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For the first, quasi-article on ion6.com, I thought I might post the information about what tools I used to make this website and what keeps it going.
This site is powered by Joomla, an open-source Content Management System. It runs on version 1.5 with several enhancements to the standard Joomla install. The first thing I did after installing Joomla was find a good template. This site uses the RokWebify template, with heavy tweaking. The logo is original, and so is most of the code used to get all the files working together.
The first thing I installed was the Joomlatwork SEF patch for better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) support. This adds some functionality that should be in the next version of Joomla. Next I got Joompack for backup of my site and database. It is really simple and gives me great peace of mind that what I worked so hard on won’t be gone if something goes wrong. The next thing I installed was sh404sef. This is a great enhancement, because while SEF (Search engine Friendly) urls in Joomla have definitely improved since version 1.0, there is still a lot to be done. Sh404sef probably takes the most time to get just right, but that’s because it controls one of the most important parts of the whole site. All in all, it’s a great component. After that, I installed Query Cache to reduce the query load on my database and speed up load times. The final component I installed was Xmap, which provides great html and xml sitemaps for humans and search engines.
As for modules, I have Popular of Late (Link Removed due to site hijack) installed to make sure the “popular” articles are all recent articles. The Firefox banner in the upper right hand corner is held in place by Be Involved! (although I made the image).
Now on to what I have enabled in Joomla. I have Legacy mode (so I can use extensions made for Joomla 1.0), page cache, SEF urls (in addition to sh404sef urls) and page compression enabled.
I have tried many plugins, modules, components, etc., and I’m pretty happy with all of these. I’m not being paid to talk about these products (Isn’t it sad that I have to say that?), I really do think they are great for anyone who wants to get started on Joomla. There are a lot of great, free, open -source extensions available. Anyone who is willing to look around and try things out will end up with a great looking site that is easy to use and works well. Because Joomla 1.5 came out relatively recently, there are some plugins I want that aren’t available yet. This will add some functionality (like comments, social bookmarking, user registration, etc.) to the site. I’ll update this post as I add them. |
