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TOP 10 JOOMLA BEGINNERMISTAKES AND HOW TO AVOIDTHEMYou know how it goes. You

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JANUARY 26, 2011

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create a fantastic Joomlawebsite with greatarchitecture, awesomeusability, clean code andoptimized images, and whenyou’re done, you hand itproudly to your client with(hopefully) some explanation of how to use the site’s backend. Iusually create a video tutorial that explains how to perform thebasic features.

The client is happy, you get paid, and you move on to the nextproject. A few months later, when the client comes back with somequestions or wants you to upgrade or add some features, younotice that the site is not quite as clean as it used to be, not asoptimized as it used to be, and so on. In fact, it’s kinda messy andcrappy. Not a site you’d like to sign your name on or to have in yourportfolio.

What went wrong?

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Joomla is great because it empowers even non-designers tomanage their sites themselves. The problem is that thosecustomers, in their effort to run the site without bothering you, makemistakes.

During the years I’ve been developing Joomla sites, I’ve noticed thatsome of these mistakes repeat themselves. If those clients knewjust a little about what to watch out for as they start using their newsite, maybe they wouldn’t make them.

Feel free to send your customers this post to help them avoid thesemistakes.

1. LINKS TO OUTSIDE SITES OPEN IN THE SAMEWINDOW.

There’s a very simple rule here: all links to external sites should openin a new window, not the same window. You don’t want to lose thatperson forever. If a user clicks to a new site in the same window,they’re gone. All HTML editors have the capability to choose “newwindow” when creating links. If you are linking inside the site

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however, you should usually open the link in the same window (thisis the default). Leave too many windows open while the userbrowses the site, and they’ll end up with a messy browser.

External site: New window. Your own site: Same window.

Choose to open the link in a new window, if you're

linking outside your site

2. FILE NAMES SHOULD BE DESCRIPTIVE.

Let’s say you create some images of flowers to

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red_rose.jpg

upload to your site. You could call the images“1.jpg,” “2.jpg” but these names will make it hardto find, and search engines won’t know what tomake of them. Even “flower1.jpg” is not good enough. The morespecific, the better. For example, “red_rose.jpg” is a great file name.This is not only good for usability (it’s easy to know what the imageis without having to open it) but it’s also a great way to get freetraffic from Google when people search for images of a red rose.

3. NOT RESIZING IMAGES.

One big flaw of Joomla is no ability to resize images; that’s your job.Of course, you don’t need to resize the image. You could upload agigantic image and resize it on the HTML Editor interface bydragging the corners. But large images take longer to load, and thatpicture will still load as a large image. Speed is important, so if youwant to keep your site speed down, you must resize the imagebefore you upload. There are many tools for resizing images.www.shrinkpictures.com is a good one for beginners but any imageediting software, such as Fireworks, can do the job too.

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lady_gaga.jpg, not lady gaga.jpg

4. HAVING SPACES IN FILE NAMES.

When you create a file, any file, besure to use underscores instead ofspaces.

So a photo of Lady Gaga should benamed: “lady_gaga.jpg” and not “ladygaga.jpg.” Use a space and thecharacters “%20 “ will replace the gap when the browser reads thefile. This creates a messy code and can create unpredictableproblems. Here’s a great article about the best practices for creatingfile names:www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/create-good-filenames.shtml

5. PLACING ALL THE IMAGES IN THE SAMEFOLDER.

Joomla allows you to create new folders according to topic underthe images/stories directory. For example, if you have an “about us”page with photos of your team members, create a new folder, call

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the folder “team” and place their images there. Place all your imagesin the generic images/stories/ folder and in no time you’ll bestruggling to find your images when you want to add them to yourarticles. Keep your images organized by topic. And of course, nospaces in the folder names!

Some HTML editors will let you do this on the spot, when adding anarticle, but the default HTML editor that comes with Joomla, won’t.So you’d have to go to site->media manager and add a new folderthere.

Keep your images organized by topic

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6. NOT USING THE AVAILABLE HEADING FORTEXT FORMATTING.

Every template has a style sheet file (CSS file) with headings forformatting. The title of your article is already formatted by Joomlabut the rest of the article usually needs some more headings tobreak the block of text.

There are two ways to do this: the right way and the wrong way.The wrong way is to highlight the title, choose a font, choose acolor, choose a size, click the bold button, and center it. It works butit creates messy code and it’s hard to maintain. If you wanted tomake all the titles inside the articles green, not bold and in Arial font,for example, you’d have to open each article and make each changemanually. That could take a while.

The right way to format text inside your articles is to use headings.This will create clean code and if you decide to change the way theheadings look, all you’d have to do is open the CSS file and makethe change once. (That’s not for beginners but you will get there

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eventually).

Select one of the available styles, especially the headings style

7. TYPING DIRECTLY INTO JOOMLA.

When you login to your Joomla admin, you start a session. Thelength of the session is set to 15 minutes by default but can bechanged on the global configuration page. Start typing an articledirectly into Joomla then and your session will end before you’refinished writing. When you try to save your work, you’ll lose it. Trust

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me been there, done that. It’s not fun. The solution is simple: writeit in Word, save it, then copy and paste it into Joomla. But becareful

You've got 15 minutes to finish typing , or else...

8. COPYING DIRECTLY FROM A WORDDOCUMENT TO JOOMLA.

This is a very big mistake that can take your site down (I’ve seen it!).

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Creating your site’s copy in Word is a very good idea but copyingfrom Word directly into the Joomla HTML editor produces messy,bloated code that Google hates and which can mess up your site.The solution is simple: strip out the code by copying the text intoNotepad first, then copy from Notepad into Joomla. Notepad iseasy to find on your PC under “accessories.” I’m sure Macs have asimilar program.

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Copying from Word directly into the Joomla HTML editor produces messy, bloated

code that Google hates

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9. ADDING UNDERLINE TO TEXT THAT IS NOT ALINK.

Text should only be underlined if it’s a link. People are used toclicking on underlined text. They see an underline so they assumeit’s a link. If you need emphasis, use bold, italics, a different color, allcaps, or a bigger size. But don’t use underline.

Text should only be underlined if it’s a link

10. HARD CODING LINKS.

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There are two ways to link to a location on your own website. Thewrong way is to find the article on your site, copy the URL from thebrowser window and use this link when creating a hyperlink. It’smessy, and if you move your site, change the article’s title or changeyour SEF extension, you’ll be in trouble.

The right way is to use the HTML editor to link to the article or menuitem. The HTML editor will know the right URL to use in a way thatdoesn’t mess up your site. Make sure you always choose “relative”in the HTML editor settings, if available. The basic Joomla HTMLeditor doesn’t allow you to do this the right way, choose an HTMLeditor that does (My favorite is WYSIWYG Pro).

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Posted in: Joomla, Tips & Tricks 177,603 26

The right way is to use the HTML editor to link to the article or menu item

That’s it! If you follow these practices when working on yourJoomla website, you’ll be in an excellent shape, and in time, all thiswill become second nature. Remember, we all started at the sameplace you are today, and we all made the exact same mistakes. Ihope this helps.

Web designers, what are the biggest mistakes you see whenhanding a site to clients? Please add yours below.

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Merav KnafoMerav Knafo is the founder and CEO of iJoomla, Inc.She loves writing about Joomla, usability and SocialNetworking.

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LEAVE A COMMENT

SUBMIT COMMENT

Hans KuijpersJanuary 26, 2011 at 6:42 pm | #

What a nice list to hand over to fresh Joomla users. But I don’t

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agree with your first point. You state that one always should openexternal links in a new window. That discussion is on for years now.Should you or should you not open an external link in a freshwindow.Feel free to read the discussion about this topic onSmashingMagazine ->http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/01/should-links-open-in-new-windows/

Reply

Merav KnafoJanuary 26, 2011 at 6:50 pm | #

They make some good points in that article, but still,losing your visitor to an external site makes no senseto me, so I am keeping this point

Reply

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RyanJanuary 27, 2011 at 11:38 pm | #

Regarding #1, I’ve noticed some pretty big sistes doing this –external links opening in the same window. The biggest one isDrudgereport – they lose me as soon as I click on a single story. Ivealways wondered if there was a hidden motive for doing it thatway?

Reply

Merav KnafoJanuary 28, 2011 at 12:51 am | #

No hidden motive, just ignorance

Reply

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Matt LipscombFebruary 1, 2011 at 2:26 pm | #

What I personally often find that new users “miss” is some very corebasics of protecting their site. Specifically, making sure you stay up-to-date with the latest Joomla version and also stay up-to-date withthe latest extension versions. I would go further to say that 75% ofthe client sites I am hired to “fix” – need fixed because they letthings get so “behind”.

Reply

Merav KnafoFebruary 1, 2011 at 2:29 pm | #

Totally agree with that. The best way to get hacked isto be behind on your updates.

Reply

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MikeFebruary 1, 2011 at 2:37 pm | #

Nice article, very useful for new users, i wish i read it few years back,it would have saved me lots of time

Keep up the good work

Reply

Merav KnafoFebruary 1, 2011 at 2:48 pm | #

Thanks Mike, do send it to newbies, they need all thehelp they can get

Reply

Eric Caldwell

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February 1, 2011 at 3:24 pm | #

One thing on the Word copy/paste. We have been battling this foryears with our clients and that’s one of our first training items nowalong with explaining how images work on browsers along withhow tables work.

To combat the bloated HTML paste issue, we install JCE on everysite and the first thing we show people how to do is use the “Pasteas Plain Text” feature in JCE. No need for external text editors

Reply

Jamie Robinson-WoledgeFebruary 1, 2011 at 8:03 pm | #

A good foundation article and I agree with Matt, I know manyJoomla developers who don’t even know the basics of site securityand rarely keep up to date with core updates. Also in regard to Pt.#1 from the very infancy of WWW the golden rule was internal links

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same page, external links new page. The Smashingmag article andbackup research is a surprise to me. A quick thought how about acompromise and all external links open a modal window? howwould that effect SEO?

Reply

Andrew RogersFebruary 1, 2011 at 9:29 pm | #

Well written there! It’s nothing new and these tips has long beenthere for us. About opening new window for external sites, it hasbeen my rule of thumb to keep visitors to my site. What you wrote isspecifically useful for Joomla users and wanna thank you forsharing it.

Reply

Danny

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February 6, 2011 at 8:21 pm | #

One main thing is that majority of clients are “novices” they do notunderstand the simple reasoning why things are being done acertain way. For instance explaining that copying/pasting fromWord will create messy code with the WSYWIGS. It can getfrustrating working with clients and having them understand a lotof the basic things. Some don’t take the time out to learn. I work forone of the biggest sites in the US and our publishers whoresponsible to update articles and front of the site are required tohave HTML/CSS and web knowledge because of all the mistakesand not knowing. I say they should hire someone that knows howto publish in the joomla environment

Reply

Steve PullingerFebruary 7, 2011 at 3:05 pm | #

This is a great list, I was reading through it thinking “Yep, had to tidy

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that up”.

I really noticed this lately as I’ve been adding customer sites to ourshowcase and having to go through and tidy them up before linkingthem.

One thing about pasting from Word; if you use JCE for your Editor,the current version automatically strips out the messy Word codewhich saves a trip to Notepad.

Reply

MatanFebruary 8, 2011 at 12:49 pm | #

Hi Merav, Great article but I can’t agree with your firstdetermination.

I think it’s really bad idea to make links open in a new window. It’sbad for the user experience because the user lose the “Back” button

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functionality and this is the most common action users useing inbrowsers.

Reply

Merav KnafoFebruary 8, 2011 at 12:52 pm | #

The problem is that if you “get lost” in the new site,you’d have to click back again and again and again.Most people will give up after once or twice. That beingsaid, this is an issue worth doing usability testing for

Reply

BarbMarch 21, 2011 at 4:25 pm | #

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Great collection of tips.I also routinely install JCE, and then take away the font, font-size,font-color, etc. editor buttons — it makes it easier to keep the clientout of THAT particular trouble, anyway.

Reply

Chris - ClickWebDesignJune 20, 2011 at 10:48 am | #

Definitely a few classic gothcha’s there. Image resizing is a realdrawback. I’m surprised there’s even a debate about external linksopening in the same window – I agree with the authors views.

Reply

AdiSeptember 15, 2011 at 6:50 pm | #

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Thanks for this awesome list. I plead guilty of doing at least half ofthem.

Reply

tahsin352August 13, 2012 at 1:42 am | #

wow some post. very helpful post. this is also applicable for mobiledevices. you can see the latest book on mobile web developmentwith Joomla!. see the book <ahref=”http://newdailyblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/joomla-mobile-development-beginners.html”>Joomla! Mobile WebDevelopment</a>.

Reply

GarethNovember 8, 2013 at 3:28 am | #

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Great article that I wish I found with my very first site development– about 8 years ago, but alas, I finally got all these through bloodand sweat and banging my fist onto the mouse. Anyway, from myside: Links going to another domain url should open in a newtab/window so that you don’t loose the visitor when they close thepage. Always provide breadcrumbs so that the back arrow is notused – make it easier to navigate and not lose the loose the visitoronce again. This is all matter of opinion, but my sites are developedaround what ticks me off when I visit a site – don’t make the samemistakes as others

Reply

HiraNovember 5, 2014 at 12:32 pm | #

Thanks for the Nice Tips, It really helped. Can you please add moretips in your article? regarding indexing, speed .

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Reply

DJFebruary 4, 2015 at 7:46 pm | #

Great arricle. I’ll be sure to apply these rules to myself, lol. Sorry forthe off topic queation but is this Jomsocial?

Reply

Mobiele Applicaties DevelopmentFebruary 17, 2015 at 12:55 am | #

Building a website seems like a daunting task, but if you break itdown into its steps. There are quite a few free website templateswhich you can use, such as wordpress.org, dotnetnuke.com orjoomla.com. These can easily be set up by any one and should nottake longer than a day to do so.

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Reply

tsheringMarch 14, 2015 at 2:51 am | #

please suggest me how can i enable save and close button inijoomla template

Reply

kiedarMay 22, 2015 at 3:42 am | #

Hi,

Why is it that whenever I try to edit an article or create one, or to editanything from the admin dash board it redirects ne to the homepage without making any changes?

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Reply

SrpJuly 11, 2015 at 7:17 am | #

Is there any free joomla template for directory listing site.

Reply

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