10 Handy Joomla Tricks

Written by Sudhi | 10 April 2009

Joomla can be called a lot of things: Versatile. Flexible. Powerful. If it wouldn't be offended, I might even call her robust. However sometimes even one of the best content management systems needs some workarounds.

Below are 10 handy Joomla tips and tricks.

1. Take advantage of the extension options.

Joomla's extensions fall into four categories: templates - which modify the look and function of the frontend, components - which add a specific function to Joomla such as user registration or FAQ's, modules - which add a frontend widget to the site and plugins - which change the core functionality of Joomla.

Templates

Templates are the Joomla equivelent of a Wordpress theme. They work the same way, changing the overall appearance of your Joomla site. Soon we will write about some of the best free and commercial Joomla templates.

Components

Components are the muscle behind any Joomla site's feature. They provide a function such as a simple contact form all the way up to a robust social networking and online community site.

Modules

Modules are Joomla's version of a Wordpress widget. They are movable, customizable, self-contained boxes on a Joomla site that can contain anything from static text to a dynamic and interactive user tool. Often modules interact with components such as login form.

Plugins

Plugins are usually small extensions that somehow change the core functionality of Joomla. For example, a component creates a unique kind of content might use a plugin to allow Joomla's core search function to search within those unique content items..

2. Use the debug position.

If your template does not have a "debug" position, you can create one and use it to include invisible elements on your Joomla site. By creating a module that is published to this position and setting the "display title" parameter to "no", you can insert code in your site without changing core or template files. An example of this is Google Analytics javascript or any other code that is not meant for front-end viewing.

3. Reset your admin password.

We've all done it - set a unique password and forgot it. Here is how to reset your Joomla admin password should you forget it. You'll need access to the MySQL database using a client such as PHPmyAdmin, most hosting providers have some version of this available to you. Find the users table, and locate the entry for the Admin, by default it is ID #62. There will be a password column that includes an MD5 encoded entry. Change the entry to "1232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3" and save the changes. Your new admin password is "admin". Log into the backend and change it immediately to something secure.

4. Wrap an outside page with your Joomla site.

Joomla uses an iframe called a "wrapper" to include outside pages within your Joomla site. Simply create a new menu item, choosing "wrapper" from the list of possible menu items. Provide a URL to the outside page and you're done! This is almost always seamlessly incorporated into your site so users won't even know it's an iframe.

5. Speed up your Joomla site.

Joomla comes out of the box with tons of cool features. However all of those nice tools and functions can really bog down a Joomla powered website. Unpublish or uninstall any extensions you're not using - including all those fancy image scrollers and Flash animations.

Use Firebug to detect any errors, especially calling images that aren't there. This drastically slows server speed.

Keep your Joomla version up-to-date which helps both speed and security.

And last but not least, disable gzip in the backend - this prevents Joomla from having to encode all files before sending them.

6. Set a module position.

Modules can be assigned certain positions anywhere in your template. This provides a great deal of customization options without having to touch a line of code.

Go into the modules menu and select a module to edit. Joomla comes with a short list of modules as part of the core installation. In the parameters of a particular module, there is a drop-down list of available module positions. This list includes all module positions in the template. Simply select the position you would like the module to load into and you're done!

Tip: Want to see all of your site's module positions? Just type in http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?tp=1

7. Optimize for search engines.

Meta Tags

In the backend of your Joomla site, in the global configuration screen, you can identify a site title, meta description and meta keywords. Do not forget to fill this in! Identify the purpose or very brief description of your site in the title field.

Search Engine Friendly URLs

Joomla 1.5+ is very good about search engine friendly URLs. Simply enable them in the administration section of your joomla site. They are built from the menu items, so if your menu item has an "alias" set, you can manipulate the SEF URL that is created by Joomla.

Splash Pages = SEO Suicide

Simply put - splash pages may look nice, they may look professional, but they are a pain for your visitors and they might as well be a virtual brick wall for search engines crawling your site.

SEO Karma

As with any site, "black hat" or "grey hat" tactics to increase your search engine ranking is a quick way to get your site penalized by the search engines. It may temporarily work, but having good SEO karma is vital. Provide quality, original, valuable content and your Joomla site will thrive.

Headings

Search engines love headings, because they are supposed to be important. Each Joomla content item you create has a title, this title is very important. Don't call your article "tip #2", name it "Web Design Tip #2"

Link Anchors Matter

When you link to other sites - it's not good SEO karma to always use the rel="nofollow" tag. It will help your ranking if you only link to sites that are related to your content and your website. For example, if your site blogs about web design, use anchor text like check out these web design tips not check out this site. The built-in Joomla WYSIWYG editor makes it easy to define all of your link attributes.

8. Load sample content.

During the installation process you have the option of loading sample content. What does this mean? By utilizing this option, you can see the full functionality of a Joomla site. Sample content in this instance means sample articles, menu items, categories and sections; as well as sample FAQ's which can sometimes be tricky to set up manually.

9. Insert a module in content.

You can insert any module into content by using this tag: . User1 being the name of the module position you would like loaded. This way you can insert things like RSS subscription forms, login forms, even RSS feeds. This one comes from Jen Kramer McKibben at www.joomla4web.com.

10. Assign a module to specific menu items.

One of Joomla's most valuable features is the ability to assign a module to a specific menu item. This allows the site administrator to choose when the module will be displayed. This feature can be used to build dynamic websites that display different features or information based on where on the site the user is browsing. In the module parameters there is a textarea that includes all current menu items from all menus. By default each module is set to display for all module positions. Changing the selection to one or several will have the desired effect. You can see how this can be very useful in designing information-rich sites.