BannersManager is the most robust banner management system for Joomla that I have found yet.  The big drawback is the lack of reporting, but I don’t guess you can fault them in that they’re doing this inside someone else’s system as opposed to OpenX which is an independent system.

With BannersManager I was able to get my average cached page load time down to just over 1 second.  Un-cached times are averaging just under 4 seconds.  If you’re a purist, you want the whole page to load in under 2 seconds on a dial-up connection, but with the massive amount of information we have displayed I don’t think that’s going to be feasible.

So, in summation:

Pros

• has seperate clients, ad positions, and banners for maximum flexibility
• loads quickly

Cons

• doesn’t send out reports to clients.  Bummer.

During this process I’ve had to call on friends all over the place to Beta test for me so I knew where the bugs were.  Nobody can find the flaws faster than someone with fresh eyes.

My good buddy Bofe commented on my just-barely-better-than-craptastic load time on the site, so I’ve been engaged with speeding up my sites.  I find that my experiences with Joomla center around mastering one aspect at a time, so this time it’s optimization to reduce load time.

Right now, I’m using the 23-odd domains that I have to experiment with different caching techniques in Joomla so that I have a good basis of comparison.  The Extensions section on Joomla.org led me to a tool called PageCache 2.0.10 from JoomlaPerformance.com and the immediate results were good.  I saw, according to their measurements, auxillary page load times decrease to almost 1/5 what they were.

The problem was the index pages.  On one domain, RDL-USA.com, I saw page load time soar from 9 seconds uncached (high) to 17-19 seconds cached (outrageous).  Still haven’t figured this out yet.

So, after reading the usual “I know more than you ever will” banter on the Joomla forums, I found that I might have another issue: just watching the page load I saw that ads.mylogancounty.com stayed in the status bar in the bottom left of Firefox for quite a while.  When I unpublished the modules containing those calls to OpenX, the page load time dropped DRAMATICALLY.

So, if you’re out there, please- I’d love to hear about your experiences with managing a Joomla site with Cache enabled and banner management.  Thanks!

By creating a front-end registration process, and then utilizing JoomlArt.com’s JA_Submit component with no WYSIWYG editor, you create an environment where you can simply and easily submit content, and you still only allow certain users to publish content.  That way anyone can register, anyone can submit, but only editors/managers get to publish the pertinent info.

Previously I operated under a faulty assumption – that you absolutely had to minimize visual clutter on the page in order to maximize user experience – but if there’s nothing on the page because the authors don’t really know how to post, then it defeats the purpose.  There is a balance to be found.

1. Use JoomlaSEF from Artio: Before we go any farther, I need to let you know right now if you didn’t know, that Artio embeds some advertising for certain people in the Meta Generator tag on your site.  This is why they give it for free.  you can hack it, but it ain’t simple.  The string is not stored locally, and I have yet to find the call in the sef.php file.  Other than that: install it first, keep it updated, and make sure it’s working.
2.  Fill Out All The Meta Tags: Listen to me very carefully: no matter your SEO buddy tells you about how important H1 tags are, don’t forget that a page with pertinent meta keywords and descriptions is still going to rank better than one without it.  Fill out the article or content specific tags EVERY TIME ON EVERY ARICLE
3. Repeat the Keywords: If you’re writing an article about “baby dolls” then you need to mention “baby dolls” more than once in the piece.
4. Use Keywords in the IMG descriptions: Make sure that when you add a picture to a page that it has a description involving the primary focus of the page.
5. Turn Off Page Titles & Use < H1 > Tags: …and don’t be afraid of using real h2 and h3 tags for heading and subheadings.

Those are the bare minimum.  For more on Search Engine Optimization for Joomla please see SEOmoz

There are too many assumptions about how people use Joomla by the developers (I’m referring to 1.0.x here since I have done nothing more than install 1.5 – no testing).  One of the biggest problems I have with it is the RSS feed and it’s insistence on only publishing Front Page published items.  In my opinion, this is a biased and unnecessary decision… but I can’t argue with great free software.

Now, to remedy the problem:

• RD RSS: RD RSS does one thing really well… it allows you to create individual feeds for each content section, but it fails when it presumes that you once again just want “Front Page” items.  Works well with Feedburner, though.
• DS-Syndicate: although I have heard one person say that the relative URLs produced don’t work well with email delivery, I do know that it does parse well through Feedburner, and if you have PRO turned on, then I doubt it matters.  The big improvement here is that DS-Syndicate gives you the option to publish non-Front-Page articles to the feed.

Right now, we have a static front page on the RDL website, but I want to give customers as many options to pull our content through the channels as possible.  If they want to get updates through the website, through a feed reader, or however you want, I want you to have it.  What matters is our end of producing the relative content that informs the consumer.

In summary, I am switching to DS-Syndicate.  The good news is that since I have already changed all of my RSS links to the Feedburner URL, all I have to do is update Feedburner.

My dream is this: I want to be able to create new, clean “web2.0″ inspired themes for Joomla quickly and easily. I have considered using V5WebMarketing.com as a platform for development, but, once again, I have little time for that.

Editor’s Note: I know that “Web2.0″ is not a style, but it kinda is… it’s just so fresh and clean and stuff.

For now, there’s the option of using Barry North’s Joomla 1.5 CSS Template Tutorial and start from there. I still personally don’t understand the whole concept of correctly formatting my modules. I know the 0,-1,-2 options (kinda) and I think -2 will set it to display table-less, but I somehow get hung up there.

What I want to do here is go over some of the very first things I do with any Joomla install, and there have been several now. For this example, I will be referring to 1.0.1x versions of Joomla.

1. Install JCE : JCE allows you to have a considerably more functional WYSIWYG editor for Joomla (of which, I still only use like 10% of the buttons – consider deactivating some if you are running a public site). The two biggest additions that this site brings are the hyper link Manager and Image Manager giving you automatic links to any content item in the one and a Graphical interface for choosing your image on the other. ***Note that the image manager defaults to “float: left” and will not respond to the center command without editing the HTML
2. JoomSEF: Joom SEF allows for standard “Search Engine Friendly” URL’s and work with most basic installations. More complex installs with many front-end accessible components may cause some problems.
3. RD RSS: Let’s face it: the default Joomla RSS feed blows. It’s beyond horrible. I have take to cleaning mine up by installing this application and then burning the feed with FeedBurner. I should probably point you to this article about Joomla and RSS that helped me.
4. DS-Syndicate: This is a replacement for the embedded RSS feed generator in Joomla.  Previously I had recommended RD RSS for this solution, but I have since found out, much to my chagrin, that RD RSS (like the default Joomla feed gen) only publishes “Front Page” items.  You still need to burn the feed with Feedburner and change all of your RSS references to the burned feed.
5. Calendars: There are two good options if you need a calendar…
   1. jCal Pro: If you want a standard view of a calendar and fairly simple use (especially if you’re going to allow front-end users to add events) then I would go with this install. Don’t fail to take advantage of the “jCal Latest Events” module on every page to advertise your events.
   2. gigCalendar: if your calendar is meant to be more of a list with events spread out over time, then this is the calendar for you. Drawbacks: having to add every “performer”, “venue”, and doing some intermediate database level editing to change the band oriented labels.
6. LetterMan: Newsletters can be an integral part of your marketing effort. There is a lot of information out there about how to make effective newsletters so make sure and read that before you try to do this, but a great permission based newsletter campaign can really grow your business. LetterMan allows you to make them fairly complex, as well as supporting multi-part MIME messages.
7. Community Builder: If you are going to have many front-end registered users, you have to use this, and you need custom fields for the registration to get demographic information. See the available directory of custom apps for this component.

That’s all for now. That’s a great start. Email me if you need more info.

So, here’s what I’m going to do: (this is probably more for me than it is for you)

• hybridcars template (modified)
• JCE (replaces cluttered WYSIWYG editor)
• jCal Pro (better than the other cals)
• BSQ Site Stats (more complex site stats)
• jPack (backup software)
• mosList Messenger (mailing list manager)
• CommunityBuilder (haven’t done this before )

Demo on the Joomla Test Site

Also, once again, Google Apps will handle the email/dashboard. If you haven’t check it out, do so.

• JCE – Joomla Content Editor – A better interface for your content creation areas. Allows custom CSS to be applied to the editor simply by creating a new CSS file in your template css folder and making it work for you.
• jCal Pro – while still lacking in event repeating, the interface is better than ExtCal, and the bots and modules are cleaner. Overall, it’s an improvement from the clumsy interface of ExtCal
• jPack – a Joomla one-click backup that allows you to migrate and then re-up the entire site. Great f you went to test, then deploy (as is the case with the UMT website.

http://www.russellvillemethodist.com (and .org)

This came after a meeting Monday night. I already have them up and I hope to start re-building the demo site there (now that I’ve found some decent templates and don’t have to use all my time in developing to that end).

I’ve been using the js_royale free template and I have modified it till all that’s left are the ugly table borders.  I could go back and re-write the html with the content areas in mind, but I don’t really understand the whole visible/hidden thing and how certain things show up in some pages and not others.

For example: on the main page and the Events page I have it showing the Upcoming Events in a (I’m assuming) css block called user1.  There are 9 of these, and only 1 seems to able to be used in this template.  If I re-work all this I could make it where at least user2 and user3 are availiable at the bottom of the page.

More later – I’m going to get my daughter.

Joomla uses Sections, Catergories, and Content items to organize.  It’s a (now that I think about) simple, outline-esque way of organizing information.  Even static information. Here’s how it works…

1. Food (This is a Section)
1. Meats (This is a Category)
1. Pork (Content)
2. Beef (Content)
3. Lamb
4. Chicken
2. Fruits (Category)
1. Apples (Content)
2. Oranges
3. Pears
4. Tomatoes

So, you can link to the Food Section and it will show you all of the content in Meats and Fruits.  If you link to the Fruits section it will only tell you about Apples, Oranges, Pears, and Tomatoes.

I love it when the light goes on.  Some of the phrasing in Joomla is still ambiguous, but you can figure it out.

Currently, the UMT website can be found at: http://www.leecoursey.net/methodist

This website is operating on the Joomla! CMS backend. This is my first experience with this CMS product and it has been an entirely so-so venture. Thus far I have been able to figure most things out, but a few things still avoid me. Today will be primarily focused on creating a new template for Joomla for the church and updating and inputting actual content.

Currently installed plugins/features:

• Joomblog
• EventsCal
• TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor

Pros and Cons of using Joomla thus far:

Pros: it’s fairly easy to install and set up and it’s also fairly easy to input content once you figure out the lingo.

Cons: learning the lingo, the fact that Joomla seems to be designed primarily as a way to relate articles, clumsy controls about creating content (creating a page on the site and creating a new News article function and happen the exact same way)

Overall it’s a very cool product for the money – free. There also seems to be a very large user group and plenty of developers – many of whom seem to be looking to make a profit too. It’s not an entirely open-source community. Templates seem to be the primary money-maker.