Baratta Design

If you are new to Joomla and have not operated any other type of content management system I would suggest the following.

These suggestions are suited to an individual or small business. My suggestions are meant to help keep your costs down while you learn to use the back-office of Joomla. Having to pay a webmaster or developer every time you want a module position moved or content added defeats the propose of using a content management system like Joomla. The main point being, to empower you to look after your daily business on the Internet or your personal website.

Try to use Joomla as it comes or 'Out of the Box' for at least a couple of weeks before adding any extensions. (If you can take the time) For example, making your urls search engine friendly can be easy or you can complicate it to no end. When you add in extensions and modules from 3rd parties you start to complicate your ability to have them all work correctly and without to much manual changing by you. SEF URLs can cause many issues to arise in the future of your site. The main issue may be content that other sites link to on yours, changes its location by changing the URL.

Are sef urls really important? I wouldn't pretent to have all the answers when it comes to what search engines can and can't see. What I will point out is, some of the most popular high ranking sites in Google do NOT have SEF URLs! I will let you be the judge of that statement.

There will be hundreds of SEO gurus who will have another story to tell. The fact is even with SEF turned on in Joomla many say it is not very good at SEO.  You may read about the double content issue with Joomla. It really isn't double content, it is different ID's for the same content because Joomla has more than one menu as a rule. If you are planning on using SEF urls please take a look at the JPromoter for Joomla , you may find the information interesting.

Add components and extensions into your site one at time. Take some time to understand each one before adding another. Check your site out and make sure that one is working and if it has caused any issue with the rest of your site. Adding in all the component and extensions at once can be overwhelming. Conflicts may be difficult to evaluate.

Community Builder is a good example of an amazing component but, you should plan around it, so to speak. Study all the plugin and add-on's that can be found for CB. Start out knowing you plan on letting CB be in charge of your members or users, because that is what CB does. Make sure other extensions will work with Community Builder.

The most popular extensions normally consider CB when they are making their component. I have talked with client's who felt it was necessary to have other type's of PHP scripts to run niche type area's of their website or master plan. Their reasoning so far as been that they, the client, can easily use that other script. The fact is Joomla can do any type of website you want it too. You can have many type's of directories, article sites, member paid site's, photo site's, thumbnail's picture's, forum's, shopping site's etc.

The main reason for the request for other piece of software seems to be that they have not learned how to use their back-office. You should be able to depend on your developer or consultant to tell you about current and new modules. I believe once you have been introduced to the extension that can do the job, you will see Joomla in a new light.

Joomla is opensource software but it is important to remember that if you had to find a match for it's features you would be starting at $349.00 USD to even come close. If you consider all the extension's that are also opensource the cost would be in the thousand's of dollar's. You may require help getting set up and installing Joomla but, the more you learn after that, the less you will spend in the future. There will never be any software upgrade charge's with Opensource software. There will be cost if you require a developer to do it for you.

Article by Daryl Baratta of Baratta Design
a licensed Joomlart Template Club Developer
(Can legally supply you with a high-tech template with your Joomla project)

Copyright Notice: Article should not be copied without the author's name and link back in place. Thank you!

Tag it: