Here’s a quick Joomla development tutorial for you. There has always been a serious debate on Joomla vs WordPress. Both have their own pros and cons. Joomla is certainly one of the best content management systems available in the market. With 2.6 % of market share and a number of added advantages over WordPress and other CMSes, it turns out to be a very popular choice among users. But, even the best of things can turn out to be bad if not worked upon properly. Though it does not require much expertise to make a website out of Joomla, there are many avoidable mistakes that you may be making that can turn out to be costly. And so, to ease your Joomla learning experience, here is a list of 3 common mistakes that Joomla beginners usually make:
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The Problem with Images: Visuals certainly make your website beautiful. Beginners love to put images on their site to make the site lively and descriptive. But many developers are unaware of the darker picture. These lively images may actually be turning away the potential visitors by slowing down your website. This can be very problematic for your business. Research shows that a small delay of microseconds in page loading can turn away a huge customer base. So, image resizing is one thing that you need to keep in mind while using Joomla templates because the platform will not do that for you. Not only do you need to resize the images to make them look smaller on your webpage (that doesn’t actually help with the image size) but you need to minimize their size so that they are quicker to load. Many sites like www.shrinkpictures.com and TinyPNG offer such services. Another thing you need to keep in mind while uploading images is to make sure that you provide an alternative description, so that the user is engaged while the image loads or in case the image fails to load.
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Inserting Text: Text is the basic building block of your website. While pictures may well be worth a thousand words, you need that precision while laying forth your ideas, which only comes from using words with artistic precision. Further, you need text so that you are found by the search engines and seen by people! After all, you can only create an impact if you are found at all. To ease your way with text insertion, you need to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, when you login into Joomla admin, your session is to be of 15 mins by default. You can change it through the Global Configuration Page, but in case you start writing and the session expires before you finish, you lose all the data. Trust me, been there, done that. It’s painful. The better option is to write in word or notepad and copy paste it into the posting window. Secondly, when you copy and paste your text directly from Word, the HTML Editor produces a very messy and bulky code that can eat up your website. To avoid this, stripe out the unnecessary code by copying the text onto NotePad first and from there copy and paste onto the HTML Editor. As people usually assume that an underlined text is a link, it is best to avoid this confusion as well. Emphasize the text by using bold, italics, caps or by changing the font or colour. Just don’t underline it.
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Not Planning the Right Things: For those planning to shift over from WordPress or Drupal to Joomla, make sure that you have a step by step migration plan first. Not having a migration plan can be very harmful because preparing things on Joomla becomes quite a hefty task. You may leave out things in this confusion. To not lose anything and migrate successfully, evaluate your current website and make a list of the different content types. Identify areas that will require your focus while implementing the changeover. Then, through a migration service, make a changeover.
Also, have a proper backup plan. Beginners assume that their hosting company will create backup and hence, usually tend to step back even when tools such as Akeeba Backup offer free backup services. Don’t do this. In case of data loss, retrieving the backup from the host can take a long time and they may even charge you for that. Another thing to keep in mind is to have a proper backup of the older version, while updating your website so that if something goes wrong, there are ample ways to fix the problem. Keep the backup copy on a different server so that it is not available for the hackers to hack.
Implementing the above tips would also help you with Joomla extensions and Joomla plugin development.
When using Joomla for the first time, you won’t get everything right, but the above tips will help you to avoid some of the commonly made mistakes. So, get ready to indulge yourself into the immersive experience of making the perfect website.
Do you know some more Joomla development tricks? Join us and fuel the discussion
Author Bio: Raj is CEO & Founder of QL Tech, Located in Perth, Australia, QL Tech is one of the best Agency for Development, Automation and Digital Marketing Services by the virtue of its dedicated professionals.