Dear Joomla developers and site builders all over the world! I'm very glad to announce to you that there will be a gorgeous Joomla event taking place in May. Have you ever heard about this - J and Beyond 2012?

J And Beyond 2012

J And Beyond - What is it?

J And Beyond is not Joomla! Day. This is an international conference with attendance of developers and site builders from all around the world. It will be take place in May 18th to 20th in Bad Nauheim, Germany.

After the release of JSN PowerAdmin a week ago, the JoomlaShine team is very happy to receive a lot of positive feedback from Joomla! users. All of them find JSN PowerAdmin helpful for their sites. It’s really a big motivation for the JoomlaShine team since we truly want to contribute more to the Joomla! community.

No more waiting, let’s scroll down to those nice words...

Twitter

We are truly glad to receive some really cool comments from JoomlaWorks, one of most popular extension providers for Joomla!

JoomlaWorks tweet on their Twitter

Joomla! in Munchen - http://www.flickr.com

Joomla Day 2012 - What Are You Waiting for?

Recently, a guy - my roommate kept saying about Joomla over and over again until I got sick of it. However, I'm a little curious about this kind of thing. What the heck is it, anyway? Why do people take so much care of it? Then I do some Google search and finally find this: Joomla Day 2012 event - sounds interesting, huh?

What Is Called Joomla Day?

Joomla Day actually is occasion when Joomla users (including those who are newbies as well as addicts) gather together to spread the word about Joomla and share their passion for it.

Every year, Joomla Day event is hold in different places or nations and there's only one Joomla Day at a time in a specific location. So it's very exciting for Joomla users to prepare for this event in their local area.

From day to day in this event, you will experience different environment of making new friends, broadening your knowledge, updating new tracks, themes of Joomla community and especially beer (the funniest part, I think).

You might not know about Joomla! Days although you have used the CMS for long time. It is a pity if you miss such a cool event of the Joomla! world.

This article will give you information about Joomla! Days in 2011. Probably you will join the events this year and see something different.

First of all, you'd better know what Joomla! Day is, so...

JoomlaShine Team is amazingly happy to announce the launch official JoomlaShine Blog. To continue with delivering awesome Joomla templates and outstanding customer support we would like to give you more value with providing a great content. We understand that learning Joomla! CMS and building the website is not simple task with hundreds questions in mind. In this blog you will find the information that supports you in the right decision. Topics in the blog are chosen based on many requests from our existing customers. We understand well what the problem you are trying to solve and support you in coming articles.

Topics

• Joomla Tutorials – Learning Joomla! CMS is not a trivial. We aware about that and would like to share as much experience as possible to make your Joomla learning journey easier.
• Website Development Tutorials – Building a website takes a lot of effort and things to care about. You will find valuable content starting from choosing a right hosting company to the building a stable working website.
• JoomlaShine Documentation Portal – Making the product easy to use and clear to understand. That’s what you can find in articles of this topic.
• JoomlaShine News – Product’s release, important updates, special promotion programs is what you can expect in articles of this category.

We started this blog with four predefined topics which we believe you are interested in. However, it’s the only a beginning of our journey and so we’d like to hear your opinion about future topics. What are you wondering or interested in at the moment? Let us know through the comment box.

Stay informed about latest blog post following us via the Twitter channel.

If mobile support is in your criteria checklist for choosing a Joomla template, continue to read this article. All Joomlashine templates are ready for your mobile devices. And I am going to show you how nice your Joomla website mobile looks on iPhone, Android, and iPad with JSN Epic.

Please note that both versions for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7/2.5 of JSN Epic support mobile. And it is as the same as other templates - JSN Dome, JSN Tendo and JSN Teki.

JSN Epic on iPhone and Android

The built-in mobile design has a neat layout with 8 module positions. Besides this, its menu and HTML overrides are optimized to make sure that your website is presented effectively and nicely. Moreover, it is compact and lightweight so your website visitors can surf your website fast.

JSN Epic on iPhone and Android

When you want to learn anything, the first important thing that you need is to have a good book. You can go to a book store to find one, or search for an e-book on the Internet. In addition, there is another resource where you can get so much useful information- a well-known blog. Learning Joomla is not the only one. There are many Joomla blogs to support the user. One of the most useful Joomla blogs in my opinion is “joomlablogger.net”. Unlike a book, the joomlablogger.net website is always being updated with new and interesting information. You can take its most popular blog posts as your lessons for your learning all about Joomla. Well, let’s start now!

About joomlablogger.net

First of all, I would like to introduce you to this website and its administrator. This website is built for Joomla users who are at any level of Joomla use. The administrator is Kristoffer Sandven and he has worked as a professional Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) and a Joomla consultant. He has undertaken the work of Joomla blogging and run this site since 2009. For more details, you can look here. This website is a large resource of Joomla knowledge and you can learn about Joomla via the Joomla articles in the categories “Joomla tutorials”, “Joomla tips” and get the latest Joomla news updates in the category “Joomla News”. Moreover, the administrator also gives you a quick look at Joomla templates, Joomla extensions and services. In addition, because this is an open blog, you can feel free to express your ideas as well as suggest topics. Even if you just want to advertise on this site, you can do it, because this blog is visited by thousand of Joomla users from 126 countries, so it has great potential!

The website “joomlablogger.net”

Mobile solutions for Joomla websites

In the mobile age which we are living in, more and more users access websites via smart mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android-based or Windows-based mobiles. It brings a new challenge to website developers - Providing the look-and-feel of a mobile device's user interface effectively.

Joomla CMS is not an exception. Joomla developers provide some mobile solutions for your websites. Take the phone out of your pocket and check out yours website with the mobile Joomla products below.

To build a Joomla magazine website, besides choosing a suitable template to present the content, you should also install some other extensions. You know, an online magazine can't live without functionality ch as article comments, contact, etc.

Firstly, please make sure that you have installed Six must-have extensions for all Joomla websites. Secondly, let's take a look at the list of essential extensions for aJoomla magazine website below. Please note that, all of them are free. And I have tested to make sure that they work well.

Here we go!

Currently, the number of templates designed for Joomla gallery websites has increased significantly in the market. Considering this fact, I'd like to share with you some experience in building a photo gallery website from scratch based on version 1.5.

The aim of this article is to help you build a Joomla gallery on version 1.5 in the most cost-effective way. Therefore, I prefer free templates and extensions (under GNU/GPL license). The only cost you have to pay is hiring a hosting service and buying a domain name.

By following the steps below, you can build a Joomla gallery website by yourself.

Not only for businesses but also for individuals, it's essential to show your social activities to visitors. You have written many helpful articles, and they're worth sharing. Integrating your Joomla site with social media channels will help you drive more traffic to your site and advertise your articles better. I've tested many Joomla 2.5 extensions and in this article, I am going to tell you about some of the best free social extensions that you need. Firstly, you should have a look at several types of extensions I will mention today, categorized by functionality:

1. Display your channels
2. Add comments
3. Bookmark and share
4. Display social profiles
5. Login using a social network's account

Display your channel

Stalker

When I build my social media channels, the first thing I do is show them on my website for people to notice. It's really difficult for me to go to each channel and grab the integration code. I need one extension that allows me to show all my channels easily. Stalker is a great Joomla social extension for that need. The main reason I chose this Joomla 2.5 extension because I can show up to 52 social media channels to my visitors: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google+, just by entering my user ID for each channel. I can also add more networks or customize my icons to fit my template. Moreover, Stalker can display icons anywhere on the site: in a module position, directly in an article or even in a Community Builder profile.

Stalker module on the site

Facebook is now so popular, most people have their own account. And when you visit many pages, you can see Facebook like box where they invite you to follow them. You also can see how many people liked them. Do you want to add fan box code on your page? Just follow our guidelines, and you can do it not only on Joomla website 1.5! but also on 2.5!. There are 2 parts:

• Part 1 is for people who only have a Facebook account; you need to create your own fan page.

• Part 2 is for people who already have a fan page. You can start to add fan box code right now.

Create a Facebook Fan page

1. Just login your account and Create a page (You can find in the footer of your page)

The first time I researched Joomla SEO, I had many questions in my mind. And I saw that not only Joomla newbies but also webmasters had the same troubles as me. So I think it's a good idea to make the list of Joomla FAQs related to SEO. It will help you save a lot of time when doing SEO for a Joomla website. And here are ten of the most common FAQs.

1. Has Joomla already got built-in SEO? What can I do with the SEO functionality?

Yes, Joomla already has some SEO functions:

• SEO settings tab in Global Configuration.
• SEO features in menu item: Page Display options tab and Metadata options tab
• Metadata Options in Article Manager

When newbies first install Joomla, the URL rewrite function is disabled. You must enable it by renaming the file htaccess.txt to .htaccess.

With Joomla version 1.5, SEO functionality is simple. You just control the Meta tags of the website or articles, and re-write the URL. With the menu manager, you can't set Meta tags; the Page Heading is not displayed as an H1 tag. But from version 1.7/2.5, there are four more functions: setting aliases for article titles, include site name in page titles, Metadata options for Menu item and displaying the page heading as an H1 heading (visible to search engine).

Default SEO setting in Global Configuration

Insert H1 tag in Joomla 2.5

When you include site name in page titles you can choose the position to place your site name: after or before page titles. What is the difference? With large brands, they often put the site name before a page title to increase Click-Through Rate (CTR). But for lesser known brands or news websites , it's better to put the site name after a page title for maximum SEO value.

For further functionality, you should use Joomla SEO extensions. We've collected all the most useful tools in the article: "Excellent SEO plug-in for Joomla website".

Joomla is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in the world. It is well known for a free open source, a lot of Joomla templates, Joomla extensions and a friendly community. The name 'Joomla' is derived from the Swahili word 'Jumla', which means 'all together'.

Joomla has been developing continuously in 7 years. There are a lot of changes when compared to the first version. With the infographic below, you can see how it is developing, how attractive Joomla is and more.

Here you can download the infographic in original size

Edited by 10 march 2012

Spanish

Thanks to Hector from www.joomlabarcelona.es for translation the infographic file to Spanish.

Each of us knows about the importance of improving search engine optimization (SEO). You can read a lot of articles about how to optimize original Joomla templates on the Internet - but it's not the best way. You can save your time and have a better result with SEO plugins for Joomla. That's the reason why one of the most frequently questions now is: "Which Joomla extensions are good for SEO?"

First, I will note what you need to do to improve SEO of your website:

• On page
  
  • Control Meta tags (such as title tag, description tag): the keywords in these elements will be shown up in search results. Search engines can know your site talks about what.
  • Fix crawl errors: search engines will regard your website as a high-quality one and improve your ranking.
  • Rewrite the URLs: The default URL can't help search engines to get information about the content of a page. You should rewrite the URLs, so that the friendly URLs allow your site to achieve better rankings.
  • SEO article content: Not only the main page but also each of your articles can affect the ranking in search results.
• Off page
  • Submit sitemap: get your website indexed by search engines in the way you want.
  • Build back links: more links will generally lead to better search engine rankings and a better Google Page Rank.
• Check the traffic: monitor the visitors and improve your SEO continuously.

I have been testing various extensions to solve all of the above points. I choose tools for Joomla websites only. I didn't evaluate tools for general websites such as: SEO Powersuite, SEOmoz or Raven. Therefore, this article will give you six excellent SEO plugins which you can search for easily in Joomla extensions directory (JED).

From version 4.0.0, you can upgrade JSN ImageShow from Free to PRO in the back-end, in a few seconds, without re-installing. This process saves you time and effort.

Please make sure that:

• You have installed JSN ImageShow Free from version 4.0.0  
• You have bought JSN ImageShow PRO

Now, we will get started.

If you have used a free JoomlaShine template and now you want to get more options with PRO Editions, this article is for you. I am going to show you the way to upgrade JoomlaShine templates from Free to Pro step by step. In this article, I use the JSN Teki template as example. Please note that upgrading other templates is the same.

Uninstalling JSN Teki Free

The first thing to do is to uninstall JoomlaShine templates Free.

Open the back-end of your Joomla site, go to Template Manager, and change the default template to make sure that the JSN Teki Free is not set to default. You know, you are not allowed to uninstall a default template.

Change the default template

Dear Joomla fans,

We are happy to announce that we’ve released an extension that will help you to manage your Joomla website easily: JSN PowerAdmin. It is developed with only one purpose: Help you to use Joomla with ease. Now you can enjoy Joomla with Enhanced Administration Menu, Spotlight Search, Site Manager and more.

Here you can check how it works:

This is our contribution towards the Joomla community. So you can download it freely, without registration. Please don’t hesitate to share your usage experience and suggestions with us. We’d love to hear them.

Details / Download

JSN ImageShow v4.0.0 has been released after quite a long time of development. We believe that you guys will like it since it comes with a lot of useful improvements, and it is now fully compatible with Joomla 2.5.

No more waiting, let's get started.

Improved core architecture

Enhanced core architecture

A lot of automatic installation processes have been implemented to JSN ImageShow v4- sample data, upgrading, themes and so on. Moreover, all image sources have been converted into separate plug-ins. By default, you have the Local Image and Picasa image sources. To get the other image sources, you simply go to the Showlist, click on the installation icons of the component.

Thanks to this work flow, you will get much better performance and keep your Joomla websites lightweight.

Hi guys, I am Huyen - I have worked in the pre-sales support team at Joomlashine for one and a half years. My daily work is answering questions from customers and would-be customers of Joomlashine - people who buy our Joomla templates and Joomla extensions.

You know, I am asked a lot of similar questions, so it would be great if all of these were gathered together in one place so that if you have the same questions, you can search for the answers quickly.

I hope that you like this idea. Now, let's get started.

General

Q1: Do your products support Joomla 2.5 & further Joomla versions?

A: Yes. As soon as Joomla releases the latest official version, we release the templates and extensions for these versions.

Finally, Joomla 2.5 has been released, so have you found suitable extensions for your Joomla site? Let's take a look at Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) which contains a number of extensions ready for Joomla 2.5. In this blog post, we will introduce you to some outstanding popular Joomla extensions based on the following criteria:

• High rating (4.5 stars and above)
• At least 50 votes from users
• Good reviews from users
• Supports Joomla 2.5.

JCE - Editor

• Compatibility: Joomla 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and 2.5
• License: GPLv2 or later
• Reviews: 370+
• Votes: 780+
• Website - Download

JCE Toggled Editor

Introduction

In this tutorial, we will show how to convert a Joomla 1.5 template to Joomla 2.5 template. We will take default Joomla 1.5 template "rhuk_milkyway" as an example and convert it to Joomla 2.5 native compatible template.

Note:

This tutorial covers only template conversion process, so it's assumed that you already have Joomla 2.5 website installed or converted from version 1.5.

There are 5 steps involved.

1. Make a copy all Joomla 1.5 template files
2. Edit files structure
3. Edit file "templateDetails.xml"
4. Edit file "index.php"
5. Install and test converted Joomla 2.5 template

The release of Joomla 2.5 is a step which marks a big and long-term change in the Joomla Community. No matter whether you have used Joomla before or are just learning about it now, you will find it necessary to know more about the latest version: Joomla 2.5. All of the basic questions you wonder about will be fully answered in this article.

What does Joomla 2.5 allow the user to do?

If you thought that only developers can build and run a website, it’s time to forget that. With Joomla 2.5, you are provided with a foundation framework to build your own website. If you’ve dreamed of having your own website, nothing can prevent you from trying to build a good one with Joomla. Joomla gives you all the things you need, and now you just need to learn how to master Joomla.

Joomla 2.5 is the latest version of Joomla; it was released in January, 2012. This is a long-term version in comparison with Joomla 1.6, Joomla 1.7. Basically, there are no big changes in this current version compared to the previous version. The interface as well as the basic structure of Joomla 2.5 is similar to Joomla 1.7, but there are some new features added in. These improvements give you a new experience to perfect your website with every passing day. The latest version of Joomla 2.5 is Joomla 2.5.4 (at the time of writing this article).

I/ Joomla! 2.5

Joomla! have just released version 2.5.3. The functionality of Joomla! 2.5 made me feel very interested, and today I'm writing a blog post about the new features. My blog might not mention all of the new features, but I'll try to write this blog within my knowledge.

II/ New features in Joomla! 2.5

There are many articles written about the new features in Joomla! 2.5. I will go straight to the important functions which I think are very useful for users in Joomla! 2.5. This blog post includes two parts: one for Beginners and one for Advanced Joomla! Users.

A. For beginners

Smart Search

Besides the regular Search module, Joomla! 2.5 now supports Smart Search functionality. For content to be displayed in search results it must first be indexed by one of the Smart Search plug-ins. After the indexing of the content is completed, you can set configuration to display Smart Search via Module Manager with a module named "Smart Search Module".

Figure 1: Smart Search component

Joomla 2.5, with many new features and upgrades, comes soon after the release of versions beta1 and beta2. JoomlaShine is glad to announce that we have already tested our JoomlaShine template in Joomla 2.5 and will support it when it is officially released.