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After a few years of using  Joomla! to develop websites, I now prefer WordPress. Two main reasons informed my decision: 1) the user-friendliness of the administration of WordPress, especially the menus, and 2) the effortlessness of upgrading a WordPress site, as well as all the plugins.  I will still maintain the Joomla! 1.5 sites that I developed (eg Communitas, GDN, Seisoen van Luister), as well as this site (for the time being).  But WordPress will now be my CMS of choice.

I have also finetuned my installation of WordPress, with about 40 plugins that I prefer.  I have also zoned in on the excellent Yootheme templates, and use them as part of my installation and training. You can read more about that at my new WordPress site Communitas Interaktiewe Webtuistes, unfortunately in Afrikaans.  

Here is a selection of two other sites I have developed using WordPress: Bybelskool and Lewende Hawe.  Links to the other sites I have developed are on the main WordPress site Communitas Interaktiewe Webtuistes.

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Joomla! is used to build a wide variety of websites, both small and elegant, and big and intricate.

However, when you start out building your website with this great CMS, there can be a bewildering amount of possibilities and options.

Siteground is a site that specializes in Joomla!, and provides a wide range of tutorials.  Look at these tutorials to get you up to speed:

Check out their free templates as well.
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One of the great things about Yootheme's templates is Active Item Dectection.  With many of their templates the Active Item is highlighted in different colors, which can be set in the template section.  For it to work, your params.ini file should be writable (755) and the main menu items should be ordered consecutively in the menu manager.

Recently I saw that the Active Item Dectection on one of my sites was not working.  I used the Waybeyond template on that site, which was also installed on another site and still working perfectly there.  I checked the parameters, installed the latest update for Waybeyond, but still no joy.

Then I began the laborious work of browsing through the Yootheme forums on this template.  It turned out that Active Item Detection doesn't work when the cache is set to on in the System settings of the Global Configuration of Joomla!  Usually I turn that off when installing Joomla!, but I must have missed it somehow.  When I turned that off, Active Item Detection began working again.  One can also leave the setting to on, and turn it off in the specific menu module (Module Manager | Advanced Parameters).

 

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I came across a number of hidden Joomla! secrets, that I find quite intriguing.  For the whole list, you can watch a PowerPoint slide and listen to Brian Teeman.

  • Images on your Joomla! site will not get indexed in search engines like Google, because of the way the default robots.txt file is set up. You will find this file in the root of your installation.  The default is like in this picture, with images disallowed.  Delete the highlited line, Disallow: /images/, if you would like your pictures to be included in the various search engines.  Incidently, this robots.txt file must be in the root of your website.  If your Joomla! installation is in a subfolder, eg www.yoursite.com/joomla, then the robots.txt file should be in www.yoursite.com. That is because the robots only read the robots.txt file when it is in the root folder of a website.
  • To see the module positions in the template of a Joomla! installation, type the following: http://www.yoursite.com/?tp=1.  The number 1 is actually irrelevant. You can use any number, even your own name.
  • If you are testing a lot of components and the list gets too long, so that you have to scroll down to see them (use your mouse wheel), you can shorten the list by deactivating them in the uninstall components area.  Go to the Extensions Manager menu, click on Install/Uninstall and then on Components.  Then click on the green mark in the Enabled column of the relevant component to deacivate it, like I did in this picture with the Banners component.  That doesn't uninstall the component, so that you can just re-enable it when you want to use it again.
  • One can not be careful enough with security on a Joomla! installation.  Here are some tips:
    • Use the updates that Joomla! distribute from time to time, currently 1.5.14.  It is essential especially for the security updates that usually is part of the upgrades.  Do test the upgrade on a test site of course, but update as soon as it is viable.
    • Do not use the default jos_ prefix for your database.  Give it any other prefix to deter hackers.
    • Do not use the default ID 62 user that is called admin.  Create another user with Super Administrator powers, downgrade the ID 62 user to Manager and delete it then.
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I love the new addition to my arsenal of Twitter gadgets, TwInbox.

Yes, that is spelled right: Tw(itter)Inbox. It installs as a toolbar in Outlook and gives you the ability to keep your tweets organized (eg tweets recieved and tweets sent) as you would with good old email. And you can:

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I have two passions in life, serving God and helping people
Port Elizabeth, RSA
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