Website Design, Search Engine Optimization

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.

Next week I will attend the CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference.  I am a believer in continued education and try to attend a few conferences a year.   I have not been this excited about being a part of a development community since I started developing sites in (dare I say) 1997.  Developing sites with Joomla and WordPress have changed the capabilities of what a business can do on the internet today. With all the wonderful CMS solutions offered it will be exciting to hear from some of the movers and shakers in this field  and learn new tricks to share with you.

CMS Expo is designed for all members of a content management team, from the creators to the developers.  There will be learning sessions that include integration of  Social Media, CSS and techniques for many of the different CMS solutions that are available.  Not only will I become better acquainted with the applications that I am already familiar like Joomla and WordPress, but I will have the opportunity to be exposed to others that I would like to know more about, Drupal and Alfresco to name a few.

Technology is always changing and the website of yesterday or one that was developed a few years ago is being replace with these powerful open source dynamic CMS alternatives. The first steps to developing a website are only the beginning of an ongoing process. The truly powerful and successful websites are nurtured and upgraded constantly.  Don’t put your website in a drawer, open it up, dust it off and let’s bring new life to your on- line presence.  The beauty of CMS for a website owner,  is the ability to update the content without a lot of  technical background.

Glossary:

• CMS – Content Management System
• CSS – Cascading Style Sheet, control over how a web page looks to the user.
• Joomla – Framework, built by a development community or collaborative effort through open source to build dynamic websites.
• WordPress – Framework built by a development community or collaborative effort through open source to build the best blogs and now also has features that can be used to build a website.
• Open Source – Source code that is available to the general public for use for free.
• Blog – short for web log, an online journal that allows for comments and open conversation