Google

  • Accessing the administration panel

    Okay, you've installed your Joomla site, and want to began to master it. You click on the administrator link in the frontend and instantly hit the wall: a blank page is showing up. What's the deal? The cause is generally simple: This is happening almost always because your 'live-site' setting in your configuration.php file doesn't correspond with your Administration URL. You either have a www in your live-site setting in your configuration.php file and you are accessing your administration backend without the www or vice versa. It's highly recommended to correct this, the problem can impact even your site's Google rating.

  • Can't login after moving to new server

    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.

  • Cleaned your site? Fix Malware warnings too

    You have done a great job by cleaning your recently hacked file? Excellent, but you not finished yet!

    If you were blacklisted by Google, McAfee, Yandex (or any other web spam authorities), your site is showing various malware warnings to your visitors, wich can be a big turn down factor. Luckily you can request a review after the hack has been fixed.

    Google is now limiting repeat offenders to one review request every 30 days.

    Be sure your site is clean before requesting a review!

  • Duplicate content penalty

    In the world of dynamic sites generally, and, of course among the webmasters runing Joomla sites there is often a lot of worry about duplicate content penalties since so many different URLs can point to the same exact page.

  • Dynamic vs. Static URLs

    Joomla, as a PHP/MySQL powered solution is inserting the content into a webpage by way of a script. This type of site is considered to be dynamic. The advantage is obvious - that's why you and me have been chosen Joomla Tongue out. But what's the drawback?

  • Enable GoogleBot to fetch your JavaScript and CSS files

    Google announced recently that they’ve updated their webmaster guidelines to specifically note that blocking your CSS or JavaScript files may have a negative impact on your indexing and search rankings in Google. They are claiming, that for better understanding your site, they need to access these files too (and, probably next time they will want to take a peek in your laundry bag too...)

  • Error: 500 - String could not be parsed as XML

    Today I had a big surprise, several of my sites went out of business with the "Error: 500 - String could not be parsed as XML" message. I checked everything, and found no clues what can be happened. the sites weren't hacked, files or database has no signs to being tampered width or being damaged.

    And usual bug-hunting tactics as unpublishing modules for example revealed also nothing.

  • Google Indexing '?tmpl=component&type=raw' Webpages

    When doing Search Engine Optimization tests you discover that your web pages are duplicated in the Google index. One record is correct and the other includes '?tmpl=component&type=raw' in the url. Usually panik strikes instantly... since the hype about Google's "duplicated content penalty" is still high, giving more, than 1,2 million hits, despite the fact that Google officially denied the existence of a dumb penalty for such a "duplicates", claiming that they are penalizing only copycat pages. so, it's mainly a false alarm... but since all SEO workers are living (and dying) form the confidence - or lack of confidence - of their clients, it's a problem, wich should be solved.

    But let's see first, where these links are coming from, then we will find an easy cure for the problem itself.

  • How deep linking can give you an edge in the competition for better ranking

    You knows the basics, right? Great content and a good number of incoming links are necessary for gaining the top SERP (Search Engine Ranking Points) for a particular keyword phrase. The good old way to reach this goal was to build an attractive landing page and add to it as many links as possible.

  • How to Add Meta Tag Robots in Joomla 2.5 withouth extra tools

    By default Joomla 2.5 does not add the robots meta tag in the header and you have no handy tool by default to do it in one place, unless you don't use some add-on which let you do this easily.

    But what if you prefer to do it yourself, bare-handed, without seeing even some code? You might be surprised, but in fact in Joomla 2.5 it's very easy to set up meta tag robots for your home page and content articles.

  • How To Create A RSS Feed For Joomla 1.7+

    After I upgraded this site to Joomla 1.7 I wondering, how I can create a RSS feed with all entries to re-create the original functionality we had in the initial site. The problem is that Joomla 1.7 use for this purpose the "Syndication Feeds" module, which picks up the Featured Articles menu item (if any) to create a RSS feed from the currently displayed page.... This works fine - relatively - if you use the default Joomla setup, the Featured Articles menu item being your default homepage. But this isn't my case - and this isn't anymore the case of most of the sites... so I needed to find out something else.

  • How to remove 'Welcome to the Frontpage'

    I did not realised until recently how hard may be even for some seasoned Joomla webmasters to get rid of that 'Welcome to the Frontpage' text from their Joomla site. But talking with couple of customers and being even hired for do this Tongue outmade me curious, and I Googled for 'Welcome to the Frontpage'...

    The result may be surprise you... my last attempt ended on 25.000.000(no kidding...) hits.

    So, there is the free-for-all recipe:

  • How to remove the Joomla generator tag

    You use Joomla? Huh... Me too... Did you know, that by this alone you became a potential target for some bad guys out there?

    Like it or not, there are some nerds who are "specialized" themselves in hacking and cracking Joomla sites.

    Scared? Not need too, just be cautious and take some countermeasures. What you can do about?

  • How to sell your downloadable products?

    Yes, things like media files - or your software. No, I don't sell software - I give it away for free, for example here. Bu I build sites with selling capabilities. My favorite solution for it is VirtueMart, THE shop to be used with Joomla.

    Is powerful - but is not for beginners, you can easily lost here without proper guidance.

  • Increase your Joomla site's SEO score with sh404SEF

    If you think, that is enough to build a nice site with a great content to have lots of visitors flowing to your site you're wrong. There are millions of webmasters trying to do the same. And Google and other search engines simply can't find, index and sort all of these sites, and show them to your potential visitors. So you need to do a little more to help these search engines - and to help yourself!

  • Joomla Site Statistics

    Are you a good webmaster willing to see how your site are performing? Or you're a web developer in need to show to your client how their brand new/re-branded/tweaked/SEO/SEM mastered site is performing? If the answer is yes, you may already know, that web statistics is a powerful resource. And there are a lot of Joomla packages to help you. So, why you are reading this, instead of grabbing one and using it?

  • Joomla update warnings via Google Webmaster Tools

    Now you have one more extra reason to use Google's very useful Webmaster Tools. Recently Google added to his arsenal of Joomla related enhancements a useful one: In the Google Webmaster Tools you will see a warning with useful details on what to do each time yor Joomla site gets outdated!

  • Leverage browser caching

    One of the most easy ways to make your Joomla website faster is to leverage Joomla browser caching. This is one of the high priority tasks recommended by Google to make your website load faster.

  • reCaptcha stopped working

    While working on a new site I discovered, that reCaptcha - which used to be a rock solid part of the CMS since Joomla 1.7 - stopped working. Spent couple of hours googling around and checking and double-checking settings, just to discover, that Google, in his infinite wisdom, has changed things again without notice. The problem affects all Joomla versions from 1.7.1 to 3.2.0.

  • SEO DOs And DONT’s, According To Google

    Changes to Google’s algorithm have the ability to make or break businesses. Google is sending out the signal that you should worry less about the current SEO trends, and more about producing great content, and that they’re “leveling the playing field” for sites that don’t pay as much attention to SEO. Obviously great content is a positive, but at the same time, Google is showing us each month all of the changes it is making, and all the while, providing tips about how to do certain SEO things better.

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