Joomla! Community Magazine™

Illustration by:  YeprJane Beyond

Many people ask “Is Joomla! good for SEO or not?” and my final answer is: “Yes it is!”.

Joomla! is the ideal software with which you can build any website: business, corporate, education, government, portals etc. At the same time it is one of the easiest content management systems to set up, for many reasons, and good for the purpose of better rankings in search engines too.

Scottoiler is an award winning manufacturer of motorbike chain lube systems. Operating for over 25 years, they are the global market leaders in this field. 1 in 10 motorbikes in the UK have a Scottoiler system installed, but their market extends globally. Operating a number of different global websites, this new site combines the UK and US stores and is the first step in consolidating their online presence into one central system.

The Joomla! Community Leadership Team has responsibility to manage the Joomla! forums, the Community website, the JCM, the Joomla! Resources Directory, the Joomla Extensions Directory, Joomla! Events, and Joomla! User Groups. For this issue’s article from the Community Leadership Team, we want to recognize Mike Carson and his significant volunteer contributions.

The Joomla! Setup is a series of interviews with developers in the Joomla! community, talking about the tools they use to get the job done, inspired by the setup. Can you tell who it is?

Open Source Matters is the non-profit organization which was formed to manage the legal, financial, and trademark related matters for the Joomla! project. In this issue's Leadership connections article from Open Source Matters, OSM board member Steve Burge shares some of the work that OSM has been doing during July on behalf of the Joomla! project.

Joomla! 1.6 stable is right around the corner. With it comes an administrator interface that although significantly updated, remains largely the same as the previous interface from Joomla! 1.5. The Joomla! 1.5 admin interface was an updated version of the original Joomla! 1.0 interface, which was inherited from Mambo. One could say that we're using an interface that's been around the better part of this decade. That's an eternity in software.

When dealing with website security, most web masters think only about fending off potential attacks. However, we are all human. No matter how hard we try, some of the attacks will make it through, and hit our site. Our concern should be making sure that these attacks never cause any real harm to our site. We'll start covering our bases from... the database! In this issue we'll see some working, real-world examples of security measures based on that concept, which take a minimal amount of time and skills to apply to your own site. But, first, what has the database to do with security and your site surviving hacking attempts anyway?

OpenCamp Dallas - August 27-29, 2010! OpenCamp is the SouthWest’s first multi-platform web conference. With top speakers covering topics ranging from social media to technical development, content creation, revenue generation and more, webmasters and web developers, bloggers, podcasters and technologists on any platform are welcome.

Welcome to Joomla! in the Press/Media. You will find links and short descriptions of where you can read recent articles about Joomla! in the Press and Media.

The first weekend in October, Joomla users and developers will converge in San Jose, CA, for Joomla! Day USA West 2010. This is the third Joomla! Day to be held in California’s Silicon Valley, and the 2007 event was the first-ever USA Joomla Day. Opening ceremonies begin at 7pm on Friday, October 1. The following two days, October 2 – 3, will be non-stop Jooming! Starting at 9:30 am and running until 5:30 pm, attendees will have the option of choosing 4 break-out sessions to complement the two group sessions each day.

If you’re anything like me, the confines of 4 walls is unpalatable. So you opt for working at the local coffee shop, book store or even the beach where there are signs of life other than your own pulse. But how can we do that when our work is so dependent on having an internet connection? Simple. With a couple of Macs, three apps and about an hour, you can cut the cord — the Ethernet cord that is.

In the second of the Template Tools articles, we not only assess three more Joomla! Template Manufacturers: JoomlArt, JoomlaPraise and ProThemer; but we also explore the template folder in your Joomla! install and outline the essentials of Search Engine Optimisation.

Whether you have an e-commerce site or a blog or anything in between, the Holiday Season is a great opportunity for promotion. This month we compare Holiday snow effects, Team Member Nicholas Dionysopoulos has a special present for you and Team Member Sully Sullivan provides a little Holiday Fun!

Our Joomla! community spans the globe. We are people who are resourceful, entrepreneurial, geeky, ingenious, artistic, and generous. We like to learn, and we like to instruct. We come in every color humanly possible. The sun never sets on Joomla!, or on the people who create, develop and think up new ideas, every day, in dozens of different languages.

Welcome to the new Joomla! Community Magazine! Whether your first visit or your fiftieth, all of us on the JCM team want you to know that we are delighted that you are here. We've put together quite a variety of content here and you will find lots of great stories to hold your interest. When you read something that makes an impression, please be sure to leave a comment, or better yet, submit your own story for an upcoming JCM issue!

Welcome to Joomla! in the Press/Media. You will find links and short descriptions of where you can read recent articles about Joomla! in the Press and Media. Besides current mentions of Joomla!, we will take a “look back” into the history of the Joomla! project in future issues.

In an exam room with my doctor, I tell him, “It hurts when I snap my fingers this way.” My doctor replies, “stop snapping your fingers that way.” Ah, yes the obvious. Jokes aside, intelligent people, like doctors, break down hard problems into simple steps that don't seem obvious at first. I then proceed to ask him, “I think I need a second opinion, can your system just send over my records?” My doctor looks puzzled. I think to myself, “All those years of medical school and he doesn't know how to send over my records?” Where has the intelligence gone?