Website Design, Search Engine Optimization

A Joomla 2.5 Upgrade with an SEO Perspective

These past months  I have upgraded a number of Joomla 1.5 websites to Joomla 2.5. Some of the upgrades have gone really fast and others not so fast. If you have limited components I have found it goes much quicker, but if you have to upgrade your components and sometimes recreate them then the site can take a lot longer upgrade. It really depends on how extensive the site is.

Along the way I have created a check list of details I need to remember to do. It has saved me a few times. All my upgrades have been done with JUpgrade. It is a wonderful component and I am so grateful for it. This is my checklist and  I hope it assists you as you go through the process. It is not in any specific order but some tasks should be done before others. If you have something to add to this list please do so in the comments. It would be helpful to all of us.

1. Back up the Joomla 1.5 website before doing anything else. I use BlueHost, so I do this through the CPanel. I know there are components that can do this.
2. Create a sitemap of the Joomla 1.5 website. I do this so I can create 301 redirects when the Joomla 2.5 site is complete. Joomla 2.5 creates all new url’s
3. Get the Google Analytics code or any extra code that may be on the site. It does not transfer to the new site and will have to be reinstalled.
4. Meta Tags, Joomla 2.5 has great control over the descriptions and title tags. All meta tags will have to be re-input. Make sure you transfer them from the old site or copy them down. There are components that manage the meta data, but I prefer to use Joomla core.
5. Once I have made all the changes to the Joomla 2.5 site and it is ready to launch I back the site up again (see #1).
6.  The transfer of the files from JUpgrade can be done with an FTP client or through your web hosts File Manager. At first I was using my FTP client and it was taking forever, the server would time out constantly. Now I am going in through CPanel and using File Manager.
7. It may be best just to get rid of your Joomla 1.5 website files, but I am not that brave so I go through my 1.5 files and rename some of the main folders such as administrator, components, modules, plugins and templates. I also remove all the files in the default folder and save them on my local drive. That way when you load the Joomla 2.5 files they will be clean files with only 2.5 information. As you can see I am a bit paranoid and don’t like to delete anything until I know it is working. After you have loaded the Joomla 2.5 site and it is working correctly then you can go in and delete the old file folders that you have renamed
8.  In file manager I create a zip file of the jupgrade folder > and save it on the server. I take the files in the jupgrade folder and “move” them to the default folder. All this is done through the CPanel file manager and it goes quite quickly.
9. Then I pray a lot …
10. Your site should be working correctly. I have been pleasantly surprised how well it can go. You will have to go into the sites control panel and create the pretty url’s and rename the htaccess file on the server. The htaccess file is also where I put the 301 redirects.
    Note about 301 redirects, Joomla 2.5 has a redirect manager but you have to wait for Google to serve up the 404 page. I prefer to redirect the pages before Google gets them.
11. I also edit the robot.txt file, for some reason joomla has images as disallow??!! If you want your images to show up in Google images remove that line. I also remove disallow media.
12. Don’t forget to reinstall your Google Analytics, meta tags and there is really so much more. But I will leave you with this for now.

Lastly, some of my clients understand that the upgrade is necessary and it is. But there have been a few that were not happy about the additional expense. But I guess that is technology.

Joomla! Day West

Joomla Day West was in San Jose on October 2-3, 2010 in the Town Hall building in the eBay Offices. Thank you to eBay, Microsoft and kontent design big sponsors that provided meeting space, great wifi and two meals each day. About 180 people attended both days and also included the joomla! leadership teams. Most of the buzz was focused around the 1.6 upgrade which is due out sometime. 1.6 is a major upgrade from 1.5 and the plan is to support 1.5 for a year after the 1.6 launch. We learned there is no rush to upgrade to 1.6. When you decide to make the leap I would have a back up plan for the upgrade as you migrate the website over. At this time I don’t know of any migration documentation. You can download Joomla 1.6 Beta11 if you would like to try it out.

Here are some of the major take away points from the conference:

1. The production leadership team is separating out the framework development from the CMS.
2. Leadership Team Summit were all in attendance and able to have meetings in person.
3. eBay will now be contributing to joomla!
4. iJoomla Components are now “GPL”
5. moo tools 1.3 will include art functionality along with exciting new Java Script behaviors
6. Kunena 1.6 is a stable release, it supports Joomla! 1.6 style languages and is backward compatible with Joomla 1.5
7. JomSocial demo’ed the new release 2.0 and will be out soon. JomSocial adds a social networking community to your website. http://www.jomsocial.com/
8. BluePrint - is a CSS framework for joomla! and the “Atomic” template will be included in Joomla 1.6 .
9. Open Source Matters is now in the black meaning – they don’t owe money.
10. 1.6 has formatting changes that will effect templates.

The Joomla Community has updated the website and added additional support:

1. Joomla! Community Magazine
2. Joomla! Showcase
3. Joomla! People Portal – discussion groups and social networking. This is a JomSocial site.

Leave a comment with information I may have left out or that you would like to add.

Uploading Product images to VirtueMart can be done either by going through the back end administrator control panel in Joomla or through the front end. When I am making a quick change sometimes I will go through the front end rather than the back end of the site, depending on what I am doing it  can be much faster.

Below is a  bulleted list that I put together for a client.

1. VirtueMart BACK END Updates – Login as you normally would at this page http://www.yoursitename.com/administrator/
   • Click on the Components Tab across the top in the main control panel
     scroll down to VirtueMart (they are alphabetical) and click
   • Now you are in the store control panel. On the left is the Administration Panel go to Products >> List Products
   • From the list of products find the item you want to change or add an image. Click the media icon in the specific product row you have selected
   • A Pop Up window will appear for this specific product “FileManager :: Image/File List for (product name)”.  Click on the image file name, then a new screen will appear
   • Upload a File for: (product name)
     click the “Choose File” button and find the image on your local computer

     Pick the File Type

     Check the image sizes, if you want both the full and thumbnail images

     File is published? Check this box if you want to publish the image(s)

   • Next to complete the job-
     Top Right options to save your work
     Save – to save what you have done
     Back – to go back to the other window
     Cancel – go back to FileManager
   • Return to FileManager::Image/File List for (product name) in the pop up window
     Choose what you want to do with the images – publish or remove
     Also you can view the images you have uploaded
2. VirtueMart FRONT END Updates – Login at the customer login box on the front end of the website http://www.yoursitename.com/
   • Find your product
     Then go to the product detail page
     (url may look something like this:
     http://www.yoursitename.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=yourcart_flypage.tpl&product_id=63&category_id=11&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=55 )

   Click on the little pencil near the name of the product on the top left

   • This will bring you to the “Flypage”  for the product, click or open the Product Images Tab Under the “Update Item :: Product name ” heading
   • There will be two choices Full Image and Thumbnail Image
     Full Image >> click the “Choose File”  button and find the image on your local computer
     Image Action will change to Auto-Create Thumbnail
     Choose none if you don’t want a thumbnail
     Save – to save what you have done and leave the window
     Apply – to save what you have done and stay in this window
     Cancel – to go out of the window

I hope you find this helpful when updating your e-commerce, shopping cart.