Joomla Top 10 Mistakes

FORUM SUPPORT
VIP SUPPORT
MY DOWNLOADS
JOOMLA
JANUARY 26, 2011
TOP 10 JOOMLA BEGINNER

MISTAKES AND HOW TO AVOID
THEM
You know how it goes. You
open in browser PRO version
Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API
pdfcrowd.com
create a fantastic Joomla

website with great
architecture, awesome
usability, clean code and
optimized images, and when
youre done, you hand it
proudly to your client with
(hopefully) some explanation of how to use the sites backend. I
usually create a video tutorial that explains how to perform the
basic features.
The client is happy, you get paid, and you move on to the next
project. A few months later, when the client comes back with some
questions or wants you to upgrade or add some features, you
notice that the site is not quite as clean as it used to be, not as
optimized as it used to be, and so on. In fact, its kinda messy and
crappy. Not a site youd like to sign your name on or to have in your
portfolio.
What went wrong?
pdfcrowd.com
Joomla is great because it empowers even non-designers to

manage their sites themselves. The problem is that those
customers, in their effort to run the site without bothering you, make
mistakes.
During the years Ive been developing Joomla sites, Ive noticed that
some of these mistakes repeat themselves. If those clients knew
just a little about what to watch out for as they start using their new
site, maybe they wouldnt make them.
Feel free to send your customers this post to help them avoid these
mistakes.
1. LINKS TO OUTSIDE SITES OPEN IN THE SAME

WINDOW.
Theres a very simple rule here: all links to external sites should open
in a new window, not the same window. You dont want to lose that
person forever. If a user clicks to a new site in the same window,
theyre gone. All HTML editors have the capability to choose new
window when creating links. If you are linking inside the site
pdfcrowd.com
however, you should usually open the link in the same window (this
is the default). Leave too many windows open while the user
browses the site, and theyll 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.

Lets say you create some images of flowers to
pdfcrowd.com
upload to your site. You could call the images

1.jpg, 2.jpg but these names will make it hard
to find, and search engines wont know what to
red_rose.jpg
make of them. Even flower1.jpg is not good enough. The more

specific, the better. For example, red_rose.jpg is a great file name.
This is not only good for usability (its easy to know what the image
is without having to open it) but its also a great way to get free
traffic 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; thats your job.
Of course, you dont need to resize the image. You could upload a
gigantic image and resize it on the HTML Editor interface by
dragging the corners. But large images take longer to load, and that
picture will still load as a large image. Speed is important, so if you
want to keep your site speed down, you must resize the image
before you upload. There are many tools for resizing images.
www.shrinkpictures.com is a good one for beginners but any image
editing software, such as Fireworks, can do the job too.
pdfcrowd.com
4. HAVING SPACES IN FILE NAMES.

When you create a file, any file, be
sure to use underscores instead of
spaces.
So a photo of Lady Gaga should be
named: lady_gaga.jpg and not lady
gaga.jpg. Use a space and the
lady_gaga.jpg, not lady gaga.jpg
characters %20 will replace the gap when the browser reads the
file. This creates a messy code and can create unpredictable
problems. Heres a great article about the best practices for creating
file names:
www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/create-good-filenames.shtml
5. PLACING ALL THE IMAGES IN THE SAME

FOLDER.
Joomla allows you to create new folders according to topic under
the images/stories directory. For example, if you have an about us
page with photos of your team members, create a new folder, call
pdfcrowd.com
the folder team and place their images there. Place all your images
in the generic images/stories/ folder and in no time youll be
struggling to find your images when you want to add them to your
articles. Keep your images organized by topic. And of course, no
spaces in the folder names!
Some HTML editors will let you do this on the spot, when adding an
article, but the default HTML editor that comes with Joomla, wont.
So youd have to go to site->media manager and add a new folder
there.
Keep your images organized by topic

pdfcrowd.com
6. NOT USING THE AVAILABLE HEADING FOR

TEXT FORMATTING.
Every template has a style sheet file (CSS file) with headings for
formatting. The title of your article is already formatted by Joomla
but the rest of the article usually needs some more headings to
break 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 a
color, choose a size, click the bold button, and center it. It works but
it creates messy code and its hard to maintain. If you wanted to
make all the titles inside the articles green, not bold and in Arial font,
for example, youd have to open each article and make each change
manually. 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 the
headings look, all youd have to do is open the CSS file and make
the change once. (Thats not for beginners but you will get there
pdfcrowd.com
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. The
length of the session is set to 15 minutes by default but can be
changed on the global configuration page. Start typing an article
directly into Joomla then and your session will end before youre
finished writing. When you try to save your work, youll lose it. Trust
pdfcrowd.com
me been there, done that. Its not fun. The solution is simple: write
it in Word, save it, then copy and paste it into Joomla. But be
careful
You've got 15 minutes to finish typing , or else...
8. COPYING DIRECTLY FROM A WORD

DOCUMENT TO JOOMLA.
This is a very big mistake that can take your site down (Ive seen it!).
pdfcrowd.com
Creating your sites copy in Word is a very good idea but copying
from 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 into
Notepad first, then copy from Notepad into Joomla. Notepad is
easy to find on your PC under accessories. Im sure Macs have a
similar program.
pdfcrowd.com
Copying from Word directly into the Joomla HTML editor produces messy, bloated
code that Google hates
pdfcrowd.com
9. ADDING UNDERLINE TO TEXT THAT IS NOT A

LINK.
Text should only be underlined if its a link. People are used to
clicking on underlined text. They see an underline so they assume
its a link. If you need emphasis, use bold, italics, a different color, all
caps, or a bigger size. But dont use underline.
Text should only be underlined if its a link
10. HARD CODING LINKS.

pdfcrowd.com
There are two ways to link to a location on your own website. The
wrong way is to find the article on your site, copy the URL from the
browser window and use this link when creating a hyperlink. Its
messy, and if you move your site, change the articles title or change
your SEF extension, youll be in trouble.
The right way is to use the HTML editor to link to the article or menu
item. The HTML editor will know the right URL to use in a way that
doesnt mess up your site. Make sure you always choose relative
in the HTML editor settings, if available. The basic Joomla HTML
editor doesnt allow you to do this the right way, choose an HTML
editor that does (My favorite is WYSIWYG Pro).
pdfcrowd.com
pdfcrowd.com
The right way is to use the HTML editor to link to the article or menu item
Thats it! If you follow these practices when working on your

Joomla website, youll be in an excellent shape, and in time, all this
will become second nature. Remember, we all started at the same
place you are today, and we all made the exact same mistakes. I
hope this helps.
Web designers, what are the biggest mistakes you see when
handing a site to clients? Please add yours below.
Like
Sign Up to see w hat your friends like.
Posted in: Joomla, Tips & Tricks
177,603
26
Merav Knafo
Merav Knafo is the founder and CEO of iJoomla, Inc.
She loves writing about Joomla, usability and Social
Networking.
pdfcrowd.com
LEAVE A COMMENT
Name *
E-mail *
Website
SUBMIT COMMENT
Hans Kuijpers
January 26, 2011 at 6:42 pm | #
What a nice list to hand over to fresh Joomla users. But I dont
pdfcrowd.com
agree with your first point. You state that one always should open
external links in a new window. That discussion is on for years now.
Should you or should you not open an external link in a fresh
window.
Feel free to read the discussion about this topic on
SmashingMagazine ->
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/01/should-linksopen-in-new-windows/
Reply
Merav Knafo
January 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 sense
to me, so I am keeping this point
Reply
pdfcrowd.com
Ryan
January 27, 2011 at 11:38 pm | #
Regarding #1, Ive noticed some pretty big sistes doing this
external links opening in the same window. The biggest one is
Drudgereport they lose me as soon as I click on a single story. Ive
always wondered if there was a hidden motive for doing it that
way?
Reply
Merav Knafo
January 28, 2011 at 12:51 am | #
No hidden motive, just ignorance
Reply
pdfcrowd.com
Matt Lipscomb
February 1, 2011 at 2:26 pm | #
What I personally often find that new users miss is some very core
basics of protecting their site. Specifically, making sure you stay upto-date with the latest Joomla version and also stay up-to-date with
the latest extension versions. I would go further to say that 75% of
the client sites I am hired to fix need fixed because they let
things get so behind.
Reply
Merav Knafo
February 1, 2011 at 2:29 pm | #
Totally agree with that. The best way to get hacked is

to be behind on your updates.
Reply
pdfcrowd.com
Mike
February 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 Knafo
February 1, 2011 at 2:48 pm | #
Thanks Mike, do send it to newbies, they need all the

help they can get
Reply
Eric Caldwell
pdfcrowd.com
February 1, 2011 at 3:24 pm | #
One thing on the Word copy/paste. We have been battling this for
years with our clients and thats one of our first training items now
along with explaining how images work on browsers along with
how tables work.
To combat the bloated HTML paste issue, we install JCE on every
site and the first thing we show people how to do is use the Paste
as Plain Text feature in JCE. No need for external text editors
Reply
Jamie Robinson-Woledge
February 1, 2011 at 8:03 pm | #
A good foundation article and I agree with Matt, I know many

Joomla developers who dont even know the basics of site security
and 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
pdfcrowd.com
same page, external links new page. The Smashingmag article and
backup research is a surprise to me. A quick thought how about a
compromise and all external links open a modal window? how
would that effect SEO?
Reply
Andrew Rogers
February 1, 2011 at 9:29 pm | #
Well written there! Its nothing new and these tips has long been
there for us. About opening new window for external sites, it has
been my rule of thumb to keep visitors to my site. What you wrote is
specifically useful for Joomla users and wanna thank you for
sharing it.
Reply
Danny
pdfcrowd.com
February 6, 2011 at 8:21 pm | #
One main thing is that majority of clients are novices they do not
understand the simple reasoning why things are being done a
certain way. For instance explaining that copying/pasting from
Word will create messy code with the WSYWIGS. It can get
frustrating working with clients and having them understand a lot
of the basic things. Some dont take the time out to learn. I work for
one of the biggest sites in the US and our publishers who
responsible to update articles and front of the site are required to
have HTML/CSS and web knowledge because of all the mistakes
and not knowing. I say they should hire someone that knows how
to publish in the joomla environment
Reply
Steve Pullinger
February 7, 2011 at 3:05 pm | #
This is a great list, I was reading through it thinking Yep, had to tidy
pdfcrowd.com
that up.
I really noticed this lately as Ive been adding customer sites to our
showcase and having to go through and tidy them up before linking
them.
One thing about pasting from Word; if you use JCE for your Editor,
the current version automatically strips out the messy Word code
which saves a trip to Notepad.
Reply
Matan
February 8, 2011 at 12:49 pm | #
Hi Merav, Great article but I cant agree with your first

determination.
I think its really bad idea to make links open in a new window. Its
bad for the user experience because the user lose the Back button
pdfcrowd.com
functionality and this is the most common action users useing in

browsers.
Reply
Merav Knafo
February 8, 2011 at 12:52 pm | #
The problem is that if you get lost in the new site,

youd have to click back again and again and again.
Most people will give up after once or twice. That being
said, this is an issue worth doing usability testing for
Reply
Barb
March 21, 2011 at 4:25 pm | #
pdfcrowd.com
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 client
out of THAT particular trouble, anyway.
Reply
Chris - ClickWebDesign
June 20, 2011 at 10:48 am | #
Definitely a few classic gothchas there. Image resizing is a real

drawback. Im surprised theres even a debate about external links
opening in the same window I agree with the authors views.
Reply
Adi
September 15, 2011 at 6:50 pm | #
pdfcrowd.com
Thanks for this awesome list. I plead guilty of doing at least half of
them.
Reply
tahsin352
August 13, 2012 at 1:42 am | #
wow some post. very helpful post. this is also applicable for mobile
devices. you can see the latest book on mobile web development
with Joomla!. see the book <a
href=http://newdailyblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/joomla-mobiledevelopment-beginners.html>Joomla! Mobile Web
Development</a>.
Reply
Gareth
November 8, 2013 at 3:28 am | #
pdfcrowd.com
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 blood
and sweat and banging my fist onto the mouse. Anyway, from my
side: Links going to another domain url should open in a new
tab/window so that you dont loose the visitor when they close the
page. Always provide breadcrumbs so that the back arrow is not
used make it easier to navigate and not lose the loose the visitor
once again. This is all matter of opinion, but my sites are developed
around what ticks me off when I visit a site dont make the same
mistakes as others
Reply
Hira
November 5, 2014 at 12:32 pm | #
Thanks for the Nice Tips, It really helped. Can you please add more
tips in your article? regarding indexing, speed .
pdfcrowd.com
Reply
DJ
February 4, 2015 at 7:46 pm | #
Great arricle. Ill be sure to apply these rules to myself, lol. Sorry for
the off topic queation but is this Jomsocial?
Reply
Mobiele Applicaties Development

February 17, 2015 at 12:55 am | #
Building a website seems like a daunting task, but if you break it

down into its steps. There are quite a few free website templates
which you can use, such as wordpress.org, dotnetnuke.com or
joomla.com. These can easily be set up by any one and should not
take longer than a day to do so.
pdfcrowd.com
Reply
tshering
March 14, 2015 at 2:51 am | #
please suggest me how can i enable save and close button in

ijoomla template
Reply
kiedar
May 22, 2015 at 3:42 am | #
Hi,
Why is it that whenever I try to edit an article or create one, or to edit
anything from the admin dash board it redirects ne to the home
page without making any changes?
pdfcrowd.com
Reply
Srp
July 11, 2015 at 7:17 am | #
Is there any free joomla template for directory listing site.
Reply
search...
CATEGORIES
iJoomla
pdfcrowd.com
Extensions
Joomla
Usability
SEO
Monkeys
Templates
WordPress
outsourcing
Promotions
pdfcrowd.com
GET A FREE SPECIAL REPORT!

Email Address
First Name
Last Name
GET REPORT >>
pdfcrowd.com
IJOOMLA.COM
MY ACCOUNT
STAY IN TOUCH
Refund Policy
My Downloads
Forum Support
About
My Orders
VIP Support
Testimonials
My Store Account
My Downloads
Learning Center
My Account
Contact Us
Licensing
Terms & Conditions
PARTNERS
Sakic.Net SEF Advance
PixelsParadise.com
Hot Joomla Templates
pdfcrowd.com
iJoomla is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters. The Joomla! name and logo is used under a
limited license granted by Open Source Matters, the trademark holder in the United States and other countries.
Facebook
Twitter YouTube
pdfcrowd.com

Joomla Top 10 Mistakes

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Joomla Top 10 Mistakes

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

FORUM SUPPORT

JANUARY 26, 2011

TOP 10 JOOMLA BEGINNER

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

create a fantastic Joomla

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Joomla is great because it empowers even non-designers to

1. LINKS TO OUTSIDE SITES OPEN IN THE SAME

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

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

2. FILE NAMES SHOULD BE DESCRIPTIVE.

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

upload to your site. You could call the images

make of them. Even flower1.jpg is not good enough. The more

3. NOT RESIZING IMAGES.

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

4. HAVING SPACES IN FILE NAMES.

lady_gaga.jpg, not lady gaga.jpg

5. PLACING ALL THE IMAGES IN THE SAME

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Keep your images organized by topic

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

6. NOT USING THE AVAILABLE HEADING FOR

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Select one of the available styles, especially the headings style

7. TYPING DIRECTLY INTO JOOMLA.

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

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

8. COPYING DIRECTLY FROM A WORD

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

9. ADDING UNDERLINE TO TEXT THAT IS NOT A

Text should only be underlined if its a link

10. HARD CODING LINKS.

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Thats it! If you follow these practices when working on your

Sign Up to see w hat your friends like.

Posted in: Joomla, Tips & Tricks

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

They make some good points in that article, but still,

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

No hidden motive, just ignorance

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Totally agree with that. The best way to get hacked is

open in browser PRO version

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Thanks Mike, do send it to newbies, they need all the

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

February 1, 2011 at 3:24 pm | #

A good foundation article and I agree with Matt, I know many

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API

February 6, 2011 at 8:21 pm | #

Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API