How to install and configure Joomla with minimum effort, tuned for speed, SEO, security - and top performance.
Today I had to upgrade an old, Joomla 2.5.7 site to latest Joomla, everything went out fine until I had to do the first critical step - the upgrade from Joomla 2.5.28 to Joomla 3.51. Did I mentioned that server has PHP 5.6.25 withouth possibility to upgrade - at least not on short term?
OK, so, wasn't the best setup condition available, but usually this is not a dealbreaker.
And BUMM, I have seen an old "friend", a popup saying:
ERROR: Invalid login
... and does this randomly, both in frontend and backend, sometimes showing the correct pages, and rarely an error message saying, that "table '#__session' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed".
After updating K2 to version 3.6.3, in the backend, when tried to edit one of items, I got this error:
Error decoding JSON data: Syntax error.
After upgrading to Joomla 3.6 I had a nasty surprise - in the Joomla Installer the tabs - Install from file, Install from folder etc.., all but the Install from Web - where all gone. Of course, nothing found on the web: this happens when you are an early adopter. But I discovered the "fix" accidentally, on my own.
If you search on Google for the term "joomla can't login after moving to new server" - or something similar, you will get more, than 1 million hits for most of the combinations.
So, you aren't alone. And there are plenty of suggestions, on what might gone wrong and how you might find that, and there are verious fixes. But what if you moved the site to another domain? From development server to it's final place? This is a subject wich is rarely touched by those advices.
You just upgraded your Joomla site to latest Joomla 2.5 or 3.* and your regular, registered users cannot login to the frontend, seeing this error:
How did you find this site? Did you asked yourself the question how a site can be found on the net? Watch your own habits, and you'll see: you are looking to the sites found on first page of the Google results for a given search term. Must be something very important, to go down to the second, and even to the third page. What else you use to find new web content? Social media? Recommendations from friends? Links on pages you like and visit? Do you know, that less, than 1% of existing web-pages are reaching the first page of the Google results for some search term? do you know, than less, than 17% of existing web-pages are even spidered regularly by the major search-engines? If you don't get spidered and/or you don't reach the magic first 3 pages for at least some search terms you are interested in - you aren't exist. And I can't believe, that anyone building a web-page plans to remain hidden... So, how you can get there? Enter the art of SEO. You will find some interesting, Joomla-specific ideas here which may help you learning it! And never forget: SEO is about what you do every day. SEO is a long term strategy - not a quick fix.
Joomla is safe!! - you can heard in every forums. Is indeed safe enough? Yes, the core Joomla, if properly configured and deployed is a reasonably secure environment. The difference can be made by several factors. and first of these factors is YOU, the webmaster. But there are others, like the hosting environment, the addons used, and couple of others. Watch your back! And keep your site safe!
... and not only. Sometimes you don't know, why your Joomla site isn't working as you want it. Here you can find some tips wich might help you finding your way!
And, remember: everyone was a beginner!
Yesterday your Joomla site worked just fine. Today is misbehaving. And you're clueless... Right? Hey, you're not the first one having this experience. You're on the good site where you might find the cure for your problem!
All kind of software tools you should have to be productive. From local development environments to programming tools, resources, tips and tricks wich can help you build your Joomla siter faster, easier.
Basic tricks to make Joomla work for you. Things you can solve using various configuration areas of your Joomla, your hosting environment or your components.
