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:

• How to install Joomla manually
• How to customize the layout of your Joomla website
• How to create articles in Joomla
• How to create a Contact us page in Joomla
• How to link articles to the Joomla Menu
• How to create a Poll in Joomla 1.5
• How to create search engine friendly URLs
• How to add a counter in Joomla
• How to install extensions to your Joomla website
• How to change Joomla templates
• How to add a drop-down menu to Joomla 1.5
• How to secure your Joomla website
• How to optimize your Joomla website
• How to create a backup of Joomla 1.5
• How to upgrade Joomla 1.5 to the latest stable version
• How to fix the most common Joomla 1.5 issues
• How to convert a static website to Joomla

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).

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.

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: