New Joomla Course - hands-on learning

I finally launched my new course - 6 Weeks to a Self-Managed Website.
During the course participants create and optimize a Joomla! website - with my help.

The course is offered over 6 2-hour sessions with the first week one-on-one and the following 5 weeks group coaching in a computer learning lab.

We had our first session last Wednesday during which we had an overview of Joomla, started our site maps and set up content and navigation.

Week four we diverge a bit from Joomla to show how to use Google tools in conjuction with Joomla for google analytics, website optimizer and google ads.

Simple photographer site

I needed a simple way to create user specific photo galleries in a joomla 1.x site.

I came across Simple Image Gallery http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/17/42/ - this allows my completely web newbie photographer to upload all user images to a folder assigned to them, then create an article that creates a page of thumbnails from that folder as well as creating a lightbox slideshow.

Then I completed this hack:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=178&t=124296

Once she is done all of the previous, she logs into her Joomla backend and enters the Joomla User Manager and specifies that after login, the user will arrive at their personal photo gallery to preview their shots.

Hiding site title on home page of Joomla!

This comes up over and over again and I always forget where to do the edit.

By Default, Joomla shows the Site Name on the Home Page. If you set this to something long and detailed for SEO use or you have an interest in attractive design, or are a bit of a control freak like me, it is important to know how to hide the site title.

In your Joomla Control Panel, Click on "Menus" - then "Main Menu" - "Home"
On the right side of the detail page that loads, click "System Parameters"And check the 'No' radio button next to *Page Title*And Page title will be hidden from the front-end Home Page. Whew.

Joomla Install with SSH

What a huge improvement!

I always lost files when I uploaded Joomla! via ftp then had to painstakingly determine which files were lost.
Never again.

Now I ftp the (much smaller) zip file of the full Joomla package to my main public directory.
Enable SSH through my Host control panel - a simple one click in my Security section and choose a password.

Launch Putty - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Login to the host with the SSH username and the password you set.

type the command cd public
type the command unzip Joomla_1.5.9-Stable-Full_Package.zip (in this case)
Voila - magic - no files lost - 2 minutes from start to finish.

Go through the online install and it all worked.

Okay then I tried to delete the installation folder with ftp and realized it wasn't empty
Back to SSH
rm -Rf installation/
Beautiful.

Who else has a time saving idea?

JoomlaPack Backup and Restore

If it sounds too good to be true....
Well not really.

Joomlapack is a great extension. But as with any install of Joomla, make sure your ftp program uploads the whole thing! and in ascii where needed.

If you can unzip right on the server, my goodness what a miraculous extension joomlapack is.
I designed sites on my local server and test them thoroughly adding all content there as well as by connecting to my local database directly to cut and paste much more rapidly.

To be able to backup and then upload to an empty host and automagically install and restore the exact site in minutes is incredible: content, newsletters, forum entries - everything ported over well.... now if only my ftp program would stop losing folders during upload.

have a look at http://ideinrise.com.previewmysite.com
- a development server online - once I switch the DNS it will not need the previewmysite.com portion.

Butterfly Marketing Review

Just read a great review of Butterfly Marketing at http://www.seocracked.com/product-reviews/butterfly-marketing-reviewed.html
I think we can all agree that the content is brilliant and the strategies sleek but as Joshua correctly points out - implementation for the newbie would be tough.
I feel pretty confident as I have been a web designer and technology marketer for 12 years now. If you need help implementing, contact me or comment below.
I will be using Joomla as my platform to integrate Butterfly marketing strategies.

Content Management

I love starting new projects, listening to client worries, ideas and dreams, researching options, proposing solutions and devoloping websites that mesh with their needs. I am not so keen on website maintenance.

I have been a web designer for 10 years.
In year 1 -3 I updated client websites for them. Always.
In year 4 - 6 I would install a cgi script to allow them to go in and edit text on any of their webpages.
In year 7 I discovered Macromedia (now Adobe) Contribute. I would design sites in Dreamweaver so that all aspects except the main look and navigation could be edited by the client - yay this was a big step.
In year 8 I discovered WebAssist.com and started creating database driven websites with online control panels whereby clients could login and add pages, products, images and more using the programming language asp and an online database.... but... Access databases break so I switched to MySql and went through a new learning curve... and.... asp stopped being popular so I switched to PHP.... and if a new feature needed to be added, I often had to get into custom programming from scratch.

Last year I started using Joomla! http://www.joomla.org/
I am in love.

I took over an existing website for a new client. Instead of having to dive into code and figure out what the original designer had been thinking, this site was created using Joomla!
I was able to login, make their edits and have their site current in under an hour - this after they had been neglecting it for almost a year.
Later I was able to add a Blog and Event registration in just a couple of hours.
http://www.cnhr.ca/


Did I mention Joomla is free?

Did I mention that any time you want to add a new feature you can browse through over 4000 "extensions" to find that add-on feature? http://extensions.joomla.org/ Many of these extensions are free as well.

Why else do I love Joomla?

• I can create my own graphic design and use it for the site.
• Site managers can add new navigation items - not just edit existing pages
• It can be used to create an online community, social networking, e-commerce, calendar, newsletter, magazine, polls and surveys, blog, discussion board, document repository, education.....
• I can develop my own extensions that work with the existing structure.

So in this blog, I want to turn others into Joomla fans by sharing my discoveries, ideas and sites.

Visit my very first full Joomla site http://penetanguishenecurlingclub.com/