RIP Edward Moore Kennedy

As a life-long Republican, I often thought Ted Kennedy was the Anti-Christ. I get that out of the way early so as not to be mistaken for a Democrat.

No matter what my politics or yours, it is impossible not to admire much about Ted Kennedy. Others have eulogized him far better than I could, so I won't attempt that here.

He will be missed.

What are the "Time Sinks" in building a website?

The toughest and most time consuming tasks about building a website are not what you probably think.

The programming and "code busting" can really be done quite quickly, especially with a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla!

The real time sink is content: What shall we say? What is the best way to say it? How should it be illustrated? How should it be organized so my visitors can find it, and so that they will certainly see what I want them to see? How do we get the visitor to take action?

Any CMS, and especially Joomla!, gives you more options than anyone needs as to presenting content. Those decisions can be made quickly, and changed later very easily.

There is no shortcut to good content. If it is a business site, the business owner is the best qualified to write the content. The owner should tell the story the way he wants it told. It is easy for some, the challenge of a lifetime for others.

In book publishing, lots of people with great stories to tell hire "ghost writers" or use an "as told to" to bring the skills of a professional writer to the task.

If your website is "flat" and doesn't get the response you need to build your traffic and your business, look long and hard at your content. We believe you will conclude that you need help with your content, and that hiring a Professional is the quickest and least costly way to get the content you need.

Sometimes Old Dogs CAN learn new tricks

Working on some sites for a new client, we noticed an oddity on one of them, and as we are "cloning" the sites one from another (with new content in each domain) the oddity showed up in the latest clone as well.

In all my days with Joomla (about 1800 and counting), I had never seen anything like this:

The entire back office of Joomla was full of "dots" which turned out to be the character for "bullet" • . Each and every link and link Label had a pair of bullet symbols enclosing it.

Although we could not determine that this was having any detrimental effect on the site, it had the client worried, and I felt obliged to "fix" it.

Since I had never seen it before, and couldn't conceive of anything that would cause it, I posted in the forums at Joomla.org, and 36 hours later found out I had set "Language Debug" to "Yes" in the Globals.

So if you ever see that behavior, think about me and have a good laugh at my expense...

"Joomla Expert", Hah!

End of an Era...

As promised, the Joomla! Community has formally "retired" Joomla! 1.0

A new entry in the blog at jooomla.org made it official on July 30.

So... what does this mean to us?

• All new site development should begin at Joomla 1.5.14 (as of this writing).
• If you are still procrastinating about migration to 1.5, it's decision time.

You CAN do it yourself, but if you don't feel like it... Give us a call, we can do it for you.