The Best of Joomlablogger.net 1
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1. 47 Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 5 of 48 About the author joomlaBlogger net is blog about the content management system Joomla and all things related to running a successful website based on this popular CMS The blog was started in May 2009 and is mainly written by myself My name is Kristoffer Sandven and work as a professional Search Engine Optimizer SEO and a Joomla consultant help clients get as much traffic as possible to their pages and to convert those visitors to revenue In my day to day job with Joomla continuously discover things that can be shared with you fellow Joomla addict for our common benefit Making Joomla a better and even more widespread platform The goal of this blog is to inspire you to help you implement Joomla for your use and eventually assist you in making money by doing so Please don t hesitate to contact me with ideas for topics to write about on the blog kris joomlablogger net hope you will enjoy this ebook which is a compilation of the best and most popular posts from joomlablogger net hand picked some of almost 300 posts available on the blog and have collected them together here into a document you can keep print and study The blog www joomlablogger net Facebook Fan page www facebook com joomlablogger Twitter www twitter com joomlablogger You Tube channel www youtube com joomlablogger Copyright 22. 15 005 15 er arin ey erence 15 Joomla meta tags part 2 Built in functionality 16 How to use the built in Joomla meta tag functions and a small MOA 16 DUNG TAG m A 17 Ihe ICS CHD ON Ero cic says Sete 18 Pitfalls of using the global meta description field duplicate descriptions 19 Meta description on pages other than articles 1 leere eere e erre eene e eoe enia 19 7 20 20 Taking your Joomla meta tags to the next 20 Joomla meta tags part 3 sh404SEF 21 Meta tag management 1 21 THE IN SNAOASEP TT 22 Why would you want to remove the section category from the title 22 Meta description tags in 5040455 iei etr EUER RE 22 How to customize your meta tags in 4045 23 Following pages in Joomla frontpage and blog 25 Some points to remember
3. n Wu am zx rr e T f e r nt t Ype content conten Cenplates el alter 1 hred 1 t Plugine n1 3 ue 2 7 h 15 Ylesha ref htt 225 ys ep href Sheern hs n er JA http sms 7 Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document Meta elements can be used to specify page description keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes The meta element has four valid attributes content http equiv name and scheme Of these only content is a required attribute What Meta Tags should I use There are a lot of meta tags available but will focus on those know will give you something back in search engine visibility Or that provide an enhanced user experience Recent discoveries by myself and my colleagues indicate that less is more when it comes to meta tags and other elements of your web pages Removing unnecessary code from your HTML will increase the amount of unique content in each of your pages This is beneficial for SEO as Google and the other search engines look for unique relevant content Thus removing unnecessary meta elements from your pages is a good thing Removing whitesp
4. Some points to remember about SEO and Joomla e The TITLE tag and the meta description are the first impressions your business gives to a potential customer or reader searching in Google Create the meta tags so they sell your page and make the user want to click e Use your main keywords for the site in both the TITLE tag and meta description Don t stuff your tags with keyword Spamming is not good for the user and it will get you banned from Google Joomla meta tags part 4 Google Webmaster Tools Meta tags are tags or meta elements that mostly contain information about the 6 website or page which is not shown directly Goo le webmaster C to the user In this part I will show you how g to use the Google Webmaster Tools to monitor and improve your Joomla meta tags improv traffic with G one Se Si no four u 0 you When you have your meta tags set m recommend using Google Webmaster Tools to Google sites check your work If you don t have a Google a T with multi regi ional webs orking Webmaster Tools account set one up for free 15 Mal t a majority of users sut vou now tna o nquage here Did yo amation ii their own 1 jaw nr oo You need to verify your site to be able to access information about how the site is indexed in Google Additionally the pages you have worked on need to be indexed in Google I ve previously written a post on how to get your
5. ves Use section alias 9 rt categor se category alias 2 Why would you want to remove the section category from the title Well it makes the title tag more unique And according to my own experience with SEO for Google and the experience of the SEOMOZ readers the TITLE tag is among the top 5 factors in search engine visibility The main keyword s should be included in the TITLE tag And if possible near the beginning of the tag don t force it it must read well Meta description tags in sh404SEF With the active meta management setting on the meta description tags of articles and other pages on your site will be automatically generated If you have entered a meta description in an article sh404SEF will use that text How to customize your meta tags in sh404SEF Even though sh404SEF does a decent job of creating meta tags for your site you might want to create new ones For instance you might want to alter the article title so it says one thing in the title tag and another in the title in the content area of your site You do this by entering custom meta tags in sh404SEF Please read my tutorial on how to set up sh404SEF if you are unfamiliar with the component the sh404SEF control panel make sure you have the advanced settings activated 2 Click View Edit SEF URLs 3 Locate the URL you want to create a meta tag for normally do this by entering part of the URL into the
6. Filter box and hit Enter 4 Check the box next to the URL 5 Click the New meta button in the top right corner 6 Enter your preferred meta tags TITLE Should be no more than 80 characters 2 Meta description Should be no more than 155 160 characters 3 Keywords usually ignore the keywords tag but feel free to enter som 4 comma separated if you feel like it they have no impact on SEO 5 Robots tag normally leave these untouched 7 Click Save These settings will now override the default meta tags created by sh404SEF Joornla JoomlaBlogger Status 0 backups Last beckup on No backup Legacy 10 FS Preview amp 2 O Logout fle Memus Content Component s Extensions Tools help Q o o Q eel sh404SEF URL Manager Q Ne Lat Home abe Home pepe Mato New META Dup coete URL Back to 50 1511 Control Panel Show SEF Utt SEF W iss Fiter 2 SEF Pea UH tios looi wt v Mew tI at teet 0 gc Cass t t You ll find the New meta button on the URL manager screen Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 23 of 48 Add tags Title tad Description tad Keywords tag Robots tag Language tad blog joomla news The Title Tag goes here Remember keywords and keep it under 80 characte
7. dated and signed permission from the author Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 2 of 48 Contents About the author 6 Link to Joomla articles with no menu item 7 Free yourself with Joomla template overrides 8 First a note CATON 8 TOPINE OVENI C S 9 When to 6 5 PERDRE 9 This will only work for one template 9 Examples of Joomla template 9 How to customize the output of category list 9 How to customize the output of com 11 How to create line breaks in Joomla article titles 21 leere rere rere eren nennen 12 Us your IAIN e 12 Exploring the Joomla meta tags part 1 13 Whal Mela 13 What Meta Tags should 7 2 13 jj1 5 14 DIOS CHD HOM 14 FOV WOM GS Y 7 15 000
8. it has functions for managing the meta tags Including title description and keywords of every single page in Joomla Setting up sh404SEF will be the topic of the next part in this series Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 20 of 48 Joomla meta tags part 3 sh404SEF Meta tags are tags or meta elements that mostly contain information about the website or page which is not shown directly to the user In this part will show you how to use the meta tag functionality in sh404SEF to improve your site SEO Search engine optimization for Joomla If you have the SEF Search Engine Friendly component sh404SEF installed the meta tag management is more flexible than with the built in Joomla solution You will be able to enter meta tags for any page on your site This involves for instance that you may enter meta elements for blog and section views as well as for following pages automatically generated from these views i e page 2 page 3 etc Note This tutorial was written for sh404SEF version 1 5 Some views may have changed in the current 2 version Meta tag management in sh404SEF believe you should activate active meta management in the sh404SEF advanced configuration If set to Yes Title Description Keywords Robots and Language META tags will be managed by sh404SEF Otherwise original vaues produced by Joomla and or other components will be left untouched This does not mean
9. text transform none font weight normal In this case you only add the styles that are different from the original The other styles are left untouched Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 39 of 48 Use Firebug to Test Your CSS One of the tools use to test my CSS is called Firebug It s an add on to Firefox which gives you a lot of information about the CSS and HTML structure of a web page When you have Firebug installed you can right click an element and choose Inspect element The Firebug window will open at the bottom of the screen Now you can see the HTML structure left and the CSS right Now the fun begins You can start experimenting with the CSS directly in Firebug Want to change the margin of an element The background color Remove the border Every tweak you would like is available to play with and the result is instantly shown in the browser Of course if you refresh the page the changes are lost When you re happy with your changes copy the CSS into your custom CSS file and upload to your server Take a look at my previous post about 8 Free Firefox extensions every Joomla user should have Take some time to learn CSS believe every Joomla user web site developer should learn some CSS and know HTML by heart It makes it so much easier to modify your templates and to achieve what you and your client wants It s not like learning hardly kno
10. EM cec 39 Don t repeat styles if you don t 0 39 Use Firebug to Test 40 Take some time to lear CSS wicca 40 Easy to get started with CSS and Joomla 2 40 Recommended reading for learning CSS a anna 40 Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 4 of 48 10 Ways to Fail at Joomla 41 10 things you can do to improve your Joomla site 42 Easy Joomla documentation with Joomanuals 43 Easy step by step process to create a manudal JooManuals features in detail Benefits of Joomanuals ee Pricing and value Resources 46 SEO TOONS Template 0 6 60 00005 1 a A Joomla coupons 47 Joomla support from Open Source Support Desk 47 20 off a 1 year subscription for 1404 enis esee nna 47 10 discount on all JoomlaBamboo nana 47 6 months extended subscription Joomanwuals
11. about SEO and Joomla 25 Joomla meta tags part 4 Google Webmaster Tools 26 Diagnose Your Meta T8958 xe cioe aeui dia osea sodes One es daas 27 Duplicate meta descriptions le DRUSI 29 THC TAGS EE 30 DUD Cate Ulle 1305 wiaaa x 31 Meta tags will improve your site rankings go improve them eere rennen 31 Six steps to get your Joomla site indexed in Google 32 Why it s important to get indexed by the search engines 12 eere eere eren 32 15 CC HO 32 2 Your template makes a difference ru eae cv sace 32 3 Create sitemaps for users and search 21 eerie 33 4 Submit your site to Google Webmaster Tools 1 crees esee 33 5 Make use of Robots txt eere eee esee esser nah nuin rana aano 33 6 Check 34 End note about search engine visibility 34 Secure your Joomla sites before they are hacked 35 Joomla CSS for beginners 37 19 38 Joomla CSS GANG Templates oen ocu 00 00 38 CSS 5 TE
12. created with semantics in mind ie the content comes before the menus and sidebars in the source code this ensures that the content appears as early in the code as possible Return valid HTML and CSS If you buy templates from RocketTheme JoomlaBamboo JoomlaShack or other commercial template providers most of the templates are search engine friendly This can make a huge impact on getting your site indexed The better the template the easier it is for the search engine to pick up your content haven t used too many free templates but please check the above points if you decide to use a free template for a business critical site Chances are it s worth the money to invest in a commercial template if you need search engine friendliness 3 Create sitemaps for users and search engines An XML sitemap is ideally an XML file that contains links to every page on your site use the extension Xmap for creating Joomla sitemaps both HTML for the users and XML for the search engines Note XMap uses your menus to create the sitemap so your pages needs to be reachable from a menu directly or through a section or blog view 4 Submit your site to Google Webmaster Tools Google Webmaster Tools is a place for Webmasters to manage their websites in relation to Google If you have a Google account Google Webmaster Tools is completely free You can check your indexation submit XML sitemaps test robots txt and much more The most im
13. indexed To check which pages are indexed for your site in Google search for the following site www YOURDOMAIN COM replacing YOURDOMAIN COM with your actual domain hehe To check in Yahoo go to http siteexplorer search yahoo com and search for your URL This will also give you a list of inlinks for your site pages linking to your pages End note about search engine visibility hope this gives you something to start with and wish you luck on getting your page indexed fully in the search engines Just remember one thing You now have the tools to get your pages indexed That does not mean that your content is considered relevant enough by the search engines This is crucial to achieve good positions for important keywords A later post will explore how to make sure your actual content is search engine friendly and relevant and how that will give you positions and ultimately more traffic to your site Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 34 of 48 Secure your Joomla sites before they are hacked Phil Taylor published this Tweet some time ago A lot of people getting old versions of joomla 1 5 hacked today been fixing sites all day for customers UPGRADE NOW to Joomla 1 5 10 STRIKE TRAM JSST couldn t say it better myself It s crucial that you ALWAYS upgrade to the latest version of Joomla When you ve done that there are several other actions you can and should t
14. previous posts on this blog you might not have seen them Set up reliable backup for all your Joomla sites 2 Write useful documentation for your sites 3 Optimize your Joomla meta tags for better SEO 4 Learn how to do Joomla Template Overrides 5 Improve your HTML and Joomla CSS skills 6 Integrate a newsletter service with Joomla 7 Update your Joomla sites and keep them updated 8 Finda free quality template and customize it 9 Show off your Facebook following in Joomla 0 Learn how to set up Joomla for blog editors like Flock ScribeFire So don t wait go learn something new to improve your Joomla site today Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 42 of 48 Easy Joomla documentation with Joomanuals If you are a Joomla website developer or consultant like me you often need to create documentation for the websites you create This can be a tedious task and sometimes a repetitive one The fact is that many most web development companies don t bother to give their clients any documentation at all By providing well thought out documentation to your clients you will cement the relationship and attract new clients The only thing is It takes a lot of time to do documentation for each site Now there s a service available which makes the documentation process much easier It s actually quite fun Joomanuals is an online service which generates custom
15. the original admin user user ID 62 Thanks to Brian Teeman for this tip Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 35 of 48 5 Use a unique and strong password Create a unique passwords from a combination of upper and lowercase letters numbers and symbols For instance WsHc3 7 Use an Online Password Generator to make the process easier 6 Change your username and password often At least every 3 months 7 Don t use the root user in mySQL as the user of your database You should always create a new database user when installing a new site and give rights to the new database only This way the user will only have access to the specific site If not you can have one site hacked and the rest are wide open as well 8 Always update to the latest Joomla version Can not be said too often Get the latest version of Joomla Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 36 of 48 Joomla CSS for beginners regularly scan the unanswered questions in z the Joomla forums Many times the questions ding Style SI posted have to do with how the output of evclopedia Joomla is presented This may have to do with Wikipedia the 55 the template but oftentimes it has to do with the CSS stylesheet of the Joomla template 1 4e ts here For other New users are often unaware of how CSS and 55 Wikipedia Joo
16. want the look of your website to be consistent you often need to do some CSS tweaking So if you don t know any CSS you d better start learning now This post is not about learning you the specific techniques of CSS Rather it is written to give you an overview on how CSS is used in Joomla This is what Wikipedia has to say about Cascading Style Sheets Cascading Style Sheets CSS is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics that is the look and formatting of a document written in a markup language Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document including SVG and XUL CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content written in HTML or a similar markup language from document presentation including elements such as the layout colors and fonts The bold part of this excerpt from Wikipedia is the most important thing to know about CSS in my opinion Separation of content HTML and visual presentation CSS By using CSS we can use one centrally located file with all the styles Keeping the styling separate from our Joomla articles That way site wide style changes are easy to do Just imagine if you did article specific styling in each and every article on your site It would be a nightmare to do style changes in the case of a redesign or template change Joomla CSS and templates l m always amu
17. 010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 6 of 48 Link to Joomla articles with no menu item Sometimes you might want to create a Joomla page that is not available through a menu You only want the page to appear when the URL is entered This might be a thank you page after form submission a log in page or some other type of hidden page you would need on your Joomla site Many users ask about this in the Joomla forums and on Twitter decided to write a short tutorial on how to set up a link to an element article or other type of Joomla asset with no menu item visible on the site The thing is you won t be able to create URLs without having a menu item But who says you have to show the This is how you create URLs to pages with no visible menu items Create a new menu using the Joomla Menu Manager 2 Create menu items pointing to the article you to link to 3 Don t create a menu module you won t need it 4 Use JCE or another extension for linking to the articles This way you will have the URLs created but the menu items are not visible on the site Note If you use SEF search engine friendly URLs on your site you should not link to the SEF URLs Use the original Joomla URLs when linking That way the URLs will be translated to SEF URLs when needed but you won t have to change the links if the SEF URL changes Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogg
18. Joomla site indexed in Google Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 26 of 48 Diagnose Your Meta Tags To see how the meta tags are rated by Google choose your site Dashboard and then Diagnostics Under this menu you ll find HTML Suggestions see screenshot to the right Site configurati Your site on the web Diagnostics Crawl errors Crawl stats HI ML suggestions Labs The tool will give you a list of pages which have no meta description duplicate descriptions no title duplicate titles or meaningless titles HTML suggestions When Googlebot crawled your site it found some issues with your content These issues wont prevent your site from appearing in Google search results but addressing them may help your site s user experience and performance Meta description Pages Duplicate meta descriptions 154 Long meta descriptions 0 short meta descriptions 0 Title tag Pages Missing title tags 2 Duplicate title tags 109 Long title tags 0 short title tags 0 Non informative title tags 0 Non indexable content Pages We didn t detect any issues with non indexable content on your site Using Google Webmaster Tools it s very easy to spot any place in your site where you might have missed the title and or description For instance spotted something didn t think about earlier When you have a section or category blog view you might have enabled au
19. The best of joomlablogger net 5 4 re nai Kristoffer Sandven utorial Tee Yourself V f With Jc torials joomla core tutorials TTE you Joomla addicts ou there Hom ome Joomla tutorials Joomla tips Joomi news Home a Joomla tutorials Cora ne v Df y Joomla tutoria Malate overrides ree yourself Free y usen With Joomla template Overrides LE 0 v 0 Comments and 0 Reactions Even thou gh Joomla is a great nl i there are times when YOu will aia 2 www joomlablogger net For all you Joomla addicts out there JOOMINBLOGGER For all you Joomla addicts out there The best of joomlablogger net written by Kristoffer Sandven Founder and author The blog www joomlablogger net Facebook Fan page www facebook com joomlablogger Twitter www twitter com joomlablogger YouTube channel www youtube com joomlablogger NOTICE Like all content on my blog everything in this report is copyrighted You do NOT have the right to redistribute or sell this report in any way This report is an exclusive benefit to subscribers of my weekly newsletter ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever electronic or mechanical including photocopying recording or by any informational storage or retrieval system without express written
20. This is where keep all of my style changes If want to upgrade my template can just copy this custom css file upgrade my template to the latest version and upload the custom css file again All set Don t repeat styles if you don t need to custom css editor css 3 extensions css ieGhacks css s ieThacks css index html joomla css layout css 55 modules css popups css reset css template css EJ typography css When styling elements with CSS it s important to be specific And to keep your stylesheet lean What mean is you don t need to repeat styling just because you want to restyle an element Let s say for instance that you have the following style for the HI tag in your main CSS file template css or similar hi tont size 24px color d7d7d7 margin bottom lem text transform uppercase The normal styling for H tags are bold Maybe you want to add the styling to make the header tag use the normal and not the bold style of the font And at the same time you don t want to have uppercase letters in the Of course you could do it like this adding the following code to your custom css h1 4 font size 24px 0 margin bottom 1lem Ltext transform none font weight normal This works but it s not good code You repeat all of the styling even though you just want to alter one style and add another This is a better way hi
21. a menu item showing a contact category Joomla 5 will present a table with numbers as the first column This might be OK for some but most of my customers find it strange Template overrides to the resque We follow the same procedure as in the previous example However this time we will have to edit two files Follow these steps Create a folder here see screenshot to the right C3templates templates YOURTEMPLATE html com contact jbeez category ja purity rhuk_milkyway 2 Copy these two files from components com contact 3 Sj rt_chromatophore_j15 views category tmpl 9 Jess default php html default items php J amp J co ntact In default php del r commen his code around 3 erault php delete or co ent out this co e a Ou category line 62 jmod mainmenu etd width 5 align right images class sectiontableheaderescape Sthis E gt params gt get pageclass_sfx gt gt LJ 5 lt php echo JText Num lt eds 4i jrokzoom 4 default items php delete or comment out this code 3 system around line 7 td align right width 5 gt lt php echo Sitem count 1 gt lt td gt This will remove the numbers column Both in the header and what ever rows there are in the table You can see the modified contact category layout here You can experiment with changing the different columns around For instance one of my clients wanted the ce
22. ace from your HTML can also increase your chances of ranking higher in the search engines Just take a look at the source code of the Google com front page This means you should remove anything not 100 related to improving your site search engine visibility Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 13 of 48 TITLE The most important meta element is the TITLE tag Not a META tag per se it s often regarded as one For the purpose of this post will include the title tag when talking about meta tags in general The TITLE tag is used as the title of the page in the browser You can find it in the top bar of your browser window It will also become the name of a bookmark to the page Most importantly it becomes the clickable link to the page in the search engines Personally think the TITLE tag should contain text which is as unique as possible For my own site l ve decided not to include the name of the site focusing on the actual article title blog title etc This makes the TITLE more unique The TITLE tag is used like this in the HTML lt title gt The article title with Keyword included lt title gt Google regards the TITLE tag as very important guess this is partly because of the prominent position the TITLE gets in the Search Engine Result Pages SERPs A good title will contain the targeted keyword s or phrase s It will also be selling your page to the reader This in turn m
23. actors of which will outline the ones consider most important These steps will ensure that the search engines finds all of your pages and it will increase the speed with which they are indexed Indexation is crucial to get your pages positioned in the search engines for relevant keywords This will turn into relevant traffic to your site by people seeking what you are writing about Linking is key Before doing anything else you need to understand that the only way a search engine will pick up your pages is if there s a link to each one Spiders follow links Thus the site will not be possible to index if your pages are available through search only A blog or section layout will do as long as there s a link to each article somewhere the spider will find it You don t need to create a separate link directly to each article with the menu manager Getting links from other relevant sites is of course the best but for the purpose of this post will focus on what you can do on your own site to improve the indexation rate 2 Your template makes a difference If you need good search engine visibility you need a template that is search engine friendly So what does this mean In short it means that the template should Be created without tables for layout using DIVs and CSS Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 32 of 48 Contain table less template overrides for content layouts Be
24. ake to avoid being hacked Follow the Joomla Administrator s Security Checklist The guys at joomla org have put together a Joomla Administrator s Security Checklist use it and secure your Joomla site as much as possible using the guidelines 2 Install the jSecure Authentication plugin Every Joomla administratorhas the same URL If you install a security plugin you can add a suffix to your back end URL to make it look like this http www yoursite com administrator helloworld If the URL is not entered with a correct suffix the site will redirect to a 404 not found page Change the suffix regularly The plug in is 4 99 and it s worth it Buy and download the jSecure Authentication plugin here 3 Don t use the jos prefix The standard prefix for Joomla tables are jos However many security exploits rely on your database tables being called jos XXXXXX By simply using your own prefix you would have been protected from these exploits It should also be unique for every site Read more about this over at the blog of Brian Teeman 4 Change your admin user The default ID for the admin user in Joomla is always 62 and this may be used by a hacker To avoid this do the following Create a new super administrator with another user name and a strong password 2 Log out and in again as this new user 3 Change the original admin user to a manager and save you are not allowed to delete a super administrator Now delete
25. akes the user click the link to read the rest of the article TITLETip If you re selling products include the price in the TITLE tag This way you pre qualify the customer before they arrive at your site increasing the change that they buy from you Description The Description tag is also very important A well formed description tag will more often than not be used as the descriptive text in the SERPs Thus it should contain your targeted keyword s or phrase s and sell your page effectively The tag may look like this meta name Description content JoomlaBlogger is a blog with tips tutorials and news about Joomla CMS 100 free content gt The Description should not be more than 150 characters long By keeping it this short the full cext will show in the SERPs If you re really into it you can craft the length of your words and sentences in such a way as to control where the line breaks when showing in the Google Search Engine Result page That s actually quite neat Remember that the description tag is the actual sales copy the user will read before deciding to click your link or not Make sure the copy is correct contains your keywords and is enthusiastically selling your product or service At least it should be a clear and concise excerpt on what to find on the page It s very important to include your keywords in the description The keywords will be bolded in the search results making the actual keyword stand out
26. e to spark your imagination Come up with your own ways of leveraging this powerful feature of Joomla The examples provide here only details using template overrides for core components You can do this for any module plugin or component l ve used template overrides to change the output from YooGallery for instance How to customize the output of category list layouts If you re like me you have trouble understanding the point of having numbers before each line when displaying articles in the Category List layout Worse even is the fact that these numbers are not possible to remove At least not by using the menu item parameters or other settings in the Joomla admin The numbers column is actually hard coded into the layout of the com content category list layout files To change this and other parts of the category list layout you need to create a new directory in the templates YOURTEMPLATE html com content directory If it s not already there it should be named category Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 9 of 48 Now you can copy the file default_items php from components com_content views category tmpl and into the folder you just created Thus you will end up with a file located in this folder templates YOURTEMPLATE html com content category default items php At this point you re ready to customize your template override The file you copied will override the standard o
27. er net Page 7 of 48 Free yourself with Joomla template overrides Even though Joomla is a great platform as it is there are times when you will have to alter the core files to fit certain needs For instance you can t stand how the elements in Joomla content are put together in Joomla Or your client wants to alter the way the date is shown where the author appears how the list of contacts is displayed We could go on for ever The point is You don t want to be restricted by the platform do you You won t have to will show you the basics of how to customize the output from Joomla components modules and plugins by applying something called template overrides Relax they re your friends got this email from a reader of JoomlaBlogger Cphp B gt Id def 061166 J MIU ite 2 EXEC lt php fores Te8Ch this 933 Sectiontap gt Slimmer 5 php leentrs right php echo 4 lt td gt lt td he 2 ah tz 20 2 lt a hre 2 er lt Php echo lt php echo lt 7 rd 1 1 lt php if a lt pig if this s 12 lt td gt work a lot with Joomla and while am not a php coder myself do on occasion hack files to make a template or a component work the way want it to if can find good instructions in a forum know that with Joomla 1 5 no
28. ery easy to set up and let you choose what and how to display in your title Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 17 of 48 The Description tag You can enter global meta tags in the global configuration screen of the Joomla Administrator There are fields for description and keywords Don t worry about finding keywords but you got that point in part 1 didn t you Just make sure you delete the default keywords in the keyword field Metadata Settings Global Site Meta Description Global Site Meta Keywords tips tricks tutorials and news about your favorite content management system eee ELLE The Description field should contain a 150 character description of your site Your main keywords for the page must be included but make sure not to overdo it by repeating the keywords Two repetitions of your main keyword is OK Use your common sense Pitfalls of using the global meta description field duplicate descriptions Using the global meta description field has some pitfalls If you don t enter any specific meta descriptions for your articles and other items you will end up with a lot of duplicate descriptions This is not good for SEO and Google specifically alert you to this in Google Webmaster Tools more on that in a later post Dashboard HTML suggestions site configuration When Googlebot cra
29. g the most of Joomla Rich Text Editor Explanation on how to keep a backup of the site using phpMyAdmin Explanation on how to keep a backup of the site using Joomlapack and downloading it using Filezilla Explanation of Meta tags description and how to use them for SE Add extra notes after every chapter in the manual in case there is something you want to include that is not a part of the standard explanations NEW Rich text editor chapters for the WYSIWYG editor JCE NEW 7 VirtueMart chapters for teaching routine tasks NEW Generate manuals with low res images unsuitable for printing but suitable for emailing Here are some pictures of a finished manual Benefits of Joomanuals e chapters text and screenshots in the manual is generated to look as if you have written the entire manual especially for your client s website e All pages have your company logo in the header e content is presented in a simple way so that even those clients who think Joomla is too difficult will be able to learn it by following simple instructions e Screenshots are provided explaining each process e Will make your company stand out compared to your competition e Option to make the manual in English or German The developer tells me that the chapters in the manuals generated by Joomanuals are designed by the author of a very successful book about Joomla which is now a part of Joomla s official documentation and has been t
30. ill use the global meta description RSSeo To accomplish this you need to install the free extension RSSeo from RS Joomla This free component will give you meta tag fields when creating or editing menu items That way you can enter specific descriptions for every menu item you create Some of the functions of RSSeo Monitor your competition d Monitor the important keywords e Setunique Meta description and title for each page e Generate a Google and Yahoo Sitemap for your website SEOSimple You can also take a look at the SEOSimple plug in It has fewer options than RSSeo but it does a decent job with both the title and meta descriptions You can set it up to create the meta description automatically from text found in the article It builds the title automatically as well depending on your settings Worth checking out SEO Simple settings Parameters v Plugin Parameters Meta Desc Length 200 Title Layout Fage T tle Site Title Separator Optional From Page Home From Page Title Layout OQptona FPT tle Ste Title Use Global meta description for front page Yes Generate based on page content SEOSimple CrexIit Tag Leavelt VY Kill It Taking your Joomla meta tags to the next level This is all well but you might need even more control over your meta tags If so you should use sh404SEF The component was developed to create search engine friendly SEF URLs in Joomla In addition
31. lates YOURTEMPLAT E html folder The files located here will override the core files or other files which create some form of output on the finished HTML page When to use template overrides The most widespread use of template overrides is to change the output from com_content Most professional Joomla templates use this type of overrides Mainly they use it to create table less HTML output from the content component and to make custom layout modifications For instance you could change the order of the elements or include hard coded text and elements or add custom classes or IDs to facilitate CSS changes To create output or template overrides you need to create an HTML folder in your template folder For instance you can see that there is an HTML folder already present for the Beez template in templates beez html This is where you need to place the files that override the output of the components you want to modify This will only work for one template Remember that this HTML folder resides inside the specific template folder It will not work for other templates If you switch to another template you need to copy the content of your HTML folder to your new template folder In that case make sure you don t accidentally overwrite any override files that come as a part of the new template Examples of Joomla template overrides There are lots of uses for template overrides will show you a few examples The examples ther
32. ll phone column to appear before the email column Just remember to move both the header column and the actual data column as they are in two separate files How to create line breaks in Joomla article titles If you ve ever tried putting in a lt br gt tag in the Joomla article title to create a line break you ve discovered that this won t work The HTML is not parsed and thus Joomla will show the tag in clear text l ve written a tutorial on how to create line breaks in Joomla article titles by using template overrides This is a powerful technique which can be applied in other situations as well Use your imagination hope you now have a better understanding of how Joomla template overrides work They are fun to work with Start simple and build from that Thanks to Alice for sending me the email which got this post started And remember Never hack the core Exploring the Joomla meta tags part 1 This is the first part of a series of blog posts exploring Joomla meta tags In this first post I ll look at what meta tags are and what they should be used for Later posts in the series examine how to set up the meta tags by using the Joomla core and with third party SEF extensions What Are Meta Tags Meta tags are tags or meta elements that mostly contain information about the website or page which is not shown directly to the user This is what Wikipedia tells us about Meta Elements wr 5 Xhtj
33. mla works There is confusion regarding if For the use of C the problem relates to the Joomla core or the ie Sheets CSS is 2 template installed In this post will try and Cascading P ritten in HTML 8 give you an overview on how to use CSS in tyle web page enal Joomla iecigned primar got this email a while ago which underscores my point Kris the type of things struggle with now in Joomla are design issues have clients who love a template in fact they choose the template BUT they want the background to change they want more tabs in a horizontal menu than it will hold or they want a user area where there is none Oh just move that over to the left and insert our address add a blue bar between this place and that know just enough CSS and PHP to be dangerous It would be helpful if could just understand all the steps to creating a new user area and that includes where to put the CSS and PHP code In this post will write about how work with CSS in Joomla Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 37 of 48 What is CSS Before we start you need to know what CSS is strongly believe that the most important skills for a Joomla user to have is HTML and CSS And friendliness of course If you know HTML and CSS you have a huge advantage when trying to customize your website Most extensions are fine the way they look when you install them However if you
34. n web standards and best practices Really great Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 40 of 48 10 Ways to Fail at Joomla was surfing Twitter and the Joomla Forums today and noticed people complaining about a lot of issues Many of them were victims of one or more of the following reasons people fail at using Joomla 2 Not taking the time to learn the basics Using a bad template Not having a backup plan Installing a new version without doing a backup Not bothering to read and understand the security checklist Not learning even a tiny bit of CSS or HTML Installing new extensions on a production site without testing them Ranting and shouting in the forums thereby losing out on the help you would get if your were thinking before shouting Oops guess couldn t think of anything more how about you Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 41 of 48 10 things you can do to improve your Joomla site Sometimes we all need to get a reminder on what to do to improve our Joomla sites know I do The site has been sitting there for a long time and you know it needs to be updated and improved You just don t know where to start Maybe what you need is a kick you know where to get started In this post I ve listed 10 things you could do to improve your own or a client s Joomla site Of course they are linked to
35. ou get it for 28 as opposed to 35 Click here to save 20 on sh404SEF 10 discount on all JoomlaBamboo products JoomlaBamboo creates nice and clean Joomla templates and extensions with beautiful design Use the code joomlablogger20 0 when shopping at http www joomlabamboo com 6 months extended subscription on Joomanuals Joomanuals lets you create custom PDF manuals for your Joomla site in just a few clicks a real time saver Read my review of Joomanuals here been testing the product Joomanuals for a while and Saurabh the developer has been generous enough to make a special discount offer available for Joomlablogger readers The first 1000 subscribers using the promotion code joomlablogger will get an extended subscription 1 5 years for 25 normally this gives you a year subscription Visit the Joomanuals page to read more and take advantage of this extended subscription offer remember to use the coupon code joomlablogger JOOMIABIOGGER For all you Joomla addicts out there Facebook Fan page www facebook com joomlablogger The blog www joomlablogger net Twitter www twitter com joomlablogger You Tube channel www youtube com joomlablogger Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 48 of 48
36. ovides users and search engines with useful information about your site Text contained in title tags can appear in search results pages and relevant descriptive text is more likely to be clicked on We recommend reviewing the list and updating the title tags wherever possible Back to all issues Pages with missing title tags fconnectrecelyer tmpEcomponent fsearch ordering se archphrase all tmpl raw type json Duplicate title tags As the title tag of the page is among the most important optimization factors of a page you should make sure that they are all unique As you can see the search page on my site has 30 instances in the Google index All with the same meta description This is due to the fact that use SuperBlogger from Joomlaworks to create tag search Thus there are permalinks from each tag to the search page which gives Google a link to follow and a page to index However there are no automatic way of creating unique meta description for the search page that know of anyway You need to enter these manually into sh404SEF HTML suggestions Duplicate title tags Your title provides users and search engines with useful information about your site Text contained in title tags can appear in search results pages and relevant descriptive text is more likely to be clicked on We recommend reviewing the list and updating the title tags wherever possible Back to allissues Pages with duplicate title tag
37. portant thing however is to submit your XML sitemap to Google You sitemap URL when using Xmap will typically be something like http www jJoomlablogger net component option com xmap lang en no html 1 Sitemap 1 view xml Submitting the XML sitemap is very easy to do It will take a couple of hours for Google to pick up your sitemap after submission 5 Make use of Robots txt for submission borrowed this from sitemaps org You can specify the location of the Sitemap using a robots txt file To do this simply add the following line including the full URL to the sitemap Sitemap http www example com sitemap xml Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 33 of 48 This directive is independent of the user agent line so it doesn t matter where you place it in your file If you have a Sitemap index file you can include the location of just that file You don t need to list each individual Sitemap listed in the index file You can specify more than one Sitemap file per robots txt file So in addition to submitting your XML sitemap you can enter something like the following into your robots txt file found in your Joomla installation root folder Sitemap http www joomlablogger net component option com_xmap lang en no html 1 sitemap 1 view xml You will find the links to your own sitemaps HTML and XML under Options gt Preferences in Xmap 6 Check which pages are
38. quiyzr Wir i ame Content Joomlay As I ve shown in part I the most robots Conte e ear 7 i e Ez PPP lt n important meta elements are TITLE and imm ke n 6 index fol B e fr d DESCRIPTION In this part I will show you SCription joomla fr E how to use these meta tags effectively in Damla T n _ 3 t Joomla feed rasis T lS and ney esf el r 5 lt f cCed atom te alternat There are two main ways of configuring meta templat rel 5 e 7 erna elements in Joomla st Yle shegrm 700 bhoeni gt Styles href Tavis ilt i st NC Rind ef d 4gins s 3 Use the built in Joomla meta tag Yleshee plugi T jd Sty ref 1S sys functionality lesheer http wy 1 Ema udi 2 Use a SEF Search Engine Friendly extension like sh404SEF or Artio JoomSef The second method is shown using the SEF Search Engine Friendly component sh404SEF will be discussed in part 3 How to use the built in Joomla meta tag functions and a small mod Joomla has built in meta tag support with some limitations They are easy to use so let s get started First you should go to your Administrator gt Global Configuration gt Site and deselect the Show Author tag and Show title tag options Show Iitle Meta Tag gt No Yes Show Author Me
39. ranslated into 2 foreign languages Room for improvement Joomanuals does not create huge manuals just useful ones In a service like this there s always room for improvement would like to see support for more extensions and additional translations In addition to this would like to be able to put the company logo on the front page of the manual An option to choose to have the logo on the front page or not would be nice These are minor things for me though Most users in Norway read English very well so presenting a manual in English isn t a problem If want a manual in Norwegian l d better get around and translating it myself don t you think Pricing and value The price for Joomanuals is 25 for year which think is a fair price The developer has already added a lot of features at the request of his users And as the subscriber base grows think we will see more languages and support for more extensions as well With a subscription you can generate an unlimited number of manuals for an unlimited number of clients for one year Considering the fact that it would take a lot of money to get such a manual written especially for your client from a professional it s a very good investment Using Joomanuals saves time and will definitely impress your clients recommend you go ahead and buy a subscription and start impressing your clients and co workers use it myself and love it already If you are not satisfied wi
40. rs description include your keywords and keep it under 150 characters Don t bother The meta tag entry form sh404SEF Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 24 of 48 D D Following pages in Joomla frontpage and blog layouts One major shortcoming of the front page and blog layouts in Joomla is how meta tags are handled Let s say you have decided to have pagination on your front page You have decided to have 5 front page articles show and the rest will be pushed to page 2 page 3 and so on This is all well and a nice feature The same goes for blog layouts section or category However the following pages will have the same meta tags as the first page of the frontpage or blog layout This is not good because it results in a lot of duplicate title tags and meta description tags in Google Google Webmaster Tools actually reports on this so consider this to be a factor Google takes into consideration It s also better for your users if the meta tags are actually telling them something useful rather than a generic text from another page Joomla news page 3 Mozilla Firefox File Edit View History Bookmarks Tools Help A 9 IB http www joomlablogaer net blog Joomla news page 3 E3 You should now have the knowledge to start customizing your meta tags into something useful It can bring you loads of traffic if done correctly
41. s Pages Joomla SEO 2 amp JoomlaBlogger JoomlaBlog ger 2 amp Joomla tips tutorials and news 2 JoomlaBlogger Search 30 Video The Joomla 1 6 Admin Menu amp Joomla news page 2 Meta tags will improve your site rankings go improve them Good luck working with meta tags in Joomla If you have a large site this task can be a large one However it s great fun seeing your site improve in the search engines after doing this work correctly Six steps to get your Joomla site indexed in Google OK so you have a brand new site going on and it s all made in Joomla But how to get traffic from the search engines There are several things you can do to ensure that Google and other search engines are picking up your pages This will over time give you search engine positions for your keywords Without indexation no positions and no traffic from search engines It s not rocket science but you need to make sure that your pages are reachable by search engine spiders to get indexed l Il show you six steps to get your site indexed by Google and other search engines Why it s important to get indexed by the search engines Getting your pages indexed in Google and the other search engines is among the first steps towards getting valuable traffic to your site The search engine spiders crawl the web continuosly in search of new and updated pages The time it takes the spiders to find you depends on a number of f
42. sed when read a tweet saying something like Joomla doesn t support Joomla is not search engine optimized Of course it is But the template might not be It all comes down to how the template HTML is built and how the CSS Cascading Style Sheet codes are implemented Most of the time the template CSS files are found in the templates TEMPLATENAME css folder Some templates use only one CSS file called template css mostly others have several For optimal page performance you should keep the number of CSS files to a minimum This reduces the number of server requests necessary to show the page You may sometimes see that the template uses a main CSS file which imports all of the other files by the following syntax example import url reset css import url joomla css import url modules css import url custom css CSS Best Practices Let s say you have installed a template from YooTheme You could go bananas and change all of the CSS files wildly Probably won t be a terrible thing to do either as you can download the original files again if you screw something up However there is a better way When you want to override CSS in template use a separate stylesheet Yoo Theme has actually implemented this structure in their templates already They have included a blank CSS file called custom css which is loaded after all other CSS files
43. ta Tag No e Yes must admit don t know what that first setting does I ve tried setting it to both Yes and No but really can t see any difference in my site code The second one is unnecessary I m following the principle of less is more when it comes to meta tags If you don t have specific use for it remove it Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 16 of 48 Title tag By default Joomla will use the article title as the TITLE tag for the page Oftentimes you will want to change this title to something else The title of the article may be too long or not suitable for use in a title Or you want to adjust the message of the title element to the receiving audience i e people using Google or other search engines to find your article To enter a new title for the page you need to edit the menu item linking to the article to the Menu Manager and choose your menu item 2 Go to Parameters System 3 Enter your new title in the Page Title field 4 Make sure the Show title is set to No Otherwise it will show the title in the content area of the page v Parameters System Page Title Show Page Title 9 ves Page Class Suffix Menu image None Selected SSL Enabled Off lanore On To enter your company name or other text string before or after the default title recommend the Website Name plug in This free extension is v
44. th the service the company will return your money immediately Take a look in the Coupons section at the end of this book for a special offer from the developer of JooManuals Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 45 of 48 Resources SEO Tools There are several SEO tools available online These tools will make your life easier when doing keyword research optimizing your sites and building links These are two of the tools use and recommend for SEO SEOMoz Market Samurai Template providers tend to use templates from different providers when designing Joomla sites Here are some of the template providers use and recommend They create templates that are customizable fast loading and SEO friendly Rocket heme loomlaBamboo JoomlaShack Recommended books Eric Meyer on CSS Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 46 of 48 Joomla coupons collected a few coupons for you to enjoy Use these to save money on Joomla templates extensions and services Joomla support from Open Source Support Desk Code joomlablogger25 Savings USD 25 additional discount on any Prepaid Support Bundle for Joomla Link http www opensourcesupportdesk com home prepaid support 20 off a 1 subscription for sh404SEF Use the coupon code sh808 when buying a l year license for sh404SEF and get a 20 discount That means y
45. that sh404SEF will create the meta tags automatically as some people have assumed from the previous The Active meta management option gives you a minimum of meta tag optimization on your site There are however things you can do to improve the optimization This is useful for getting started However if you want to compete for positions on highly competitive keywords recommend writing the title tag and meta description tag for each page specifically This will ensure you have more control over which keywords are used on what pages Mata SEC Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 21 of 48 Title tags in sh404SEF Title tags are automatically handled by sh404SEF when the active meta management setting is turned on One challenge l ve had previously with sh404SEF is how title tags are built If you decided to include the category and or section in the URL of your page sh404SEF would include them in the TITLE tag as well This problem was fixed in version 1 5 5 of sh404SEF Thank you Yannick You can now enjoy separate settings for the TITLE tag and the URLs This means you can have a URL like this http www joomlabloqger net tutorials extensions setup sh404sef and a title tag like this How to set up sh404SEF These settings can be found in the Meta SEO tab of sh404SEF loomla content page title configuration Lise article title alias 9 No ves Insert section 9 No
46. to the user Preferably the keyword has been used at least two times in the description Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 14 of 48 Keywords Meta keywords are no longer important Where they ever Matt Cutts the Google guru recently did a definite post on the subject He concluded the keywords tag is not used by Google and will most likely not be used in the future Not exactly breaking news but it s nevertheless good to get the information directly from the source There s only one reason to use the keywords meta tag field in Joomla If you use the related articles tag or a cloud tag these tags use the keywords meta tag field Author don t see a reason to use this tag at all It has no positive effect on SEO lt meta name author content The JoomlaBlogger gt Robots meta tag lt meta name robots content index follow gt Generator The default Joomla generator tag is in my opinion not important at all Also it is one more thing giving away the fact that your site is made in Joomla Removing the generator tag alone is not enough to hide that the site is built with Joomla but it s a good start Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 15 of 48 Joomla meta tags part 2 Built in functionality In this post I will delve into the how to of e e ch xhti setting meta tags with Joomla se href ittp e I ttp w
47. tomatic pagination The pages following the first one will have titles like Page 2 Page 3 etc That s not very helpful haven t found way of changing these titles using the joomla core With sh404SEF or another SEF extension this is easily done Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 27 of 48 Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 28 of 48 Duplicate meta descriptions As you can see from this example the default meta description from the Joomla Global Configuration is used on 30 pages HTML suggestions Duplicate meta descriptions Meta description information can give users a clear idea of your site s content and encourage users to click on your site in the search results pages amp Back to all issues Pages with duplicate meta des criptions Pages amp JoomlaBlogger writes about Joomla CMS and gives you tips 3n tricks tutorials and news about your fav ime ulg reat oml that i 2 not available through menu You only wan At JoomlaBlogger net you will find a lot of Joomla tips All of 2 the tips for Joomla are free at Missing title tags Some components are quite lacking in the meta tags department And sometimes they create a lot of pages automatically so it s hard to tell if all title tags are OK The Missing title tags page presents the culprits HTML suggestions Missing title tags Your title pr
48. user manuals to help you save time and impress your clients Take a look in the Coupons section at the end of this book for a special offer from the developer of JooManuals The developer s product description Joomanuals is an innovative automatic custom user manual creator that will create user manuals which you can give your clients along with the Joomla website Compare it with the manual you get when buying a TV or a washing machine What this means is no more annoying calls from clients asking you silly questions like how to add an image in an article Joomanuals is a simple but brilliant idea which will save you tons of time Easy step by step process to create a manual Joomanuals has been designed for busy web developers designers and site builders who don t have time to write detailed administration manuals for training their clients Using Joomanuals this is the steps you would use to create a custom manual Log in using your user name and password provided once you subscribe Fill in a simple form with basic information about your client s website Download the custom manual generated by Joomanuals in PDF format You can print and mail it to your clients if required Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 43 of 48 JooManuals features in detail Include your company s logo on header of every page Explanation of how to edit Custom HTML modules Explanation on makin
49. utput leaving the original file intact To remove the numbering from the contact category list layout table follow these steps Remove the header column Delete or comment out the following code around line 42 td class sectiontableheaderescape Sthis params get pageclass sfx align lt php echo JText _ Num gt lt td gt 2 Remove the actual number Delete this code further down in the code atc lt php echo Sthis pagination getRowOffset Sitem count lt ebd Refresh your category list layout in the front end to decide if you re happy with the result You could do other changes as well For instance you could change the percentage width width 20 etc for the columns with class names That way you can style the individual column widths and other parameters using CSS think this is a more flexible way of working Example lt php if Sthis params get show title td class headertitle sectiontableheaderescape S this params get pageclass sftx 2 lt width 453 gt 22 echo grlodoesort ptem Title a title Sthis gt lists order_Dir Sthis gt lists order gt lt td gt gt pho endats 2 gt Copyright 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 10 of 48 How to customize the output of com_contact The same goes for the Contact category output If you create
50. w more than handful things about PHP HTML and CSS however are like second nature to me That s because I ve invested time into learning and practicing the use of these skills This is especially true for CSS Easy to get started with CSS and Joomla The easiest way of starting to learn CSS is to look at your existing template css Look at the structure of it and try changing some of the styles Do a backup of the file first You could try and change the header tags first Want the H2 tag to be smaller You got it And now it s a site wide change valid for all instances of the H2 tag Other tags to change are the a link tag the p for instance adjusting the line spacing and the UL and LI tags bullet list Recommended reading for learning CSS To learn CSS always recommend the books by CSS guru Eric Meyer He has some great insights and a huge knowledge about CSS He describes the use of CSS in an understandable way and gives a lot of practical examples in his books My first CSS book was Eric Meyer on CSS and it taught me a lot For instance he goes through the whole process of turning a table based layout into a CSS layout Eric Meyer Explaining every step along the way on wing Te Lege Nab Design Another great resource is A List Apart This is a site about web development and has a lot of CSS techniques A List Apart Magazine explores the design development and meaning of web content with a special focus o
51. w we have the possibility to make these or some of these changes in a template override as an exterior file that will not get overwritten when you upgrade the template or the component have not yet found a good tutorial on how to do this would appreciate a clear and simple if possible explanation of WHEN to use a template override HOW to do it including code examples if you have to create your own code where exactly do you put the new file do you have to create a new folder etc and possibly seeing a case to illustrate it had thought about writing a post about template overrides and this email got me started First a note of caution However tempting it might be to change the core files themselves it s not a good idea Simply put If you change any of the core files and they are updated in a new Joomla version your changes will be overwritten by the update will offer an example It s very easy to change the appearance of one of the core modules by editing the files found in modules com modulename Don t do it this way As Wilco Jansen said during the JoomlaDay Norway 2008 You should never need to hack the core files of Joomla Fortunately there is a better way Template overrides Copyright O 2010 iSee Communications AS Norway www joomlablogger net Page 8 of 48 Template overrides The solution is called template overrides output overrides or layout overrides These are files that reside in the temp
52. wled your site it found some issues with your content These issues won t prevent your site from appearing in Google search results but addressing them ma y help your site s user experience and Diagnostics performance Cravd errors Your site on the web Meta description Pages Crawl stats Duplicate meta descriptions 184 HTML suggestions Long meta descriptions 0 Labs short meta descriptions 4 Help with Title tag Pages Good titles and descriptions Missing title tags 5 Duplicate title tags 38 Long title tags 0 short title tags Non informative title tags 0 As mentioned you will end up with duplicate meta descriptions when using the global description field However think this is better than having no description at all As long as the global description is generic enough it can work quite well You should however try to create unique meta descriptions for every page on your site This is not possible using Joomla core functionality For that you need third party extensions Meta description on pages other than articles Joomla will show meta tag fields for all pages However there are some limitations on which meta tags you can edit specifically You can enter meta tags for articles Those meta tags will be used when showing an article For other items the case is different For instance there s no way to enter meta elements for menu items pointing to section or category views This means your blog views w
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