Click the image above to open the Joomla!® website in a new tab.If you own a Joomla!® website, you can benefit from following our blog. We give you information that will be useful to you in operating your site. We address security, search engine optimization, Joomla!® extensions, hosting, domain names, and many other topics of interest.
We want you to enjoy and profit from the money and energy you invest in your website.
Ignore Social Media At Your Peril
Many Joomla!® website owners have businesses that consume their time and attention at the expense of other things, like family, hobbies, and living a life. Often that means they have no time left to participate in social media sites. We have observed a not-uncommon attitude among the site owners that social media sites are largely a waste of time and resources, and that they would prefer not to spend precious time and resources to participate. Largely, they haven't established accounts on even the largest and most dominant social sites.
One issue with that attitude is that if the site owner doesn't stake out an account in the name of his brand, someone else might. A competitor, an ex-partner or employee, or worse, an unreasonable and highly annoyed customer might just do so. Clearly, nothing good can come from that.
Among all of the BAD News...
I apologize for the length of this, but wanted to share with you something wonderful that happened to me this morning. It's Christmas Eve, and we had forgotten to purchase several small items for tomorrow's dinner, so I headed to Kroger at 6:50 am to get the groceries before the rush.
I was walking through the surprisingly busy parking lot, bundled up against the cold and mist of a gloomy morning, and very foolishly attempted to don my face mask without removing my gloves. The elastic bands tend to get snagged in my hearing aids, but not usually until I try to remove the mask. This time, with gloves on, I managed to dislodge one of the hearing aids while still in the parking lot, right in front of the entrance to the store with cars and people trying to be first into the store.
Do You Have an Editorial Calendar?
In the day to day pressure of running a business or organization, it can be very difficult to find the time to add new content to your website. This is easy to understand, especially for us, since we are quite busy with serving our clients. The harsh truth is that visitors will not return to your site unless you give them new relevant content to draw them back.
Why We Chose Matomo INSTEAD of Google Analytics
We know that many website owners use Google Analytics, but our experience indicates they don't use it often, don't use it well, and never remove it from their sites even if they haven't used it in years. There are several reasons that you shouldn't do as they have done. We'll explore those reasons, and give you a very convenient alternative.
Why We Use and Recommend Fabrik for Building Joomla!® Applications
One of the coolest things about Joomla!® is that you can use it to host applications. The apps you can build with Fabrik, a Joomla!® component, are limited only by your imagination. It can be a simple form to collect and tabulate data from site visitors to the ability to schedule appointments, reserve resources, tell stories, etc. In short, any data-driven application can be built using Fabrik on your Joomla!® website.
Read more: Why We Use and Recommend Fabrik for Building Joomla!® Applications
How Will COVID-19 Affect Your Joomla® Website and Your Business?
We're sheltering-in-place per the instructions of Ohio's Governor, like many of you. We are perhaps a little more fortunate than many, because we can still make a living working from home. The phone has been pretty quiet for us, but the spammers and hackers have not taken any time off during the pandemic. We still see evidence of hundreds of hacking attempts per day on the Joomla!® websites we host and manage. We see a significant increase in the amount of bandwidth our server is processing daily, so having the public in quarantine means we are all spending more time at the computer, and the smart phone.
Read more: How Will COVID-19 Affect Your Joomla® Website and Your Business?
Let's Talk Joomla!® Templates
One type of Joomla!® extension is the template. There are at least two kinds of them, website templates and administrator templates. Here we will focus on website templates. Several templates are included with the Joomla!® installation archives and there are extensive tutorials available in the documentation and from other web-based sources. The included templates are well designed and studying them will provide the new user with valuable insights into template design and customization.
Give Your Authors and Editors the Power of JCE
Creating and editing content for Joomla!® need not be much different than using a word processor. If you give authors and editors a familiar tool, their productivity will be greatly improved.
JCH Optimize Plugin Can Improve Your Page Load Speeds
We have all been to websites which are painfully slow to load, and this can be due to many factors, but most can be dramatically improved through the use of JCH Optimize.
Read more: JCH Optimize Plugin Can Improve Your Page Load Speeds
Harper Vance Web Services and this website are not affiliated with or endorsed by The Joomla! Project™. Any products and services provided through this site are not supported or warrantied by The Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters, Inc. Use of the Joomla!® name, symbol, logo and related trademarks is permitted under a limited license granted by Open Source Matters, Inc.