Joomla Tips and Tricks

Securing you Joomla website

bob@joomla-pro.com (B0b) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 10:23:00 +0000

How to prevent your Joomla 1.5.x website from being hacked?

There are two things you must do in order to keep you Joomla site safe and hack free.

1. Change default super admin

The default super admin number is '62' for all Joomla installs. There is a security risk if you don't change this.

First, go to the user manager then create a new super admin.

Second, login as the new super admin and then delete the default super admin created by Joomla.

2. Keep you Joomla up to date with the latest version

Simply go to this website:
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/

Download the correct upgrade package.

Upload it to the root of your Joomla installation by FTP.

Unzip the uploaded file. Allow all files to replace existing ones

That's it you are done! You now have updated your Joomla site.

Creating a Simple Membership Site

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:05:58 +0000

You can create a simple Joomla membership site with Joomla core components. Simply do the following:

1. Creating users can be done in two methods:

a. Admin assigns the user and password. In this case you have to disallow user registration at the Global Configuration - System - Users Settings.

b. If you wan users to register themselves go the Global Configuration - System - Users Settings and allow registration.

A confirmation link will be sent to the registrats email.

2. For users to be able to login enable 'mod_login'. You can assing redirect link when the user is signed in and signed out.

. Assign the menu link to be 'Registered' as image below

Only registerd users can go here. If they are not logged in a warning message will show up.

3. Super Admins can manage users by going to Control Panel - Users Manager. Super Admins can create, delete or edit users here.

Simple as 1-2-3! Your membership site is setup! If you want to sell memberships you will have to purchase some commercial extensions but this is good enough...

Joomla Extensions for Schools

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:41:32 +0000

Today I am going to discuss what are the standard extensions that are need for school website.

Since Joomla 1.6.x is still very new - I will only discuss extensions for Joomla 1.5.x components.

I highly recommend the following:

1. JCE Editor

This is a must for all Joomla websites it is What You See Is What You Get editor for Joomla.

Go to their website http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net/

2. eXtplorer

This is a systems files manager - something like Apple's Finder of Windows's Windows Explorer. You can upload, down, rename, delete and edit files here without using a FTP software.

Go to their website http://extplorer.sourceforge.net/

3. DocMan

This is a Document Management system that allows administrators to upload files, organize who can see the files and also track download statistics.

Go to their website http://www.joomlatools.eu/

4. JoomFish

This is the best multilanguage software for Joomla. Note that this is not a automatic translator like Goolge Translation. This is a software that helps you maintain a multi language website.

Go to their website http://www.joomfish.net/

5. Phoca Gallery

This is the best image gallery component that I have used for Joomla. You can create seperate categories and also insert the gallery into to your content.

Go to their website http://phoca.cz/

6. MySite Site Generator

This is a automatic sitemap generator for your Joomla website. This is a must for all websites.

Go to their website http://bit.ly/992NyU

7. JEvents

This is an amazing events components. It has a lot of features and design options

Go to their website http://www.jevents.net/

8. JForms

This is a award winning component for Joomla. It is the easiest to use drag and drop forms component in the markt.

Go to their website http://jforms.mosmar.com/

9. Akeeba Backup

Last in the list but probably my favorite. This is an amazing easy to use simple backup and restore software for Joomla. You can easily move websites from one domain to another in minutes.

Go to their website http://www.akeebabackup.com/

Joomla 1.6 finally released!

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 05:00:36 +0000

After a long wait Joomla 1.6 is finally launched! New features such as advance user levels, better SEO tools, auto updating of plugins, nested categories are some of the features.

See a video Joomla 1.6 backend below

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You can create a demo website here for free! http://demo.joomla.org/

I will review some new features this week so keep on coming to our website.

Backing up your site

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:15:37 +0000

Due to various bugs and viruses out there. I would like to suggest to do the following for your Joomla sites's health:

1. Create a new user for the super admin - dont use default user Id no. 62. Create another one - use no. 62 is regularly hacked into.

2. Password should be of a random one. DONT USE webiste2010 for a password it is too comon use something like '90ApleSa'

3. Backup your website with the most amazing FREE software in the market. No other Open Source CMS has something like this. I am talking about Akeeba.

It zips up all the files, images, templates, users, content, videos - everything for the website to one ZIP file.

See the Akeeba demo video here

{youtube}NEg594hGjF4{/youtube}

Happy New Year 2011!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:02:27 +0000

Happy New Year 2011!

This is my first blog entry for some time. I have finally decided to convert Joomla-Pro.com into my blog site regarding Joomla. Please visit my blo to get interesting tips and tricks that will help you optimize your Joomla website - new material will be updated as soon as possible.

Remove Author name, created and modified date

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:41:24 +0000

I dont like the default settings of the Joomla articles. They show the author name, created and modified date.

To disable them go to:

Articles Parameters function. Go to Content > Article Manager, and click on Parameters icon (top right near Help Icon), from here you can find a number of settings, including Created, Modified, etc. Please note that if you use Use Global, this will only apply for new content which is added (not for your current articles). Current articles would have to be updated individually.

SEO Tricks for Joomla

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:05:36 +0000

There are some simple tricks in Joomla to help your website rank on search engines:

1. SEF Urls

Go to: Site -> Contral Panel -> SEO Settings

Enable the followng:

Search Engine Friendly URLs

Use Apache mod_rewrite is for Unix OS Webservers rename a file name htaccess.txt to .htaccess before activating this

Add suffix to URLs

2. Keywords

Enter website keywords Go to: Site -> Contral Panel ->

Metadata Settings
Global Site Meta Description
Global Site Meta Keywords

Enter article keywords at the right side of the article called Meta Information, you can set the Description
and Keywords of the article here.

Joomla Hosting

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:02:10 +0000

Being a web developer requires me to test a whole range of hosting providers.

Hosting providers in my home town Bangkok, Thailand are really not worth to even look at. They take hosting accounts from the US and slice them into tiny bits.

As a conclusion, the best place to book domains is GoDaddy.com and for hosting no one can beat Hostgator.com - they offer fanntastic packages.

Article Commenting System

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It took quite some time to find a good and simple article commenting extesion. Finally, I found JComments. By far this is the easiest to instal and use. Also, it is absolutely free!! Try using it and comment about the commenting system.