In this post, I give you the most popular posts of 2009. This year was my first as a Joomla blogger, and the experience has been great.
I will take the opportunity to thank you who's reading my blog. A special thank you goes to all those who comment on my posts, subscribe to my email list, follow my RSS feed and my Twitter account.
Without you, the time it takes to write this blog wouldn't be worth it. However, getting your positive feedback is a constant inspiration to me. It's what makes me want to write better and more informative posts.
I learn from you, and I hope you take away something of value from my reading my blog as well.
Here are my most popular blog posts from 2009:
- Tutorial: How to Set Up sh404SEF
My favorite SEF extension for Joomla is sh404SEF. I have tried a few other extensions as well, but sh404SEF is the one I'm comfortable with and which best seems to meet my requirements. This tutorial will help you duplicate the setup I use here at Joomlablogger.net. - Ultimate Joomla Template and Extension Provider List
There are thousands of Joomla templates and extensions available on the market. In this post you'll find a large listing of Joomla template and extension providers, and directories of the same. You'll find both commercial and free templates and extensions. - Tutorial: Link to Joomla Articles With no Menu Item Sometimes, you might want to create a Joomla page that is not available through a menu. You only want the page to appear when the URL is entered. This might be a 'thank you' page after form submission, a log in page or some other type of 'hidden' page you would need on your Joomla site.
- Tip: Secure your Joomla sites before they are hacked!
This post will give you some of the most important tactics to secure your Joomla sites. - How to Use Google AdSense with Joomla
Sometimes, you might like to use Google AdSense advertising on your Joomla site. The most obvious way of doing this is to take the HTML/Javascript code provided by AdSense and paste it into the Custom HTML module. However, this is not as flexible as I would like it. Also, if you want to change the appearance of the ad, you will have to create a new code in the AdSense account and do the pasting process all over again. So, let's find an easier way to work with Joomla and Google Adsense. - Update: Joomla 1.6 Release Plan
When Joomla 1.6 Alpha was released a few months ago, the original plan was to release the beta version six weeks after that, in August. However, the time came and no beta arrived. So what happened, and what's the status of Joomla 1.6 as of now? - Six Steps to Get Your Joomla Site Indexed in Google
OK, so you have a brand new site going on - and it's all made in Joomla. But how to get traffic from the search engines?
There are several things you can do to ensure that Google and other search engines are picking up your pages. This will, over time, give you search engine positions for your keywords. - Tip: How to display Feedburner RSS directly in Joomla
Learn how to substitute the default RSS feed with a feed from Google Feedburner. - Tip: Change the 'Welcome to the Frontpage' title tag in Joomla 1.5
I think it's amazing how many people have left the home page title saying 'Welcome to the Frontpage' on launched websites. This text appears both on the front page of the site, and in the TITLE tag. This it's used as the main link for your site homepage in search engine result - My Top Ten Joomla Extensions
An overview of my favorite Joomla extensions. - A Search for VirtueMart Templates and Extensions
During the last couple of years, I've created a few Joomla websites with Virtuemart as the e-commerce component. Although I struggled a bit to start with, I think it works fine now. I still find the control panels quite cluttered and not exactly intuitive, though. It took a lot of time to get to know all the quirks and oddities (like links that lead to not-yet implemented features...!). After a while, however, I have come to like VirtueMart, and have managed to set up a few quite successful webshops using it.One of the things I don't like so much is the lack of themes and templates made for Virtuemart. A few weeks ago I was made aware of Yagendoo, a company specializing in templates and extensions for Joomla. - Tutorial: How to set up Joomla for blog editors like Flock, ScribeFire
If you're a blogger using Joomla, one of the main things you should be concerned about is reducing your time spent on each post. At least the time it takes to publish small bits of information with your own thoughts mixed in. For this purpose, a blog editor like ScribeFire, which installs as an extension to Firefox, or the built-in blog editor of the Flock browser, may be of great help. However, to get it up and running with Joomla you need to install a few things and do some configuration changes. I'll show you exactly how.
I'm already looking forward to 2010 :)
Post illustration by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uhhhlaine/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
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