomla! rock stars and not mention Andy Miller of [Rockettheme](http://www.rockettheme.com/ "Rockettheme"). His template club dominates the Joomla! theme community. All those who work with him are also Joomla! rock stars. > Joomla! rock stardom is not reserved for coders only Joomla! rock stardom is not reserved for coders only. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Joomla! rock stars around the world such as Joomla! bloggers, Joomla! radio show hosts, Joomla! evangelists, and Joomla! cheerleaders. All of these bring their skills and talents to the table which contribute to make Joomla! the best content management website software on the planet. > I could go on forever listing my favourite Joomla! rock stars I could go on forever listing my favourite Joomla! rock stars but this is where you come in. Who are some of your favourite Joomla! rock stars? --- ## Page 58: Hey Joomla! URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/hey-joomla Date: 2024-01-08 Description: Hey Joomla! - an anthem for Joomla! based on the Beatles song Hey Jude. ![Description](/images/stories/sound_off/hey-joomla-song.gif) I thought it would be fun to turn a famous Beatles tune into a Joomla! song. Both are superstars and Joomla! deserves an anthem. it has to be something worthy of the magnitude of Joomla!, not simply a one hit wonder. Although I've banged around on the piano a few times in the past you don't want me singing this. Someone with a lot more musical talent than I have needs to do it. I heard the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, is a great performer and likes the Beatles. If you can't convince him to do it you'll just have to hum it along to yourself. Now go find your copy of 'Hey Jude'. You do remember where you put it don't you? There's a chart down below to help you sing along. I can't take credit for the chart idea. A version of it was sent to me with the Beatles song on it. I thought it was very clever. It was what inspired me to redo the tune. So are you ready? Here we go, **Hey Joomla!** by JoeJoomla... _Hey Joomla!, don't make it bad You started with Mambo and made it better Remember to give it a brand new heart That's when it will be oh so much better Hey Joomla! don't be afraid You were made to be a go getter So bring all the OS community in And it will continue to be oh so much better Any time you need new things, hey Joomla!, refrain From stuffing your core every which way For you know there's many of those who code Who will help to create plenty of good components Hey Joomla! don't let me down You'll make lots of fans, the more the better Remember to let the community in That's when we will be oh so much better So bring it on and let them in Hey Joomla! we win We're creating open source high performance And we all know that its so good Hey Joomla! we do The movement you need is found all over Hey Joomla!, don't make it bad You started with Mambo and made it better Remember to let the community in That's when we will be oh so much better Better, better, better, better, better, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na, Hey Joomla!_ ![Hey Joomla! Chart](/images/stories/sound_off/hey-joomla.png) --- ## Page 59: Toronto Joomla Beginner Training URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/toronto-joomla-beginner-training Date: 2024-01-08 Description: Learn Joomla with JoeJoomla in Toronto on September 28, 2011 **What would you like to do online?** Blog? Ecommerce? Publish articles? Promote something? Market something? Perhaps you just want a hobby to make a little extra spending cash or maybe even start your own web design business? Where do you start? > Start by learning Joomla! You can do everything above and more using _**Joomla!**_, one of the most popular web site software systems available. _**Joomla!**_ is easy to use, easier than most database driven software publishing systems. _**Joomla!**_ has a huge and helpful user community. [JoomlaTraining.com](http://www.joomlatraining.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=237_26_3_29 "JoomlaTraining.com") also provides the best classroom learning experience you'll find anywhere. These classes are staffed by _**Joomla!**_ experts. Your _**Joomla!**_ journey may begin with you knowing next to nothing about web publishing but will start you on the way to possibly becoming an expert yourself! > Get Started in Toronto with JoomlaTraining.com [**On September 28, 2011 there will be a Toronto Joomla Beginner Training class with JoeJoomla!**](http://www.joomlatraining.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=237_26_3_29) Get started on your _**Joomla!**_ journey by learning how _**Joomla!**_ works. In this class you'll become familiar with Joomla's system and leave the class pumped and ready to tackle your very own website. > It's really affordable and a great investment Click this link [HERE](http://www.joomlatraining.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=237_26_3_29) to discover all the things that will be covered during the Toronto Joomla Beginner Training class. No need to bring a thing, just come for the day ready to learn. We'll even supply lunch, it's that easy! --- ## Page 60: Get Ready, Joomla! 3.0 Is Here! URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/get-ready-joomla-3-0-is-here Date: 2024-01-04 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![g3t r3ady](/images/stories/sound_off/get-ready/g3t_r3ady.jpg) An Alpha version of Joomla! 3.0 is now available for download and it's an exciting new release. Among other things this new version is positioned to have mobile built right into it. So the question now is what version of Joomla! should I be using? This particular 3.0 version of Joomla! is for developers and early adopters only. If your website is currently on Joomla! 1.5x or Joomla! 2.x you are in good shape. Both of these versions are solid. Something to keep in mind however is that Joomla! 1.5 has come to it's official end of support by the Joomla! project. Now is the time to think about the future of your Joomla! website. > What are some of the highlights of Joomla! 3.0? Mobile computing is huge and Joomla! will be mobile ready right out of the box! Joomla! 3.0 has an all new admin backend design. It's dramatically different than what we have seen since v1.5. It's clean looking, modern, and easier to work with. Bootstrap is now a part of Joomla! ([http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/](https://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/)). Regarding Javascript, Joomla 3 is moving toward the very popular jQuery for it's core. It will be included in noConflict mode. Mootools is still a part of Joomla! 3.0 so your existing Javascript extensions that rely on Mootools will work. Something important to note is that PHP 5.3.1 is the minimum supported version for Joomla! 3.0 and official support for some older browsers will be discontinued. > Joomla! 1.5 is almost 5 years old now! You heard it right, Joomla! 1.5 is almost 5 years old! If you are currently using a Joomla! 1.5 site and you plan on your website being a vital part of your business into the future you should be making plans now to move your Joomla! platform forward. The move from 1.5 to 2.5 is not an upgrade, it's a migration. There are significant differences in Joomla! between version 1.5 and 2.5 under the hood. Careful planning is required to migrate your website from 1.5. If your site is large or complex it's always wise to engage professional help to do this. > What do I do if I am on Joomla! 2.5 now? Joomla 2.5 is currently the Long Term Support (LTS) version of Joomla. It has already undergone many months of real-world testing and it's stable, tested and reliable. It's the right version for existing sites. Joomla! 2.5 will continue to be supported until 2014. The upgrade from 2.5 to 3.x will be easy. You should be able to do the upgrade right from the administrator area of the website. Of course you need to keep an eye on all the extensions that you use on your site to make sure they are ready for 3.0. Here's a visual representation of the viable Joomla! versions and how they officially stand with the Joomla! project: ![Joomla Release Cycle](/images/stories/sound_off/get-ready/j_releasecycle.jpg) _**LTS = Long Term Support        STS = Short Term Support**_ So you can see that there's no need to go to 3.5 until it's been real world tested and proven by those who have the skills to deal with early adopter stuff. > And finally... --- ## Page 61: Top 5 Joomla World Conference Sessions URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/top-5-joomla-world-conference-sessions Date: 2024-01-03 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Top 5](/images/stories/top-5.jpg) One of my favourite movies from 2000 was High Fidelity. In that flick John Cusack laments his “Top 5” breakup songs. So in the spirit of High Fidelity I would like to declare my Top 5 list from the Joomla World Conference 2012 sessions. I only saw a small number of sessions in person while I was there from the 60 plus sessions of the event. This top 5 list is actually my top 5 right now list until I get all the way through the videos posted from the event. My list is a good one so far. It will take a pretty good session to bump any of these off the list. So here we go… > Here's my Top 5 Joomla World Conference 2012 sessions list ![Tip 2](/images/stories/one.jpg) **Is Joomla 3 ready for enterprise?: Victor Drover** This was my favourite session from Joomla World Conference 2012. I saw this session in person from outside the overflowed room in the hallway. Victor Drover is a great presenter with a hot topic. * * * ![two](/images/stories/two.jpg) **Using Videos to Train Your Clients: Rod Martin** Another top notch presenter is Rod Martin. I adopted several of Rod's great tips as soon as I got back from the conference. There are some audio issues at the beginning of this video that clear up about 5 minutes in. * * * ![three](/images/stories/three.jpg) **Joomla 2.5.x ACL for newbies (or not quite so): Helvecio da Silva** I was very impressed with the effort that Helvecio put into this presentation. If you are a visual person you'll love the charts he shows on how ACL works in Joomla! 2.5. This will help you understand a complex topic. * * * ![four](/images/stories/four.jpg) **Joomla Family Tree: Steve Burge** I was at this session and despite some audio issues with this video including not being able to hear some of the interaction from the attendees this is a favourite pick. I have always believed that you are most like the people that you are connected to. You'll find this session very interesting. * * * ![four](/images/stories/four.jpg) **The Last Frontier: Joomla! Multi Lingual Sites: Jon Neubauer** Jon Neubauer is a very good presenter and does a great job of showing how to create a multilingual site with Joomla. Unfortunately there are some audio issues with this session. Don't ever pass up a chance to see and hear Jon in person when you have an opportunity, you'll be impressed. * * * > One more thing... I was at the Joomla World Conference too and this is my presentation below. Since this is my blog I didn't think it was fair to make this my number one pick :-) judge for yourself if it deserves to be in anyone's top pick list. ![four](/images/stories/top-5-jwc-sessions/a-plus.jpg) **Secrets of Getting an A+ Joomla! Reputation and Attracting A+ Clients: Joe Sonne** > There are great speakers & content at Joomla World Conferences. Make sure you plan to be there in 2013 There you have it, my top 5 picks from Joomla World Conference 2012. Like I mentioned at the beginning I haven't seen all the sessions yet but you can't go wrong with these picks. I'd love to hear about your favourites and don't forget to look me up when you are at the next Joomla World Conference! --- ## Page 62: Joomla Truisms URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-truisms Date: 2024-01-02 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. Joomla! Truisms are valuable things related Joomla! that I have found to be true. Some of these I learned from others along the way and a few I picked up from the school of hard knocks. Learning from experience is not aways pleasant especially when the thing you are trying to solve is urgent and evasive. I'm not certain how many of my hours were spent searching for the answers to some of these problems but it was significant. Generally truisms are not widely known but they should be. Learn about them and they will keep you anchored and from drifting into problems later. Let's look at a couple of Joomla! Truisms starting with probably the most important one - backups. > Joomla! Truisms are valuable things related Joomla! that I have found to be true _7:35 video from JandBeyond 2013 NH Conference Centre, Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands,_ > Just because you did a backup doesn't mean you > have a backup Just because you did a backup doesn't mean you have a backup. This one can be a killer. Everyone knows you are suppose to do backups. If you aren't doing backups of your websites you are not being a responsible website owner or maintainer. The truth about backups is much more than installing a component, configuring it to do automated backups, and then forgetting about it. If you do a backup and it's not restorable, meaning when you retrieve the data to restore the site on a server, and it doesn't work, then you don't have a backup. Unless your backup is restorable it's not a backup, it's a useless file. What if you do a backup which is restorable but it was saved on the same web server that your website was on and there is a problem with the server? You still don't have a backup. You don't have a backup unless it's retrievable and restorable. The best strategy is to save the backup file on a different server. A great choice is to use Amazon S3 servers for your backups. A component such as Akeeba Backup Pro can be configured to upload your backups to a remote server like Amazon. This isn't foolproof though, you have to test your backups to make sure they will restore. Recently I discovered my backups for a particular site on Amazon S3 servers were not restorable. The sad thing about this is that you are paying for storing useless files on Amazon when they are no good. > Use non SEF URLs for links within your site Another Truism is to use non SEF (search engine friendly) URLs for links within your site. How many of us have been using the SEF URL for links in articles and custom HTML modules? It's easy right? All you have to do is copy the URL from the browser of the page you wish to link to and just paste it into the link field in your article manager. Well that's the wrong way to do it. It's a Joomla! best practice to use non SEF URLs for links. Those are the big ugly URLs that look like this: index.php?option=com\_content&id=183&lang=en&view=article Why would we want to use these kinds of URLs? We use them because if we use SEF URLS like: "/183-joomla-truisms" and one day someone decides to change the title of the article, or change the menu that is used for the article, then the link will break. If we use the non SEF (ugly) URL the link will always work because it is the Joomla! assigned URL in the database for the specific item. The easiest way to create the non SEF link to an article in Joomla is to use the Advanced Link Component in _JCE_, the advanced text editor for Joomla. ![JCE screenshot](/images/stories/sound_off/jce-screenshot.jpg) With this component you can browse to the menu item or content item you want to link to. When you click on the article you want the link for, JCE will put the non SEF URL as the link. This very easy to use. > Everyone has an opinion One more Joomla! Truism; there are no shortages of opinions on how Joomla! should work and how to run the Joomla! project. Here's a place to freely say what you would like to see different about Joomla. We are answering the question, "If you had total authority over the Joomla! project, what is the one thing you would change or do differently?" We're already talking about it over here: [http://joejoomla.com/change-joomla](/component/content/article/this-is-how-i-would-change-joomla?catid=25:opinion) I hope you enjoyed these "Truisms". That's it for this post. I'll do some more in the future. --- ## Page 63: This is How I Would Change Joomla URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/this-is-how-i-would-change-joomla Date: 2024-01-02 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ![Change Joomla](/images/stories/sound_off/change.jpg) I get to sound off about all my personal opinions on Joomla in this blog. I also let you have your say. But for this blog entry let's turn it around and make it **all about YOUR Joomla! opinion**.**** Here I am at the **Joomla World Conference in beautiful Rome from November 17-19 2017.** This year I’m inviting everyone to give their opinion about what Joomla should be doing different or how the Joomla project should be run. On Saturday, March 14, 2015 I did a presentation called "**Joomla Entanglement - How to Leverage Your Influence” at JoomlaDay Boston** in Boston, Massachusetts. I invited the people in my session to give their opinion about what Joomla! should be doing different or how the Joomla! project should be run. On Friday November 8, 2013 I did a presentation called **SEO From a Client Perspective” at the Joomla! World Conference 2013** in Boston, Massachusetts. I invited the people in my session to give their opinion about what Joomla! should be doing different or how the Joomla! project should be run. I started this page just prior to a presentation I did in 2013 called **"Joomla! Truisms" at JandBeyond** and we got some great opinions and feedback here. This page is like a suggestion box for Joomla! where you can see what is on the minds of others. You may discover that you have things in common with Joomlers and they may also rally around your great ideas for changing Joomla. Here's the question to help get you started: > What would you change about Joomla! if you had total authority over the project? Gather your thoughts and then post them in the comments. Comments are moderated. I won't post spam, personal attacks, or obscenities. Lively discussion is welcome. We all have an opinion, yours just may be the one that sparks the next greatest idea or changes the future direction of Joomla. --- ## Page 64: The Joomla! Project To Offer Free Video Training URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/the-joomla-project-to-offer-free-video-training Date: 2024-01-02 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Joomla users will benefit big time! ![Free Video Training](/images/stories/free-video-training/training-joomla-org.jpg) Last August of 2015 Open Source Matters (OSM) published a request for proposal for companies to submit offers to provide video training for Joomla websites. The video training is to be provided free to anyone that wishes to learn how to use Joomla. [The winner of the RFP is OSTraining](http://opensourcematters.org/press/249-joomla-will-provide-free-video-training-in-partnership-with-ostraining.html) but the real winners are the hundreds of thousands of people who use Joomla every day for their websites. Preparations are well under way for the launch of the site and it should be live near the end of May 2016. > ## This can only be a good thing for many Joomla website users The video training will be offered for free at [http://training.joomla.org](http://training.joomla.org). It is being supplied by the industry leading _Open Source Training LLC_ based out of Bradenton, Florida, in the United States which has been an excellent source of Joomla training videos and tutorials for many years. OSTraining is owned by Steve Burge. Steve has been involved with Joomla for a long time and he is also the author of a best selling book about Joomla called [Joomla!® 3 "](https://www.amazon.com/Joomla-Explained-Step-Step-Edition/dp/0321943228/ref=dp_ob_title_bk). A portion of the money from his book goes back to Joomla. He is also a former member of OSM who has been very generous to the community in many ways. Among others that you may see in the videos will be Rod Martin. He is an excellent Joomla trainer and site integrator. Rod has done live Joomla training all over North America for OSTraining. I met Rod in person in Toronto and shortly afterwards took over the live Joomla training classes there from him since I live a lot closer to Toronto than he does. > ## The free Joomla training will be suitable for beginners The video training will teach users Joomla best practices. I can’t tell you how many times have I seen website content publishers doing things such as uploading oversized images into their articles which haven’t been properly optimized for websites. Expect to learn all sorts of great hints and tips on how to set things up correctly and have a proper workflow. Of course once someone masters the beginners basics they may want to progress to a higher level of Joomla training and they can do that by enrolling at OSTraining as well. Prices are very reasonable and the quality of the training is excellent. This could be one of your best returns on investment in regards to your Joomla website. > ## OSTraining is a strategic partner for Joomla The Joomla / OSTraining partnership is excellent for the Joomla project and the community at large. There is no better way to learn how to use the best open source cms software on the planet today than from the best Joomltraining company available. A resource like this should attract new users to the Joomla CMS. OSTraining did not charge the project for setting up the video training program. They also offered to give a portion of the proceeds of anyone who upgrades from the free video training to a paid training back to the Joomla project. > ## Here’s your opportunity to shine! Joomla has a huge community of volunteers who give back to the project in many different ways. If you want to see how you can get involved take a look at [The Volunteer Portal](https://volunteers.joomla.org/ "The Volunteer Portal"). Here you will find good people volunteering their time and skills to the project. If you see a Joomla! Working Group there where you think you might fit in just visit the “Get Involved” tab for the group to contact them. This is how you can contribute to make things happen in Joomla. It is very satisfying to bring something new to life just like this video training program. Nothing happens without volunteers stepping up and getting involved. Here’s your opportunity to shine, go for it! --- ## Page 65: Top 5 Tips For Your Web Site URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/top-5-tips-for-your-web-site Date: 2024-01-01 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Get Started On The Right Foot Your website project should be fun and rewarding but it also requires you to be responsible for making sound technological decisions. This is especially important when you use a Content Management System (CMS) for your website. You never start out expecting to be part of a horror story but poor decisions can create chaos where websites are concerned. Here are the top 5 tips to keep your website project from becoming a nightmare: ![Tip 1](/images/stories/one.jpg) ## Use A Good Web Hosting Service - You Will Get What You Pay For The allure of super cheap monthly web hosting can turn your website project into a hassle. Cheap low quality hosting providers often stick your website on a shared, over crowded and under performing server. Its like living in a high density building that lacks the minimal standard of services to make living bearable. Have you ever been in a high rise tower with only one working elevator? It isn’t fun. When your website stalls to a crawl no one will want to spend time on it. This may not have anything to do with your domain either. Other domains on the shared server might be getting thousands of hits an hour using up all of the server's resources. This affects your website. There's also no joy when you are trying to publish content and save your work when it takes forever to refresh the pages of your site. If you are serious about your website pay for decent web hosting. There’s lots of good hosting companies out there. Do your research and pick one that offers good value for your money and is right for the software that you will be using. Make sure the one you choose has a reputation for being responsive and easy to get help when you need it. ![Tip 2](/images/stories/two.jpg) ## Only Use Legitimate Templates From Reputable Developers Or Template Clubs Free things are nice but don’t be tempted to get any free template from a site you know very little about. Just because it looks good doesn't mean it is. Unscrupulous developers can insert malware in illegitimate or ripped off templates from respected businesses that will create links to all kinds of nonsense such as pornographic sites, pharmaceutical scams and heaven knows what else on your site and embarrass you. Worse things can also happen causing serious damage to the server or even just be super annoying to get rid of when discovered. If you are going to use a template, other than the ones that are provided by the CMS you are using, get them from template clubs or developers that have a good reputation. Reputable template clubs also offer support and information that can elevate your website into something you are really proud of. Many of the top template clubs will often have a free template you can download from them. Usually their club templates are very inexpensive anyway. You want a rewarding experience instead of the frustration of finding out you’ve been taken advantage of. Never get your template from a pirate or warez site that offer free or low cost templates they stole from the good template clubs. When you do this you are putting trust in someone or a company that doesn’t deserve it. ![Tip 3](/images/stories/three.jpg) ## Have A Solid Backup Strategy Backing up your website on a regular basis is the best insurance. If you do not take responsibility to implement a robust backup strategy you have no one to blame but yourself when things go wrong. Will things go wrong? If they do, having a restorable backup will save you time, money and the stress associated with recovering from a disaster of any sort. Noticed I said ‘restorable backup’. Just because you made a backup doesn’t mean it will be automatically restorable and bring your site back to a previous version when needed. Backups need to be tested to ensure they will indeed be restorable. The planning of your website must include a solid backup plan. There’s great backup software available for every CMS. The best of them will not only backup your site but also upload your backup to a different location than the web server your site is hosted on. That’s a good idea because if your backup is on the web server that has a problem and you can’t get to your backup then it’s not very useful. Good and inexpensive off site storage is also available for your website backups. These are an integral part of a solid backup strategy. ![Tip 4](/images/stories/four.jpg) ## Only Install Software & Extensions From Known & Trusted Developers An extension for a CMS is something you install or upload to your website that extends the functionality and capabilities of your core software. Resist the temptation to install every kind of cool third party extension you can find for your website. This is an invitation to open the door for big problems. Not everyone who writes code for your CMS is using best coding practices. Some actually do truly baffling things. I remember being called to look at a website for a business that said they were having trouble creating a simple menu item for their Joomla! site. Creating menus in Joomla has always been one of the easiest things to do and also a terrific reason to use a system like Joomla. In their case the developer who created the menu system for the website in question didn’t use Joomla's menu capabilities at all. The developer created a Flash based menu system because it looked cool. It made using that Joomla CMS no better than working with a static HTML website. Part of your due diligence when researching the extensions you want to use on your website is to learn all you can about who is writing the code for them. If an extension is not done properly there is a potential for software conflicts or security vulnerabilities to become inherent in your site. Someone could exploit a vulnerability and get control of your website or even the entire web server and create all kinds of havoc for you and others. Will the developers or companies that created the extensions your site depends on be there for you in the future? When your site software needs to be updated and there is a big change in the way the code works will they be ready in a timely matter with an update of their extensions for your site? Will you continue getting the support and help you need? This will make a big difference in the success and joy of your website down the road. ![Tip 5](/images/stories/five.jpg) ## Be Security Conscious And Keep Things Up To Date When you create a website you must take responsibility for it. Keeping your website software up to date with the most recent security patches is the most responsible thing you can do. Software is updated for a reason. Some of it is to give you new features, however, a lot of it is to fix bugs and shut the door to potential vulnerabilities that are discovered in the software. This applies to both your core CMS software as well as all your third party extensions. Beware of customizing the code for your website or any of its extensions in such a way that they can’t be updated in a timely manner. By using best practices when customizing the software it will allow you to maintain your customizations as well as keeping your software secure. Leaving old versions of software on the same server is also a big security risk. Don’t do it. Your site or server can be hacked through old websites or even unused extensions that you let become obsolete. Uninstall and delete any extensions you are no longer using. This is the kind of thing people with malicious intent go looking for to make your life miserable. Heed these top 5 tips for your web site. They are a solid foundation to work from and will serve you well. --- ## Page 66: Joomla! Culture Needs a Change URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-culture-needs-a-change Date: 2024-01-01 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. I love Joomla but some of it’s culture needs to change. This is a huge topic so I’m only going to deal with Joomla versioning in this blog post. Before we get started you need to know that the following is my personal opinion only and does not reflect in any way an official view of the Joomla project or Open Source Matters. If you are clear on that then we are good to go… Sometimes it seems that Joomla is immensely popular in spite of itself. I’ve been involved with Joomla since 2005 and it’s been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, successes and failures. > Joomla’s culture needs a change in order to thrive in the future Now that 2014 is here it’s time to reflect on the past and determine what needs to change. Some make a habit of criticizing Joomla for everything that they feel is negative but I’m not interested in that. I’m optimistic that there are great people involved with the project who care about Joomla and want to see it rise to it’s full potential. So toward that end I would like to look at the impact of Joomla versioning based on it’s Long Term Support (LTS) and Short Term Support (STS) release cycles. > Joomla versioning needs to reflect customer thinking The Joomla version numbering system for STS and LTS cycles are based on developer thinking and not customer thinking. Here's how it currently works; if you want cutting edge features, you are encouraged to go with the STS releases – for example, 3.0 in September 2012, 3.1 in March 2013, and 3.2 in November 2013. Then when 3.5 comes around it is considered the new stable and LTS version. If you want stability and can live with the 2.5 feature set, stay on 2.5 until after 3.5 is released and then update to 3.5. Same thing with version 4. Go the 4.0 / 4.1 / 4.5 path to get the latest-greatest, which is STS or wait for 4.5 which is LTS to reduce the number of updates you need to do. > The current versioning system is confusing for the customer When you have to spend a lot of time explaining versioning to end users then you know they don’t get it. Customers equate cutting edge to be a major new release with a new number, not an incremental number. Web designers and integrators that tell their clients to stay on an earlier version of Joomla because it’s better or more stable only hurt the future of Joomla. Developers know that when a major operating system from someone like Apple Inc. is released that it usually takes a couple of incremental version updates to get everything completely settled down. Customers, however, are sold the major version change on the full version number such as v8, v9, v10 etc., not the incremental number. This is because the marketing is geared to customers. I think we are better off in the long term making the experience of Joomla for the end users and customers the best it can be. The reason that Joomla is popular is because of the number of websites that use it. There are far more customers and end users for Joomla than there are Joomla developers. Without the end user or customer Joomla would simply be a place where developers do cool stuff. I’ve called this ‘the developers playground’ which some have berated me for because they feel it is an offensive point of view. > Joomla developers should be client conscious Joomla's success in the early days was dependant upon the 3rd party extensions that made Joomla so desirable and valuable for the end user. Now when a major new release of Joomla happens and the developers aren’t ready with their extensions they hurt the future of the project because the end users will be slow to adopt the new version. So if Joomla is the horse and the 3rd party extensions are the cart, we have been putting the cart before horse. If the cart lost interest the horse had nothing to pull so-to-speak. It’s not trivial for developers to invest in their extensions for new major releases of Joomla but if they are serious about their future Joomla business they should be ready to go. Imagine Windows or Apple coming out with a new operating system where the major software that runs on these systems wasn’t available for the end users. The new operating system release is considered a failure if a large percentage of the current customer base doesn’t adopt it quickly. > With a culture change Joomla will thrive for the future I would love to see a major new Joomla version release with a full version number and not an incremental number and the top Joomla! extensions ready to go. It’s very impressive when a software company comes out with a major new release, does a public event launch, and brings out their top software vendors to show how well everything works and how tightly the core product and the software developer community work together. It’s in both parties best interests to hit a home run together. We haven’t been doing that but if we did it would benefit both the Joomla project as well as the developer community because it would create tremendous confidence in the end user base. > Changing culture is not trivial Change can be difficult for some people but it’s essential for future health. Innovator disrupters jump on opportunities to displace those who have the lions share of a product or service in a market category. Developers give customers the appearance of lack of interest in Joomla when their products and services are slow to be updated to work with the newest versions of Joomla. So how do we change the culture of Joomla in this regard? I think we need to find the developers who want to form a new kind of culture and simply work with them towards that end. Change the versioning numbers to remove the confusion for the customers and coordinate a celebration of the LTS release cycle with all it’s cool new features along with the 3rd party developers who are ready to go. In other words, have a party and those who want to be there will be identified as the new culture of Joomla. --- ## Page 67: The Joomla! Business Dream URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/the-joomla-business-dream Date: 2023-12-29 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. There are many ways to the top of a mountain but not everyone gets to plant their flag there. Failing to fulfill your business dream isn't necessarily because what you have to offer isn't wanted or needed. Failure is often the result of dream robbers. Maybe your dream is to have your own business, or simply to work full time for a good company. You spend so much of your life working, why spend it being miserable or hating what you do? Why just dream about something better? Perhaps you have already been robbed of a dream. Wouldn't you like your dream to come true? Let's do something about it. Everything starts with a dream Fulfilling a dream makes you come alive. When you have a dream you get excited and it brings you joy. Take note of that because when your dream is being challenged the joy and excitement disappear. So where are you right now? Do you have a dream or not? If you are not already living your dream, why not at least do some dream exploration? It doesn't cost you anything to dream. > A great place to be is when you have nowhere to go but up You may be at rock bottom looking up at a big mountain. It's going to be a lot of work. So what? Pursuing a dream may be the most exciting adventure of your life. Do not be concerned about how humble your beginnings look. There is nothing wrong with starting small and growing slowly. Every successful business doesn't have to take off like a rocket. Don't let other people set your goals for you. A simple goal might be to do well enough to provide for both you and your clients needs. Later on one of the bigger challenges will be managing your growth. > Guard your dream This is where most people fail, they don’t guard their dreams. They fall prey to dream robbers. I've seen very talented people start a venture and look like they were going to be wildly successful. Suddenly their enterprise dives to the ground and comes to a halt. They give up and move on to something else. This becomes a pattern that happens over and over again. It seems they never get past a certain point. > What is a dream robber? There are 3 kinds of dream robbers: 1. **The negative seed planter** - This kind of dream robber could be your mother or father, a friend, relative, co-worker, an authority figure, or even a stranger. It could also simply be something in the media you heard or saw. 2. **The bad decision maker or indecisive person** - This kind is someone who either makes business killing mistakes or a person that is unwilling to make a decision. 3. **Unbalanced lifestyle** - This one is sneaky and a real killer. Dream robbers are inevitable. They exist just because you have a dream. > Don't listen to the negative seed planters ![Marilyn Monroe](/images/stories/sound_off/marilyn-monroe.jpg) A seed will only produce whatever kind of tree or crop that the seed is. An apple seed won't produce a pear tree. Likewise, if you allow all the negative things that people tell you to take root in your thinking such as you are not good enough or talented enough, etc., your drean will be choked out and you will never succeed. Listening to the negative seed planters will rob you of your dream. Marilyn Monroe is a Hollywood legend. If she had listened to what the experts told her she never would have made it in the movie business. Columbia Pictures let her first contract expire because they told her that she wasn't pretty enough or talented enough to be an actress. \[Source: [Business Insider](http://www.businessinsider.com/26-successful-people-who-failed-at-first-2012-7?op=1#ixzz2U9CqMPZ1)\] > Make good decisions not bad ones Some people are indecisive and won't make a decision. This is based in fear. You need to overcome fear. Other people are reckless and make business killing decisions such as spending more money than they earn. Both of these types of behaviours are dream robbers. Take personal responsibility for all your decisions. They are your responsibility alone, not others who have no stake in your success. Be a person that makes good decisions. Spend your time with people who are successful and learn from them. Don't spend your time with people who aren't doing anything or going anywhere. Don't be afraid of making mistakes along the way. Learn from your mistakes, don't let them rob you of your dream. > An unbalanced lifestyle is a killer dream robber Your dream can be robbed by abusing your mental and physical heath. You have one body and it is important to keep it running well. Built into your body are warning indicators when things are getting out of balance. By ignoring the warning signs and blowing them off you are heading for serious trouble. An early warning sign that things are out of balance is anxiety. Remember when your dream first came? It came with a sense of joy and excitement. When you are hit with anxiety it is an indicator that you need to make an adjustment. If you blow off anxiety and ignore it your well being will deteriorate and the next serious warning your body will give you will be an emotional breakdown. If you don't do something to turn things around and continue doing what you are doing you are headed for a nervous breakdown. A nervous breakdown will stop you in your tracks. You may recover from a it but you run the risk of permanent damage to your health. You might never be same. What causes these negative symptoms are things in life and in your job that drain you. Things that drain are different for everyone. Something that might drain you may be a really bad client, or doing things that you aren't meant to do such as accounting if you are not good at it. Certain kinds of meetings may drain you. Serious personal problems in relationships may drain you. You can endure draining activities much better if your life is balanced and you are continually filling yourself up with things that offset the drainers and put life back into you. Things that fill you up and help you to cope better with drainers are activities like spending time with family and friends and laughing, enjoyable hobbies, and other happy and positive influences. When you fill yourself up like this, your body is better able to endure those times when there are drains on you. Working harder and never having any fun isn't the answer to being successful. Hard work is easier to do when you live a balanced lifestyle. When there is a lot of stress in your job or you are greatly challenged you need to step up and increase the things that fill up your life, not back away from them. > Don't let others determine what success is for you Remember why you wanted to pursue your dream in the first place. It might have been that you wanted to have control over your time, or to be able to pick your own clients, or to pick what kinds of projects you want to work on instead of someone else dictating what you do. Also, beware of pursuing a dream solely to make a lot of money, it is wrought with peril. Success means different things to different people so don't let others tell you you are not successful if you don't measure up to their ideal of success. This is your life and fulfilling a dream will bring meaning to it and give you joy. > What will be your final thought when you are breathing your last breath? What will go through your head when you are breathing your last breath on earth? Will it be that you pursued your dream and you have no regrets? If your last thought is that you regretted something then you were probably robbed by a dream robber. You still have time to do something about it, so what are you waiting for? Get on with it and start pursuing your dream. --- ## Page 68: The Intranet Should Be Your Most Productive Website URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/the-intranet-should-be-your-most-productive-website Date: 2023-12-29 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Or why I ditched several productivity tools in favour of a Joomla Intranet. One of the first things I created using Joomla was an internal communication system for a large organization. This is called an intranet. An intranet is a private network accessible only to the staff of an organization. In this particular case the intranet helped solve a problem that is common in a lot of businesses, the problem of internal silos and miscommunication between departments. > ## An intranet can help solve the problem of miscommunication between departments In this organization I put a Joomla install on an internal server on the local area network (LAN). For the site I simply used one of the templates that ships with Joomla and created the structure and menus to match the company departments. I gave space on the home page to each of four main departments in the organization. Each department was then given the mandate to publish news items from their department. The items that they wanted to share with the entire organization were to be ‘featured’ articles so they would appear on the home page for everyone to view. Each department was to have a minimum of three featured articles which would be on the home page. All the other articles from their department could be accessed via a menu taking you to their section of the website. > ## Everyone can be up to date about about each department at all times We set the home page for all the staff browsers to our company news page. Every morning when the staff fired up their web browser the first thing they would see the top news items from each department in the organization. They could quickly scan the home page and be up to date with what was going on in all the departments including their own. This created an improved collaborative environment between the departments and as a wonderful side bonus also raised the moral of the organization as they read stories about their coworkers and associates. In the past it would sometimes take a couple of months for important announcements from management to filter down to the grassroots of the company. Now it was seen right away as a top item headline on the homepage. No one could say they didn’t get the memo! > ## The information you need can be retrieved from a Joomla CMS quickly In my own office over the years I have tried several different productivity tools to help me be more informed, organized and efficient. I've used to-do lists, calendars, project manager applications, etc. There’s no shortage of systems available for these kinds of things. I have finally come to realize that for all the tools that are available to help you be better organized and access information quickly, there is none better than a Joomla Content Management System (CMS). Despite all the effort that I was putting into organizing everything including my notes which were stacked nicely into notebooks and everything tagged, it was often difficult to find exactly what I knew was buried in there somewhere. Then out of frustration I would adopt a different application that did a specific function really well and now I was maintaining and managing separate systems. I turned into a productivity tool junkie and it was killing my productivity. That’s when I came to the realization that that a CMS intranet works better. Mind you, when you are on the road your intranet needs a special setup to access it from the wide area network. There are solutions for this but they are outside the intended topic for this article. > ## One place for information and one system to maintain There’s no getting around it, information that you want to be accessible needs to be organized and stored in an easy to retrieve fashion. With a content management system like Joomla everything is in one place and you have one system to maintain. You quickly learn how to organize information better and can go deep into Joomla’s features to customize the user experience to suit how you work best. My home page is essentially my daily priorities list. At the onset of the day I just fire up my web browser and everything I need pops up right in front of me. The featured articles have all the relevant information for each task including notes and the paths to related digital assets on the network for them. All kinds of other information is easily found on this website as well as I continually add things to it. This site is a treasure trove for me. If anyone asked me what the most valuable and productive website I ever created was, my personal intranet would be it. > ## Joomla doesn't have any licensing fees. Who doesn’t like to save money? I also love the cost savings that comes with adopting this kind of information system. Joomla doesn't have any licensing fees. It's open source software under the GNU General Public License Version 2. I’ve been able to drop a variety of productivity applications. All those other productivity tools with their subscription and update fees start to add up. It feels good to drop some of them. Who doesn’t like to save money? --- ## Page 69: A Little Animation For Your Website URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/a-little-animation-for-your-website Date: 2023-12-29 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Is there an unused animation style sheet lurking in your site? > ## Are you missing the opportunity to add interest and emphasis to your content using animation? Is there an animation style sheet or JavaScript file lurking under the hood of your website just waiting to be used? Most modern content management system (CMS) templates include some sort of animation capability. This means you can add animation effects to headlines, images, paragraph blocks and single words in the articles you publish to give them extra pizzazz. It’s a great way to highlight and emphasizing certain aspects of your content. Even if you don’t have an animation file in your template you can easily add one like **animate.css** from [https://daneden.github.io/animate.css/](https://daneden.github.io/animate.css/) > ## What should you use animation for? I remember when content first started to be published online, the best websites attracted their readership with the elements of education, information, and entertainment. Animation can add the aspect of entertainment very easily. Why do we need entertainment in our content? It’s because it is effective. Some of the most popular communicators weave an incredible sense of humour into their message. People are generally attracted to and remember things that give them enjoyment. How many times have you heard the statement “he makes me laugh”? > ## Don’t let your animation become annoying. Some websites abuse the use of animation. Have you ever been lured to a site by a really captivating link only to land on a page that is in constant motion with popups and videos appearing and disappearing? It interferes with the content you are trying to read by moving it all around. Finally when you get fed up and want to leave the page, another pop up appears in your face shouting “**DON’T GO!**” Remind me not to visit that site again. This is like a person at an event that has no idea of social graces or when they’ve crossed the line to just plain rude. You want to get away from them. Don’t let your animation become annoying. You also need to know your audience when you are using animation. If your readership are mainly using low end mobile devices then animating your pages doesn't make sense. For certain types of website content animation should be avoided altogether. It may be inappropriate to animate a web page dealing with obituary listings. Use some common sense. > ## CSS or JavaScript animation? CSS can only do simpler animations. If you want to animate an element with complex timing and scaling you are likely going to need to do this with JavaScript. You can’t have an element scaling back and forth continuously and then suddenly make it rotate on rollover using CSS alone. > ## How do I implement animation in my website? When you approach the idea of adding animation to your website work with a good designer to see what makes sense for it. Then you’ll need a knowledgeable person who knows how to add the necessary classes to the HTML content you are animating. It’s not that hard. If your site didn’t come with an animation style sheet and you need to add one be careful that there aren’t conflicts with existing style sheets using the same class names. Hopefully there’s an animation style sheet just sitting there waiting for you to bring it to life! --- ## Page 70: Joomla! vs Wordpress for Security URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-vs-wordpress-for-security Date: 2023-12-29 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### Joomla! is a much better designed system when it comes to security > ## Who wins the fight when it comes to Joomla vs Wordpress for security? I read a very eye opening tech support issue regarding Joomla vs Wordpress when it comes to security. It was written by a talented and well respected developer that specializes in web based Content Management Systems (CMS) security and backup tools. It would have been great for him to write his own blog post about this topic but he doesn’t want to deal with the potential fallout from Wordpress fans such a blog post may create. I understand his point, people can react in fanatical and negative ways when you criticize their beloved platform. Here at JoeJoomla we don’t have any concern in this regard. Our bias towards Joomla is obvious and there are good reasons we prefer Joomla. > ## Joomla! is a much better designed system Way back at the start of our website building journey in 2005 I asked a few developers what their CMS of choice was. Several of them identified Joomla. One developer in particular told me that he had considered building his own CMS but when he reviewed the Joomla code base he discovered that it was very well done and cleaner than any other CMS based software available. There was no point in recreating the wheel so to speak. Joomla already had a large community of developers supporting it including a security team of which this particular person joined to contribute to the project. > ## Developer best practices for Joomla ensures security is properly addressed What essentially makes Joomla a better choice for security is the predictable ways that it works. All front and backend web requests must go through an index.php file. Joomla uses predictable directory names for extensions, media files, images and so on. Plugin events are fired by the core in predicable ways. When a developer creates extensions and other things for Joomla there is a best practices method of doing so that ensures security is addressed properly. > ## WordPress by design is chaotic By design WordPress has a chaotic structure which allows many directly web accessible .php files and plugins. The wp-content folder is a security nightmare hosting code installed by plugins, themes, core upgrade files and user uploads, all with different levels of trust in the same folder. Plugin subdirectories are directly web accessible for files and media. WordPress themes launch many of the hooks instead of the core and there is no predictability in the sequence of how things are triggered. Wordpress themes are based on an override system that allows the developer to specialize each content or post type from scratch. That's literally because there is no \`index.php\` file. There is also no way to ensure you're purchasing a clean or proper template because the \`header.php\`, \`footer.php\`, etc. files are just conventions that can be easily broken. Wordpress coding practices are based on php 3.x standards which if you check on php.net you will see is from over 17 years ago. There is no Object-oriented programming (OOP) at all, and everything is executed in "easy-to-use" but also loose code structures and functions. This also leads to improper code and improper code is easily insecure as well. Having a centralized and messy \`functions.php\` file in the theme is the best example of this. > ## WordPress cannot be secured as tightly or easily as Joomla The number one cause of hacked WP sites are from hack scripts that hackers upload which execute malicious files. It's easier for them because of the inherently poor security model by which WordPress allows. You really want to know a lot about who is creating those plugins for WordPress functionality that you are using. If you are uninformed you are taking big chances with your site. There's just too many points of entry that a hacker can target in a site with poorly done direct web accessible php files. To make things worse, with the emergence of cryptocurrency technology, WordPress installations are heavily under attack by malicious crypto miners. They are taking advantage of the very popular WordPress platform that is easily targeted for code injection for things such as javascript miners. The injected scripts are named in such a way to make them appear legitimate so that a webmaster doesn’t get alarmed when seeing them. The scripts are designed to use the infected website cpu cycles to mine cryptocurrencies for the hackers. So if you notice your WordPress site seems to be struggling when it doesn't have a lot of visitors this might be a sign that something is amiss in this area. > ## The Joomla! core enforces content security through centralized points In Joomla! all developers MUST go through JInput to get access to $\_FILES, $\_GET, $\_POST and $\_REQUEST superglobals when requesting data. This prevents a lot of attacks because there are centralized points of enforcing content security. Some of the WordPress's most popular plugins and commonly used themes would never see the light of day in the Joomlasphere. Joomla forces a level of security that doesn't allow shoddy code. Does that mean there has never been poorly done extensions, themes and plugins for Joomla? No it doesn't. Joomla has had it's share of security issues but the community of volunteers that work with Joomla have been good and keep getting better with regards to website security. This is on top of the fact that Joomla's foundational structure is already security conscious. It won't be long before we are enjoying the new Joomla 4.x version that the production team is working on. It is designed with an improved code structure and base practices. Joomla versions 2 and 3 are secure but there are improvements being made in the MVC model and in the general structure. Many of the improvements are already available in Joomla 3.8. > ## WordPress will never be as secure as Joomla While it is possible that you can have a secure WordPress site, it takes a huge effort to achieve it. You need to be highly conscious of what the code from all those plugins and your theme is allowing. If you are running a WordPress site surely you have qualified people to make those assessments. Several years ago I toyed with having a WordPress blog, after all WordPress had the reputation of being the darling and heavyweight champion of blogging. All it took for me to run from WordPress was dealing with WordPress themes. I hear from web developers on a weekly basis about the nightmare that WordPress is to deal with in many areas. I also hear about the good things that WordPress has that Joomla doesn't but it isn't nearly enough to make me want to switch. If you are serious about website security and have a choice to make between one platform or the other Joomla is the right choice. --- ## Page 71: Buying and Selling Domain Names URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/buying-and-selling-domain-names Date: 2023-12-28 Description: JoeJoomla, from The Joe Sonne Group, provides website solutions that brings you business. ### At NamesCon 2018 On Saturday January 27th I boarded a plane from Pearson International in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and headed to my first experience with the domain name industry, an event called [_NamesCon 2018_](http://namescon.com/) at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. I was on a mission to represent Joomla to the attendees of this event, to find new sponsors for the project, and to keep in touch with others that I met last fall at World Hosting Days which was at the very same location. > ## This is an eye opening experience into a thriving industry You knew domain name buying and selling was a thing but maybe you didn't realize how big it is. I remember years ago when friends of mine were buying domain names in the hope of making money none of them ever reported back about making a profit selling them. All those domains they bought needed to be renewed each year. If one had a lot of domain names in their portfolio it was a fairly hefty investment that may or may not pay off. I didn't get into it myself. Back then I figured some people might get lucky and bag a few clever domain names to sell to someone who was willing to pay big bucks for later. Surely this couldn't be a great path to riches. Boy was I wrong. > ## How big is it? ![NamesCon 2018 Auction](/images/stories/sound_off/namescon_2018_auction.jpg) It's big, probably bigger than you imagined unless you are already in the business. At the NamesCon 2018 auction the auctioneer was hollering out bid amounts for some domains in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, including a few for a million plus. Later when I Googled what some historic high prices for domains have been I found things like "Insurance.com" sold for $35.6 million in 2010, "VacationRentals.com" sold for $35 million in 2007 and "PrivateJet.com" sold for $30.1 million in 2012. The articles that published those prices said that there may have been other items included along with the domain name asset. Still, it gives you an idea about the domain industry. Later in the evening after the NamesCon 2018 auction there was a lively social event with a lot of celebrating going on. Happy buyers wearing huge smiles abounded in the very loud and over amplified party I was at. There's lots of money in this industry. All the attendees at NamesCon 2018 were really nice people. Being a newbie at this sort of thing I was very grateful for the information that was freely shared by experienced "domainers" as they call themselves. Techniques on how to package domains for sale was explained, things like creating artwork and websites to highlight a domain name with the purpose of enticing potential buyers and showing them how a name can appear to an online audience. > ## So what was I doing there? I was sent to NamesCon 2018 to represent Joomla.org to the attendees and exhibitors. There's a crossover of people who come to domain events that also attend web hosting shows. I met several people at this event who were in the same place last fall when I attended World Hosting Days. A rapport is now growing between myself and some of the familiar faces. Several people genuinely expressed how happy they were to see someone from Joomla there. I'm currently the Capital Team Chair for the Joomla project. Our team is the one that brings sponsorship and advertising money into the project so Joomla.org can run its operations. Joomla is an open source software project run by volunteers but there are expenses associated with it. Things like the maintenance & operation of domains, Joomla's presence at IT events, expenses for code sprints, funds needed to run JoomlaDays and other Joomla events as well as other associated services. The project also has to pay taxes, accounting, and legal expenses. Legal expenses are for things like protecting the Joomla trademark. > ## Is it worthwhile for Joomla to be at an event like this? It is very worthwhile for the Joomla project to have visibility at an event like NamesCon. Some of the meetings that I had, a few of which also included other leaders from the Joomla project such as Robert Jacobi, President, and Mike Demo, Treasurer, will certainly bear good fruit and bring in a nice return on Joomla's investment for attending this kind of event. We're currently in ongoing negotiations and planning with a couple of key companies for high level Joomla sponsorship and partnership arrangements. It's very exciting. The other thing that occurred at this event was the opportunity to clarify what Joomla is all about. Several companies attending this show were surprised to hear that I was a volunteer for the project and not employed full time. Joomla is unique in this way, there is no paid staff at Joomla.org or Open Source Matters. Everyone in leadership or who participates is a volunteer. > ## Joomla got some attention on the leaderboard I personally haven't been to many of these kinds of events so I was a surprised when Mike Demo mentioned that I was showing up on the 'Leaderboard' of the NamesCon 2018 app. The app was available for anyone registered at the event that wanted to connect and communicate with other attendees and exhibitors through their mobile devices. The idea is that you can Tweet your activities to all the NamesCon people, send private messages back and forth and request meetings too. The app had some deficiencies, many of us couldn't get the meeting requests to work, but the private messaging and activity stream worked great. So there I was Tweeting what was going on from my perspective about the event and Mike showed me the 'Leaderboard' list. I was way down on the list but high enough to appear. NamesCon was running a Leaderboard contest. At the end of the event they would draw a name from the top 10 users on the leaderboard for a free ticket to the next NamesCon. You can see from the picture below how my score on the Leaderboard climbed. I only managed to get as high as number 6 and settled at a final position of number 7 at the end of the event. I have no idea how the top person managed to get as high a score as he did because I was working this app pretty hard and didn't even come close to his score. He must have had an associate working the app full time during the event to rack up those kinds of points. I qualified for the draw but didn't win, however, Joomla got a lot of attention with the leaderboard. ![NamesCon 2018 Auction](/images/stories/sound_off/namescon-2018-leaderboard-progression.jpg) > ## The bottom line the domain industry is thriving and lively. The people are fun. The sessions I attended were fantastic. The NamesCon event in general was run excellently. What's not to like? It's an investment in time and money to be at an event like this but If you want to get serious about the domain industry I can't think of a better place to go. The level of knowledge that is being shared is tremendous and the networking is excellent. I was really hoping to win that free ticket for the next NamesCon. That was my only disappointment. --- ## Page 72: Joomla 4 Is Launched and This Is My Favourite Feature URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/joomla-4-is-launched-and-this-is-my-favourite-feature Date: 2023-12-28 Description: Joomla 4 Is launched and my favourite feature is the new and easily customized Atum administrator template. ### Joomla 4 Stable Launched on Joomla's 16th Birthday August 17, 2021 Tuesday August 17, 2021 was Joomla's 16th birthday and Joomlers around the world celebrated with big events. Birthdays usually come with a gift and after the long wait for Joomla 4 what could be better than a gift of the official launch of Joomla 4.o stable release? > ## There Are Lots Of Great New and Improved Features In Joomla 4 Here's a list of the new things that Joomla 4 brings: - Bootstrap 5 Integration - MVC layer improvements - New front-end template - New back-end template - New Media manager - Simplified installation process - Faster page loading times - SEO optimized - Built in update process to go from v 3.10 to 4.0 - AA level WCAG 2.1 accessibility compliance on core templates - Customizable HTML email templates - Web Services out of the box - Enhanced Command Line Interface - MooTools and jQuery removed from the core - Workflow for publishing content I may have missed some new features but what I really want to talk about is my favourite new Joomla 4 thing, the easily customized Joomla administrator dashboard! > ## An Easily Customized Admin Dashboard is My Favourite Feature of Joomla 4 The volunteers that contributed to make Joomla 4 stable a reality are brilliant and all of the improvements are going to help a lot of people in many different ways. None of the improvements are trivial but the one thing that jumped right out at me that I am really liking is the new administrator template called Atum. Atum is easily customized and this is going to help make the user experience for content publishers and administrators a wonderful experience. Yes you can customize the Joomla 3 administrator templates but no where as easy as you can with Atum. So lets take a look at this. This is what the Atum administrator dashboard looks like out of the box: ![Atum Joomla 4administrator template](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-4-favourite/joomla_4_atum.jpg) The developers did an amazing job of putting all the power of Joomla together in an nice and organized dashboard. However, for the novice Joomla user all of this could be really overwhelming. This is not unlike sitting down in the cockpit of a large jet and being faced with all the dials, nobs, switches and other things important to flying an airplane. It can be very intimidating and therefore a person might say that it is too complicated and they need something simpler to use. > ## This Will Make For a Much Better User Experience For Website Content Publishers With the Atum template not only can you make the dashboard simpler, you can also easily create a customized user experience suitable for everyone involved in publishing content on the website regardless of what their role is. Removing, adding and customizing the dashboard in Atum is so easy. Just click on the little cog icon on the top right corner of the dashboard modules and you can edit the module contents or unpublish them: ![Atum Joomla 4administrator module](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-4-favourite/edit-module.jpg) With this very simple but powerful functionality you can now clean up that backed admin area and customize the view for individual users. Go ahead and remove everything that is not needed for a particular user and give them just the things they need to do their work: ![Joe1 administrator dashboard](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-4-favourite/joe1-dashboard.jpg) The Joe1 dashboard example shown here is simplified by making available only the things that Joe1 users will need to do their work. Unnecessary functionality has been hidden from the user and other helpful things are added to the dashboard. The colours of the Joe1 dashboard have been changed to reflect the brand colours of the website to give it a familiar and customized look for the user. This part was done by adding a little CSS in the Atum template folder at: _https:// your-domain dot com/administrator/templates/atum/css/user.css_. Customizing the colours of the administrator template requires knowledge of CSS. The file with the styling in it that use to be named 'custom.css' in the admin template folder is now called 'user.css' instead. By adding a 'user.css' file to the Atum template's CSS directory your custom CSS is recognized by the template. But let's get back to the easier stuff. > ## A Combination of Easily Modified Admin Modules and Assigning Them to Specific User Groups With Access Levels is Where The Magic Comes In To give a custom user experience you need to create user groups that provide access to specific content that will be assigned to the dashboard modules for those users. The customized modules will only show to the appropriate users when they login to the Atum dashboard. At the top of the dashboard where you see 'Joe1 Stuff' is an Atum template position called 'customtop'. In this position I published a custom module and inserted the message you see across the top. You can put all kinds of useful things in there for the Joe1 user. The module is assigned to user group 'Joe1' so when Joe1 users login to the back end they are the only ones seeing this module. On the left side of the template I added another custom module in the 'menu' position. In that module I put handy links for Joe1 user. For this particular module I left the user group as 'Public' so all the different users can view this information since it is intended to be global and useful to everyone who works in the back end dashboard area. There are links to my client support website ticketing system, an email link and phone number. Again, there's all kinds of things you can do here, just think of what will be helpful to the user. The main area has a module I titled 'Shortcust cPanel Joe1' with just the items that Joe1 users need. Assuming that all Joe1 users write articles for the website I gave the them a button to create a new article, and also one that will automatically open a new article with the blog category already selected. To the right of that I published another custom module with a high contrast green background with instructions specifically for Joe1 users. Only Joe1 Group assigned users will see this module. Finally below these two modules is a module that shows only the articles created by the specific user logged into the dashboard. There's no need to assign this module to a group as the Joomla system takes care of things here selecting only the appropriate articles to display for each user. This makes for a nice uncluttered user experience for the Joe1 user. Now let's look at another dashboard for Joe2 users: ![Joe2 administrator dashboard](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-4-favourite/joe2-dashboard.jpg) The 'Shortcuts cPanel Joe2' has two different buttons than Joe1 has. There's different messages on the customtop and green module to the right. The 'My Articles' is now only showing Joe2 articles. These are really simple customizations but imagine what you can do to customize the user experience for yourself or your clients. For me this will be the most used and immediately noticeable improvement for my Joomla 4 clients. > ## Don't Forget to Customize the Login Screen Too! Below are two different backend login screens for Joomla 4. One is the Joomla.com login and the other is customized with The Joe Sonne Group brand colours. There's different messages, colours and logos on these two login screens. The logo image and brand name can be done in the Atum Administrator template Colour and Image Settings. This is found in the System Dashboard of your Joomla 4 admin area. Additional enhancements can be made via CSS in the user.css file of the Atum template. On the left column of the login screen a language override was used for the administrator template. Additional text was added to the bottom left area that says 'Need Support?' I added 'The Joe Sonne Client Support Site' link along with the other links already there using a module override. Even if you don't change the login screen, be sure to customize the admin dashboard to give yourself and your clients a truly customized user experience. This will make publishing content with your Joomla 4 website a joy. _**Click on the image to pop up a larger view.**_ [![Two different Joomla 4 Admin Login screens](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-4-favourite/side-by-side-login-screens.jpg)](/images/stories/sound_off/joomla-4-favourite/side-by-side-login-screens.jpg) --- ## Page 73: Customer Support Ticketing System For Clients URL: https://joejoomla.com/blog/customer-support-ticketing-system-for-clients Date: 2023-12-28 Description: Although we had what we thought was a good client support site a recent client onboarding highlighted the deficiency of our support by not allowing clients to i ### How a recent client onboarding highlighted the deficiency of our support site It may seem that we are a little late to the party so-to-speak regarding a ticketing system for clients but we've had a client support site for awhile now. The site is [https://clients.joesonne.com/](https://clients.joesonne.com/) and it is located at [Joe Sonne Marketing](https://joesonne.com/) because our clients are actually Joe Sonne Marketing clients. 'JoeJoomla' is the Joomla CMS web brand of Joe Sonne Marketing. But there was a deficiency with the support site which became obvious when we onboarded a recent new client. > ## First - The Good Stuff The Joomla Content Management System (CMS) makes an excellent platform for a client membership site. You can use it's Access Control Lists to create a User Group for each client so they only see their own content when they login to the site. There are plenty of Joomla components that make setting up a membership site easier but we did it with core Joomla functionality. We want to use as few third party extensions or components as possible and simply utilize Joomla's capabilities. This way you cut down the cost incurred of additional subscriptions and maintaining and upgrading the site is made easier in the long run. So we had what we thought was a good user experience for the client whereby we gave them access to information, training videos and also a way to collaborate in discussions on any of the items. Joomla doesn’t have a built in commenting system so that was an extension that we did install. The commenting system is nice because when someone updates a topic or participates in a discussion the latest remarks are distributed to those involved and they simply have to click a link in their email to go to the new information. The way it had been working was that clients would send us an email with their question or concern and if it made sense to have a response with screen shots, graphics or video we’d create a Joomla article and then send them the link to it. They could login to the site at their convenience, view the content and make comments on that page. This works fine when you have a smaller number of clients. It isn't too hard to initiate the topics. It’s also a great way for them to have a reference library of items they can always go back to if needed. > ## The Deficiency This system worked well for the longest time since we initiated all the topics and the clients simply went there for the content or training we provided. The problem is that the client can not initiate a topic. This is not entirely true because we could have given the clients the ability to upload an article, thereby effectively ‘creating’ a new topic but they would also have to manage the article by submitting it to the proper category for their specific client only content. There’s no way we want the client to have to deal with all this. Even if they were willing to do this they would need author rights to submit their article and the system would expose the other client categories to them. This defeats the isolating of clients from one another. We could have used a number of different approaches to solve this issue but since it necessitated customizing or adding an extension to the site why not just add a ready made and true ticketing system? So that’s what we did. > ## The Solution – A Proper Ticketing System You can go a couple of ways with a ticketing system. One choice is Software as a Service (SaaS) and another is a system dependant application. SaaS solutions take the care of maintaining the system out of your hand but they create other issues instead. Once you start using a SaaS solution for your business it’s difficult to change to something else without a lot of pain. There’s also pain in maintaining your own system but I really like the concept of your data being in your own hands. Most ticketing systems are pricey since you have to pay per user. By doing this you increased your overhead and overhead gets passed on to clients which we won’t do unless absolutely necessary. Our ticketing system choice was a modest investment. We implemented it so now our clients can easily initiate an issue, upload images if needed, and it solved the problem. Our system is also compliant with privacy laws. If someone wants all their data deleted it can be done simply and then it’s gone forever. If you want to know more about our quest for a customer support ticketing system get in touch with me and I'd be happy to talk to you on this topic. You can also make a comment below and let us know your thoughts and experiences with customer support ticketing systems too. ---